# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S28
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

28 Proceedings of the 25th General, or

...believes in him who kept the Law for him and for all mankind. Therefore
Christianity is not a work-religion, but the faith-religion. Therefore the
essence of Christianity now consists solely in faith in Christ. Luther is
fond of saying: someone is white from whiteness and black from blackness.
A Christian is someone from Christ — that is, in that he relies before God
on Christ's doing and suffering. To be sure, Christianity also teaches
morality and good works. We shall see later that true morality, and works
good before God, are found only in Christianity. But a Christian wishes to
be saved neither half, nor a quarter, nor even a thousandth part by his own
virtue and works, but solely through Christ's righteousness and works.
This essence of Christianity already finds expression in the children's
verse: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting
life," John 3:16. The well-known philologist Max Müller also pointed
tellingly to this essence of Christianity, as distinct from all other
religions, when he gave an address on the Bible — Christianity's book of
religion — before a Bible society. The famous Orientalist said, among
other things: "I may say that for forty years, in the discharge of my
duties as Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford, I have
devoted as much time to the study of the sacred books of the East as
almost any other person in the world. And I venture to tell this assembly
what I have found to be the one keynote, the one refrain, running through
all these so-called sacred books — salvation by works. They all say that
salvation must be purchased; our own Bible, our sacred book of the East,
from the beginning to the end, is a protest against this doctrine. Good
works are, indeed, required in that sacred book of the East also, but they
are only the outcome of a grateful heart — they are only a thank-offering,
the fruits of our faith, never the ransom-money of the true disciple of
Christ. Let us not shut our eyes against what is noble and true in those
sacred books, but let us teach the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Mohammedan,
that there is but one sacred book of the East that can be their comfort in
that awful hour when they must stand alone before the throne of the
invisible world."

Thus we have seen that, and why, faith in Christ is Christianity. Let us
now look somewhat more closely at the opposite opinion, the opinion that
Christianity consists in man's own goodness and righteousness.

Here we say: we have, in one respect, regard for the — admittedly rare —
people who sincerely strive to keep God's commandments in order to be
saved by this way. The apostle Paul too gives...