# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1857_S227
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded and Brought Up?   227

...gregation, which after all consists only of individuals; only that the very same faith of the heart in all, and the membership-communion with Christ that follows from it, joins them inwardly, while the same becoming-vocal of faith in the confession of the mouth and the same becoming-deed of this faith in the works of love — be it brotherly or general — joins them outwardly, and accordingly brings congregational life into being.

Now this is of course not to be understood as though this new spiritual life must be present in every single one of those called through the Gospel, and that otherwise, for example, in this or that local congregation where Word and Sacrament are in use, no congregational life at all were present; for that every one who is called has also believed in Christ from the heart has never yet been the case in the congregation of the called, from its earliest days in Adam's house down to our own time; for there we find, for example, Cain, Ishmael, Esau, Hophni and Phinehas, Saul, Judas, Ananias and Sapphira alongside and against Abel, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel, David, the other apostles, and the members of the Pentecost congregation; so that in the congregation of the called there have always been, still are, and will be until the Last Day, alongside and against those who truly believe in Christ, seeming believers and hypocrites, Christians in mouth and name only, who indeed confess with the mouth but do not have true living faith in Christ and the Holy Spirit in the heart, and consequently also stand in no spiritual and membership-communion with Christ and with those who truly believe, but only in the outward fellowship of the confession, of the use of the means of grace, and of divine worship — while inwardly, through malicious unbelief, they are members of the devil, even without proving themselves such by openly godless conduct.

Nevertheless, in spite of these tares among the wheat, these rotten fish in the net, congregational life will not be lacking there where an orthodox office of preaching is in use, and where, in right cooperation with it, the little flock of believers, even if it should not have the greater number, yet has the greater weight, and makes the new spiritual life known: in the confession of the mouth within and outside the public assemblies of worship; in watching over the purity of doctrine; in judging and deciding controversies of faith and doctrine as they arise, according to the confession of the church; in the establishment of church discipline according to Matthew 18:15–17; in the conduct of orderly church courts and, where necessary, in the imposition of the ban; in the ordering of services of worship conformable to Scripture and the Confessions; in the establishment of wholesome ordinances; in common works of Christian love for the preservation and spread of the church; in the patience of the cross under common affliction and particular visitations; in mutual brotherly reproof and consolation; in the constant striving to become ever more complete — as a congregation too, chiefly in a thorough knowledge of salvation and of self, in true living faith, and in the joyful confession of pure doctrine and combating of false doctrine, and in active love.