# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1857_S41
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded and Raised Up? 41

-ments of the civil government, according to the Word of God in Holy Scripture, govern
themselves.

That the exercise of these rights is denounced by their constitution-mongering
opponents, on this side and that, as Independentism, into
the blue, without foundation, troubles us little; for we are, from the evangelical
doctrine of justifying faith, of the church, and of Christian
freedom, divinely certain that in the conscience neither of a single
Christian, nor of a single congregation, nor of the totality of all
congregations, may any human power — be it called pope, prince, bishop,
consistory, or whatever else — govern by any commands and prohibitions, laws, and
ordinances whatsoever, but Christ alone, the one and eternal
King, through his Word, and that not through the Law of Moses, but through
the glorious Gospel, in the faith and love worked through it.
Whoever now, contrary to this genuinely evangelical Independentism, grants to any
human power, under the pretense of a divine right, the authority
to govern his conscience by human commandments, does not stand
in the freedom with which Christ has set him free, denies the faith,
falls from grace, and lets himself again be caught in the servile yoke of the Law;
for in the conscience of every individual Christian, as of the whole
church, Christ the Lord alone, through his Word, in spirit and in faith, wills to
govern unto righteousness before God and in the blessed and glorious freedom
of the children of God. Those, on the other hand — be they individual Christians
or congregations — who do not, through love, on the foundation of the one and
pure confession, establish and maintain church fellowship, and who therein
are not willing and joyfully submit to all sorts of wholesome human order which they
give themselves, similar to how formerly the equally entitled citizens of a
free imperial city submitted themselves, but who persist in willful isolation
and separation, do indeed sin against Christian love;
and this is, to be sure, in that respect a sinful, fleshly, separatistic, and
God-displeasing Independentism. That we, however, have nothing to do with this
is amply proven by the very founding and continued existence of our Synod, a loud
testimony of fact; for whereas among us no congregation's good right, grounded in the
Gospel, to govern itself according to God's Word, in the right cooperation of the church's
teaching office and its hearers, is in any way
stunted or diminished, and no one is in any way forced or compelled to accept any
human church order as necessary for the sound continuance of the church contrary to the
doctrine of Christian freedom, or even to the detriment of the doctrine of justifi-
cation by faith:
nevertheless we have, in accordance with the love of Christ, on the foundation of our good con-
fession and according to evangelical principles, entered into such a synodal
fellowship as is not to be a legislative body, but rather wishes only, in a fatherly and
brotherly manner, to stand advisingly at the side of the individual
congregations, in order, through the free cooperation of love, to carry out the fatherly