# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S34
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

34 Proceedings of the 25th General, or

...only picture God as Father after the example of Christ. Everyone bearing
a human countenance need only confidently lift up his head and call God
his Father, without bringing Christ's person and work into the Gospel —
that is, without believing in Christ crucified. But Harnack may speak of
confidence and call for confidence as much as he pleases. That confidence
remains, to speak with Luther, only in the words and in the mouth, and
never enters into the heart. And if the whole of mankind joined hands and
cried out for ten years — indeed, for a whole lifetime — "We do not,
indeed, believe in Christ's blood shed for us, but we picture God to
ourselves as gracious," it would nonetheless be condemned by its own heart
and conscience. People would go down to the grave with an evil conscience.

The matter stands thus: God is known, laid hold of, and experienced as
gracious, as Father, only in Christ, not by going around Christ. The Jews,
too, wished to call God their Father while bypassing Christ. They refused,
exactly like Harnack, to bring Christ's person and work into the Gospel.
But Christ holds up to them: "If ye believe not that I am he" — namely
your Savior and the remover of your sin — "ye shall die in your sins,"
John 8:24. No creature can bring a conscience to rest, to peace; that is
not the work of man, but the work of God. God the Holy Spirit must write
a verdict of grace into the conscience in place of the verdict of
condemnation. But the Holy Spirit is a Spirit who glorifies Christ. By
glorifying Christ in the heart as the Lamb of God who has borne the sin
of the world, he wipes out the divine verdict of condemnation in the
conscience and puts in its place the verdict of grace, and with it the
confidence: "I have a gracious God." Teachers of works, who place the
essence of Christianity in man's own morality, can lull a conscience to
sleep for a time, but cannot satisfy it. They are not bringers of peace to
mankind, but its tormentors. In his exposition of Isa. 52:7, Luther calls
teachers of works, such as the papists and Harnack, "sorry night-owls"
who "terrify with their hooting." But of the messengers who bring people
the Gospel of Christ crucified, he says: "They have lovely feet, for they
bring with them the most joyful word for troubled consciences. Those whose
conscience has once been in danger know this."*) And on Isa. 40:2 Luther
remarks: "The forgiveness of sins does not consist in the working [of a
man], nor in teaching and doing the Law, but simply and solely in the
gracious remission [of sins]. And this saying one must hold to carefully.
For when...

*) St. Louis edition, VI, 611.