# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S31
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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obedience many were made sinners, so also through one man's obedience many will be made righteous." Rom. 5:18, 19. The comparison therefore consists in this: As sin and condemnation have come upon all through Adam, so righteousness and salvation have come upon all through Christ; as death has come upon all through Adam, so life through Christ. The universality of the redemption is to be regarded as one says, for instance, of a number of slaves who were ransomed, as soon as the money for them is paid: they are all free, although, if they do not accept the release, they are not free as individual persons. They are free according to the intention of him who ransomed them, but captive because of their evil will. So Christ has made all men, the slaves of death, of the devil and of hell, free, for he has paid all that was to be demanded of them, so that no one any longer needs to be a slave; but nevertheless most remain lying in captivity, because they do not consider his ransom fully valid. Therefore, since Christ's death and resurrection, it is no longer so much this or that sin that damns, but unbelief, which is the sin of all sins. So the Lord also says: "The Holy Spirit will reprove the world of sin," and adds at once: "Of sin, because they believe not on me," to show that, after he, the Son of God, has made us men free, the guilt of the whole world has also truly been wiped out. The resurrection of Christ also bears witness to this in particular. What was Christ's resurrection? It was an act of God by which Christ was declared righteous. Christ, however, had gone into death laden not with his own sins but with the sins of the whole world and with all its unrighteousness. For the sake of these sins he was condemned by the Father, and this sentence was carried out on him; therefore he sank into death. When the Father then raised him up again, he declared by that: The guilt is wiped out, he is righteous. But as little as it was Christ who was condemned for his own person, but rather the humanity whose sin he bore, so little did Christ become righteous for his own person only through the resurrection; rather humanity was made righteous thereby, for which he died and rose. If it is asked how it can be reconciled that on the one hand Holy Scripture teaches that through Christ's raising the whole world is absolved, and that on the other hand it yet testifies that the guilt remains on the unbelievers as long as they persist in unbelief, the answer is: One must distinguish two ways in which God looks at men. When God looks at the world in Christ, his Son, he looks at it with the most heartfelt love; but if he looks at the world apart from Christ, he cannot look at it otherwise than with burning wrath. Whoever, then, does not believe in Christ, indeed rejects Christ, over him the wrath of God remains, although God, when he beholds him in his Son and remembers that he too has done enough for him, beholds him with eyes full of love; as the Scripture says, John 3:16: "For God so loved the