# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S26
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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instructed otherwise, than that I must understand it in a philosophical way, of that righteousness in which God is righteous in Himself, does right and works, and punishes all sinners and unrighteous; which righteousness is called the essential (formalem) or active (activam) righteousness. Now this was how it stood with me: though I lived as a holy and blameless monk, I found myself nevertheless a great sinner before God, and moreover of an anxious and restless conscience, and I did not trust myself to reconcile God with my satisfaction and merits. Therefore I did not love this righteous and angry God at all, who punishes sin, but I hated him, and (if this is not blasphemy or to be reckoned so) I was secretly angry, and in real earnest, against God; I said often: Is it not enough for God that he afflicts us poor, wretched sinners, already condemned to eternal death through original sin, with all manner of misery and tribulation in this life, along with the terrors and threats of the law, that he must through the Gospel yet add more of this misery and heartache, and through its preaching and voice further threaten and proclaim his righteousness and stern wrath? Here I often raged in my confused conscience; but nevertheless I held on, with further reflection, at the dear Paul, to find what he meant in that very place, and I had a heartfelt thirst and desire to know it. With such thoughts I spent day and night, until, by God's grace, I noticed how the words hung together, namely thus: The righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel, as it is written: The just shall live by his faith. From this I learned to understand that same righteousness of God, in which the just lives by God's grace and gift alone, from faith, and noticed that the apostle's meaning was this: through the Gospel the righteousness is revealed that avails before God, in which God justifies us out of grace and pure mercy through faith, which in Latin is called Justitiam passivam, as it is written: The just shall live by his faith. Here I felt at once that I was wholly and newly born, and had found, as it were, a wide-open door into Paradise itself; the dear Holy Scripture also now looked at me quite differently than before; I ran therefore quickly through the whole Bible, as I could remember it, and gathered also in other words, according to this rule, all their interpretations, as: that God's work means this, that which God works in us; God's power, whereby he makes us powerful and strong; God's wisdom, whereby he makes us wise; likewise the others: God's strength, God's salvation, God's glory, etc. As I had before hated this little word "'God's righteousness'" in real earnest, so I began on the other hand to esteem the same as my dearest and most comforting word, dear and high, and that passage to me was