# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1857_S166
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

166 On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Some Matters Connected Therewith, etc.

the Spirit of Christ, and whatever is born and begotten of this is spirit,
for the Lord's sake — His human nature, taken up into the unity of the
Person (to which, thereby, divine form belongs, 1 Cor. 15:45, cf. John
6:63) — or more precisely, that which in the humanity of Christ
stemmed directly from His divine nature, which perfected His sacrifice
as one accomplished without any change, and which, from the
inexpressibly precious moment of His death onward, laid aside
mortality together with the manifestation in the flesh and brought
about the resurrection, see Luke 1:35, 4:18, Heb. 9:14, 1 Pet. 3:18,
Rom. 1:4, 1 Tim. 3:16, etc.) — His Word, the Gospel, John 6:63, Rom.
7:6, 2 Cor. 3:8, 1 John 5:6, 8, the new man in us, John 3:6. The law,
too, is spiritual — holy, righteous, and good; but because our spirit is
sunk into flesh — (by which is meant, first and properly, the material
substance of the body; then the outward and legal side of human
existence in general; further, the present earthly stage of development
of our nature, to which is now attached the notion of transience, of the
temporal, of weakness and lowliness — this even with regard to
Christ's humanity, which emptied itself of the full use of the fullness of
its glory through self-renunciation; and finally, since in any case with
us the self-seeking inclination that seeks its own is for the most part
mediated through the desire directed toward the things of the visible
world — flesh here denoting the sinful bondage that despises the
fellowship of God's love and the eternal, invisible good comprised
therein, and the man sold under it with his understanding and will) —
then, in view of the fact that it is unable, in such a condition, to furnish
us spirit and life, but rather, sharply assailing us, awakens and
heightens the sense of the death in which we find ourselves, it is
called — not a dead, but, because living and powerful (Acts 7:38, cf.
Heb. 4:12), a killing letter, which one strives to some degree to fulfill
according to its sound and its wording, without power and without
truth, Rom. 7. The effect of Moses concerns only the soul, insofar as
the soul is distinguished from the spirit in the sense in which the spirit
is not taken as identical with it; whatever arises, beyond nature, in the
innermost ground of the heart is created through the word of grace,
and only that which this new man, or spirit, appropriates from the soul
is assigned to God and to eternal life, while that which is opposed to it,
or the flesh, is left to judgment; what is communicated to us through
the working of the Gospel pervades the whole man; and inasmuch as
the body has also served as a spiritual temple, it too is to be a vessel of
future glorification. Cf. Heb. 4:12, 1 Thess. 5:28, 1 Pet. 4:6, 1 Cor.
15:42ff.

As long as the child lives and moves in regeneration and daily renewal,
all activity — both that of making the content of its life an object to
itself, and the effort of taking it up into self-conscious movement — is
purified, uplifted, and carried by the powerful guidance of the Holy
Spirit; and the reciprocal effect of all sanctified knowing and willing