# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1857_S11
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Efficacy of the Sacraments.                    11

heard it. So Christ says of the sacraments, because they are visible words and seals of the promise: whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned; indeed Paul adds further: for whoever eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment upon himself. And from this one can also understand the dispute over that doctrinal proposition which was formerly current in the schools, that it is not the sacrament but faith in the sacrament that justifies. For the sense is not that faith justifies in such a way that it does not accept the grace which God offers and holds out in the Word and in the sacraments, or that it accepts the grace without the means or instrument of the Word and the sacraments. For the Word and the sacraments are the object of faith; indeed, in the Word and in the sacraments the true object of faith is the merit of Christ, the grace of God, and the power of the Spirit. And faith justifies for this reason, that it seizes and takes hold of these in the Word and in the sacraments. And in this sense one says that, as the faith of the Word, so also the faith of the sacrament justifies. When, therefore, justification is ascribed to faith, the hearing of the Word and the use of the sacraments are not thereby excluded; rather, in order that faith may justify, it must lay hold of Christ in the Word and in the sacraments. That doctrinal proposition, however, was set over against the opinions of those who imagined that in the use of the sacraments, even those received the grace unto justification and salvation ex opere operato who used the sacraments without repentance and faith." —

This is indeed a doctrine of the efficacy of the sacraments which, as Chemnitz himself so beautifully and rightly observes, is much simpler, clearer, more certain, and more sure than all the disputations and opinions of men. Let us remain unmoved in it together with our faithful teaching fathers, and accordingly reject as an empty and harmful delusion every assumption of any salutary efficacy of the sacraments apart from and without faith, whether of a magical or of a mechanical kind. Far be it from us, therefore, that notion of the moderns concerning the sacrament of holy baptism which amounts to the indelible character of the Romanists — namely, where it is taught that the baptized person, even if he has indeed fallen from his baptismal grace, nevertheless still remains, in virtue of his baptism, joined as a member and organically with the body of Christ, by some mysterious something, until his death. For this stands firm: whoever does not have Christ's Spirit is not his, and whoever is not Christ's is without doubt in the devil's kingdom. Therefore let us set against the doctrine of our adversaries the victorious arguments of John Gerhard, since, with regard to the indelible character of the Romanists, he says in his Conf. cath., lib. II, Pars II, art. XI, cap. II:

"We prove our position by this: 1. that in Scripture no mention is made of any