# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1911_S21
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

13th Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1911.  21

The church's calling is to make gracious and blessed children of God out of lost and condemned human beings, and to kindle in dark, dead hearts the living hope of eternal life. Our Savior states this clearly to Paul at his call to be an apostle: "I now send you among the Gentiles, to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, to receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified."

What, then, is the means by which the church achieves this? This means is not all sorts of self-chosen methods and measures. Christ says: "In vain do they worship me, since they teach as doctrines the commandments of men." Nor is this means the divine law. Certainly the church is to preach the law, but not in order thereby to fulfill its real task, but rather in order to show people in what a lost and condemned state they find themselves, and that by their sins they have earned God's wrath and displeasure, temporal death, and eternal damnation. The one and only means by which people are saved and made blessed is the sweet gospel, the wonderful teaching that God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, and that Christ, through his suffering and death, has already worked out an eternal redemption for all, which every sinner may now confidently take hold of. That is why the Risen One said in the circle of his disciples: "Thus it is written, and thus Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins were to be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem."

If, then, the church is to fulfill its task on earth, it must constantly have its mouth full of the gospel and open it diligently and wide. It must not let itself be moved by setbacks to set the preaching of the gospel aside and try other means. Whatever is not saved through the gospel cannot be saved at all. So may our gracious God further keep our Synod to this, that we make it our real business to proclaim the gospel both near and far. Then we will, for our part, help bring it about that the scattered children of God are gathered together and made ready for the kingdom that has been prepared for them from the foundation of the world.

The third reason why the church's real business must be the preaching of the gospel is the fact that the church alone is able to preach the gospel. It is true that the gospel is, on the one hand, so simple that in Christendom the stammering tongue can speak it plainly and clearly — as we see every day in our Christian parish schools, where our little schoolchildren tell of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven with perfect clarity. On the other hand, though, the preaching of the gospel is so difficult that no child of the world, however