# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S18
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

18 Proceedings of the 25th General, or

...outward Christendom slandered and persecuted the truth. Luther cries out
again and again: "We must be the heretics." When we consider this, it can no
longer seem so very strange to us that with our doctrine — which we know to
be the pure divine truth — we find no general acknowledgment within outward
Christendom.

One might object: Is not the Christian church of the truth? How then can it
reject and fight the divine truth? To this it must be said: the crowd that
calls itself the Christian church is not the Christian church. The Christian
church consists of the people who in their hearts trust in Christ's merit and
have the Holy Spirit. And these, in fact, all hold with us in their hearts.
The whole of Christendom on earth holds with us so-called Missourians in its
heart. And that is the case even when, misled by others, they outwardly turn
against us and outwardly cry out against us. All Christians on earth believe
with us Missourians that they are converted and justified by grace alone for
Christ's sake, and are saved by grace alone for Christ's sake. No Christian
holds in his heart that he, through his works, his self-decision, his right
conduct, contributes anything toward his conversion and salvation.

But, someone might further object, we are fought not merely by outward
Christendom in general, but also by those who call themselves "Lutheran" and
wish to belong to the church of the Reformation! Is that not extremely
strange? Well, that is exactly the situation in which Christ and the apostles
found themselves. The Jewish church was, by name, the orthodox church. But
the name did not protect it from rejecting the right doctrine. So too today
the name "Lutheran" does not protect against the rejection of Lutheran
doctrine. It goes with the Lutheran public of our time as it went with the
Jewish public of Christ's time. The Jews, in dead earnest, wanted to be Jews
and all but shouted themselves hoarse for the Messiah. But when the Messiah
actually came, they did not want him, but crucified him. So too many today
want, at all costs, to be Lutheran. Luther's name has a good ring to it. But
as soon as one comes before them with Lutheran doctrine, some cry out: "That
is Roman leaven," when the Lutheran doctrine of the means of grace is set
forth; others: "That is Calvinism," when they hear that conversion and
salvation depend on God's grace alone and not on human cooperation. So an
opposition that misuses Luther's name must not and cannot unsettle us
either. My dear fathers and brothers! One must stand in the truth in order
to understand it. Luther already complained in his own time that the Gospel
was "mystery and secret enough," "not only to the papists, but also to our
own people, who almost boast of being evangelical." Even more must we, in
our time, complain of "our own people," "who almost boast of being
Lutheran"...