# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S31
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Tenth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1902. 31

...Christ, are saved. Paul calls this Gospel of Christ, 1 Cor. 2, "the
hidden wisdom of God, ordained... which none of the princes of this world
knew." He describes this Gospel of Christ as something that "eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man." And the
apostle describes this Gospel of Christ as the very substance of the whole
of Christian doctrine when, in that same passage, he says: "I determined
not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified."
For the heathen world, which sits in darkness and in the shadow of death,
the light dawns only when the Gospel of Christ is preached to it, when the
message is brought to it: "You are reconciled to God through Christ;
without your works, grace — full grace — is available to you through
Christ; believe this, and you have a gracious God."

That is the essence of Christianity.

II.

And the Christian church must hold fast to this essence of Christianity if
it is to fulfill the task assigned to it in this world, if it is to carry
out that for which it has been placed in the world by God and is
sustained by God.

For what, namely, is the Christian church in the world?

1.

First and before all things, to make people blessed [i.e., to save them].
Through the state, people are to be kept in outward order. The church, on
the other hand, is to make people blessed. That is the church's task in
the world. This purpose of the Christian church is granted without further
ado by all who still wish to be Christians.

But by what means does the church attain this its purpose? Solely and only
through the preaching of the Gospel of Christ crucified. It must preach:
God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become in
him the righteousness that avails before God. This Gospel of Christ is a
power of God that saves all who believe in it. Through one's own morality,
through one's own works, no flesh is made righteous before God. On the
contrary: those who deal in the works of the Law are under the curse. As
surely as it is true that all who believe in Christ have a gracious God,
so surely is it also true that God is ungracious to all who come before
him with their own morality. What, then, would happen if the church
wished to place the essence of Christianity not in the Gospel of Christ
but in man's own morality — if, instead of the grace of God in Christ, it
were to preach man's virtue and...