# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1857_S194
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

194 On the doctrine of the election of grace and some materials connected with it, etc.

does the Calvinistic doctrine conflict with a fundamental article, the universality of the divine call, and with its connection to the most important basic doctrines — a doctrine never established in like manner by any writing of Luther, not even in Augustine's [teaching], which from the decretum absolutum [derives] the divine causality of sin

Love imparts itself, spreads and pours itself out —, insofar as he lays hold of Christ, whose righteousness he grasps, and, building upon the promise of His meritorious taking away of the sins of all, possesses Him alone. When, then, Paul admonishes: "Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies," etc.; "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall," etc.; compare 1 Thessalonians 4:1, etc. — he is not therewith demanding such things of faith, which already has Christ the new man, born of the Virgin Mary, who is love and who is spiritually conceived and begotten in the believer, and thus already has the fullness of life and everything that serves for a godly walk, 2 Peter 1:3 f.; rather, it is a holding up of the objective norm of the Christian life before the personality, where the powers of the spirit and of the flesh meet one another, so that within that personality life may be found in them as the commandments of the Lord their God and as good works — though out of faith, not out of the impulse of the law. The teaching of the law, spoken to all, converted and perverse alike — "believe, strive, pray, watch in faith, and become ever more complete" — remains necessary even for the righteous, as the apostle thereby shows us: not to stir up their faith, which is the establishment and fulfillment of the law, but to stir up themselves, yet only as proceeding out of the believed Gospel of love, to render therein the thanks of the new obedience. The God-wrought ground in the heart strives powerfully and does not cease to bring forth good continually; but it can be hindered, indeed extinguished. To fan it, to rouse the fiery coal — that is, to give nourishment toward an ever more vital energy through diligent exercise, because idle steel rusts and the lamp goes out without oil — believers are reminded of what God wills (Romans 15:15; 2 Peter 1:12-13; 3:1), on account of the blind, lazy, negligent, unwilling old Adam who clings to them down to the grave; therefore also, further, to prevent their falling, under a spiritual appearance, upon their own devotion and holiness, or even imagining a perfection of their works, which is nevertheless weakened by the flesh. Formula of Concord, p. 989 ff., Latin 717 ff. The chief sum of the commandment is love out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of unfeigned faith. For God does not burden us; in the Old Testament the purpose was quite a different one. He who could demand a great deal of us desires only this one thing: that our spirit, whose impulses are so constituted that it must love something — (whence the object of all its desires taken together is eternal blessedness, and the longing for it arises out of the whole range of those desires; but that longing must be misdirected in the highest degree when a man sets an apparent good, which, being desired by one impulse, seems to him indeed to accord with his willing, but which afterward draws such consequences after it as are wholly contrary to that willing — when he sets such a good above the morally good, and thus above himself, or the creature above the will of the Creator, and an arbitrarily chosen desire above obedience toward Him) — that our spirit, then, moved by the motives of the highest love which the Gospel offers and upon which the law grounds its demand, may be stirred, before all and in all and with all that I may think, say, or do for the honor of my God, to love Him in return. In love is comprised the unity of all divine revelations; only accidentally do they work hatred and enmity, just as by the sun the seed of poisonous, harmful weeds lying in the earth is opened up. Whatever is holy, righteous, and good flows out of love. It becomes in us, too, the noblest affection; in it is heaven, outside it only the opposite, all wretchedness. With it God has portrayed His own heart and eternal life. I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have Me as such; with this I will give Myself to thee as a Father; all the ways of My almighty and gracious governance and providence shall be thine, for thy good, and all things and creatures that depend on Me alone shall be for thy best. Thou shalt turn to My name in everything that befalls thee; it shall be to thee a strong castle and fortress, wherein is to be found all the help thou needest;