# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S27
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Tenth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1902. 27

...soul; nor this, that he is man or woman, young or old; nor this, that he
is educated or a natural man, that he is white or black or yellow, etc.;
nor this, that he is an American or a German or an Englishman; nor this,
that he believes in a god and strives to live honorably according to his
conscience and abides by the laws of the land. No — only one thing in a
person makes him a Christian: faith in Christ, namely, that the person,
who is after all a sinner, relies on Christ for the attaining of God's
grace and of salvation. In this Christianity is distinguished from all
other religions that otherwise exist in the world. For all other religions
are work-religions — that is, religions that give people instruction in
how they — the people — are to secure God's favor for themselves through
their own goodness, their own efforts, their own works. In this all
non-Christian religions, and the so-called Christian ones, agree. Only the
kind of works they prescribe differs among the various religions.
Christianity, however, is not a work-religion but the faith-religion, the
religion of faith in Christ. A Christian is a person who wishes to come
into heaven not through his own goodness and works, but through Christ's
righteousness and works.

Where does this come from? Where does this essence of Christianity come
from? In what is this essence of Christianity grounded? Where does this
difference between Christianity and heathenism come from? It comes from
this: the Christian religion has a Savior; no other religion does. The
heathen religions have mere teachers — teachers who give people moral
prescriptions, by following which people are supposed to bring themselves
into heaven. Christ, the Son of God become man, approached the matter
differently. He preached no new law, but he placed himself, in the stead
of mankind, under the old, eternally binding Law, kept it in the stead of
mankind, and paid the penalty for the transgression of the Law in the
stead of mankind through his death and shedding of blood. As Scripture
testifies of Christ: "When the fullness of time was come, God sent forth
his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were
under the law," Gal. 4:4-5. And again: "Behold the Lamb of God, which
taketh away the sin of the world," John 1:29. "Surely he hath borne our
griefs, and carried our sorrows. . . . He was wounded for our
transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our
peace was upon him," Isa. 53:4-5. In short, because the Son of God became
man and, as God-man, in the stead of mankind kept God's Law and paid the
penalty for the transgression of the Law, and so became the Savior of all
mankind, the essence of Christianity does not consist in a person's
attempting to keep God's commandments, but rather in a person's...