# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S36
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

36 Proceedings of the 25th General, or

...into the works of man loses, along with salvation, the good works as well.
No one has ever done a single good work before first believing that, apart
from his works, he has a gracious God through faith in Christ.

Why? For a work to be good, it must be done for God; there must be love for
God in the doer's heart. But since the Fall, love for God enters a human
heart in only one way: when the heart comes to know, believe, and so
experience that God has had mercy on it in Christ; that God has, through
Christ, saved it from eternal damnation and given it heaven. When the
apostle Paul therefore exhorts Christians to "Christian morality," he says
in Romans 12:1: "I beseech you by the mercies of God, that ye present your
bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God." "By the mercies of
God" means, by recalling the fact that God did not even spare his own Son
but gave him up for you all. Doing good works is an art confined to one
particular class of people — it can be done only by one who believes in
Christ as the one who blots out his sin. Luther says: "Christ must first be
ours, and we his, before we take hold of works."*) And in another place:
"You must have heaven and already be blessed" (namely, through faith in
Christ), "before you do good works. The works do not earn heaven; rather,
conversely, heaven, given out of sheer grace, produces the good works,
without any seeking of merit."**)

What belongs to Christian morality, before all else and first of all, is a
heavenly frame of mind — one that despises the vain things of this world and
seeks the things that are above. But this frame of mind is instilled in a
person neither by force nor by flattery, neither by moral instruction nor by
culture and learning, but solely and only by giving him the heaven won
through Christ. And that comes about solely and only through the gospel and
faith in it. Everything that does not have its treasure in heaven through
faith in Christ delights itself, in one way or another, in the husks of this
world. Nothing else is possible.

Whoever, therefore, takes from the Christian church the doctrine that we
have, apart from our works, a gracious God and salvation through faith in
Christ, takes from the Christian church its good works along with it. And
yet, since the time of the apostle Paul, there have always been many people
who call themselves Christians and have argued that, for "morality" and good
works to truly thrive, faith in

*) Erlangen ed., vol. 10, p. 43.        **) Walch, vol. XII, p. 183.