# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1857_S195
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the doctrine of the election of grace and some materials connected with it, etc. 195

the dogma, asserted in a form that does not follow, of an irresistible grace which by an inwardly victorious necessity releases the corrupted will of man from its slavery; although we by no means deny that what God has foreseen must come to pass, yet without prejudice to the

only terrible, like fire, to him who misuses it; from it flow the occupations of the heavenly hosts, peace and joy. He who devised beneficence also devised those strong, sweet bonds and fetters of love. He did it for us; what do we do for Him? Who are we, that He should count us worthy and bid us love Him, and — because it is the most monstrous misery not to love Him — should threaten with heavy punishments? The kindness and faithfulness which has neither measure nor end and is new every morning, the giving up of the Lord Jesus, the untiring mercy shown to so many thousand refractory souls: these are what demand the answering flame, which on the other hand is itself the gift and the working of the Holy Spirit, born into the world through the Son's accomplished deed of love and through the fellowship that proceeds from Him. And because the love of God toward us, once known and believed, pours love toward God into our hearts, the commandment of love in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is now called new — the one commandment of the New Testament, set apart from all the Levitical commandments, which do not come up to it — the commandment which in and through Him becomes so pleasant and lovely that His disciples even lay down their lives for the brethren (John 13:34; 1 Eph. 4:10, 19, 11; 3:16). For the freedom of love, as a liberation from guilt and constraint which takes the place of the love commanded in the law, goes — being in its innermost ground directed toward God — in its imparting to the neighbor through self-denial beyond the love of self.

Thus faith, love, and good works rhyme and fit finely together; and yet it is faith alone which receives blessing and righteousness from the God of salvation, freely and out of pure grace, without the slightest regard being had to it insofar as it is a work or has works — which can acquire nothing — but rather because through it alone it is possible to receive freely; and yet faith is never and at no time alone, without works. Formula of Concord, p. 955 f., Latin 692. It is not works that first make the person godly and pleasing to God; rather, the person must be such beforehand through faith before the works can please God, who regards the person not for the sake of the works, but the works for the sake of the person, Genesis 4:3 ff. This is brought out with special clarity in the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 4, by the citation of the first verses of Psalm 32, in that it shows that when David recounts the manner and way in which blessedness can come to a man, he makes no mention whatever of works — for the silence of Scripture very often furnishes a strong ground of proof — and yet, on the other hand, the psalm expressly adds at once: "in whose spirit there is no guile." No merit of works is contained in this; for granting even that a thief confesses his crime and does not maliciously deny it, he does not thereby earn pardon. The proper sense of the words of verse 2 is, according to the original text, this: Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit; the latter is thus a continuation of the predicate that is asserted of the person who has absolution. With the blessedness that arises out of the forgiveness of sins there is inseparably joined the undeceiving, divine certainty of the spirit; that is faith, which is not of the sort of a slack bow. On this ground — that faith can never and in no case exist and stand alongside an evil purpose and decision — the Apology and the Formula of Concord, pp. 956 f., 208 ff., Latin 693 f., 107 ff., also demonstrate the agreement of James with the meaning of Paul. For the former, faith and work do not stand as two mutually complementary factors which the concept of justification could not unite; therefore he too does not speak of works which precede faith or which first bring justification to accomplishment, but of works which follow out of and after justifying faith, without which faith has nowhere its seat and its being. What does it profit if someone says he has faith and yet does not have works? (James 2:14 ff.) Can faith — namely, not as that power which works good works —