# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S165
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Fourth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. 1884.   165

what belongs to it, works, helps, and furthers." — Another passage relevant here is Ephesians 1:3ff. There the apostle praises God for having made the Ephesians partakers of his spiritual blessing, for having made them Christians, and then says: "According as he hath chosen us," and so forth. Every Christian who reads these words without prejudice will at once understand them to mean that the spiritual blessing that came upon him in time is a consequence of the eternal election. — The same holds for the passage Romans 8:28–30. Chemnitz rightly says on the basis of this passage: "Thus God's election, too, does not follow upon our faith and righteousness, but goes before as a cause of all of it; for whom he has ordained or elected, those he has also called and justified." One should further turn to the passage 2 Tim. 1:9, where it is written: "Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began." The apostle confesses here in the name of Christians: God has taken us out of the world by his call of grace and set us into the state in which we have salvation. What is the cause? "Not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began." Just as here, on the one hand, "our works" are rejected as the cause of our Christian state and our salvation, so, on the other hand, our eternal election — for that is God's "purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began" — is expressly given as a cause of our being saved and called. One must be blind not to see this. Such is the explicit word of Scripture concerning the relation of faith and the Christian state to eternal election. — Where, we ask, does the word of Scripture that speaks of election say anything to the effect that the latter took place with regard to faith as the ground and presupposition of election? Nowhere, nothing of the kind. Nevertheless this doctrine has been forcefully pressed, and the doctrine of Scripture that we hold has been rejected. And what was the procedure by which one tried to prove the false doctrine of election to be the only correct one? One took passages of Scripture in which no explicit word of God, no revelation about election, is to be found — for example, the passages "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved" and "Without faith it is impossible to please God" — and drew from them the conclusion: "Therefore faith must precede the eternal election to salvation; therefore it must be said that election took place with regard to faith." Having thus decided for themselves, apart from the word of Scripture, how God's eternal election had taken place, they then tried afterward to read these very thoughts of their own into the passages of Holy Scripture that speak of God's eternal election,