# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S77
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 77 —

The discussion returned once more to the phrase "to keep the mystery
of the faith in a good conscience." This is a biblical expression, since St.
Paul holds up to Timothy (1 Tim. 3:9) that it is not enough to carry the
pure doctrine in one's head; rather, when a person presents the doctrine of
the faith, he must also have a good conscience in doing so. If a preacher
preaches repentance, then, it must not be the case that his conscience says:
what business have you preaching repentance to others when you yourself
do no repentance; or if he exhorts to faith and holds it up to others, it must
not be said within him: you yourself have no faith; or if he exhorts to
sanctification, it must not be said in his conscience: you yourself apply no
diligence to sanctification. A preacher who wants to have a good
conscience must himself stand daily in true repentance, or else it will be
said of him, as of an ungodly man: "What have you to do to declare my
statutes, or that you should take my covenant in your mouth, seeing you
hate instruction, and cast my words behind you?" Every sermon he
preaches to others must first be a sermon directed at himself. He must not
have to hear the voice of God in his own conscience saying: Be silent, you
hypocrite! — So-called dead orthodoxy is something altogether dreadful. In
it people learn the pure doctrine by heart and work it over in their heads,
but are only sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. God wants nothing to
do with such preachers. Preachers are not to be mere light-bearers but
lights themselves; they are not to be mere salt-vessels but salt itself. A
tenfold condemnation strikes the man who preaches repentance to others
and does not himself repent.

A further requirement laid upon us preachers is this: that we prepare
ourselves carefully for our preaching. This is necessary, partly so that the
sermon be thorough, and partly so that it be well ordered. A disordered
sermon does not produce the benefit it could produce if its contents
followed in proper order. To prepare oneself carefully for a sermon means:
after prayer for God's help and enlightenment, to consider the text rightly
and to immerse oneself truly in it. For, according to the old rule, there are
three things that make a theologian — and thus also a preacher: prayer,
meditation, and trial [*Anfechtung*, spiritual trial/affliction]. To
meditation belongs, of course, also the right division of God's word
according to its chief parts, law and gospel. One often gets the impression,
even hearing sermons from members of our own Synod, as if the law were
set forth far too little in its terrible severity, as the office that preaches
damnation. Merely so as not to become legalistic, we leave it entirely aside
or fail to treat it with proper thoroughness. From this deficiency, no
doubt, also comes the satiety already censured, which is to be noted in our
congregations. If the law is not preached rightly, then the hearers do not
become properly poor sinners, and if they already were poor sinners, they
nevertheless do not become daily poorer sinners, as they ought. Where the
law does not first