# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S36
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 36 —

can, as said, no man come into heaven who is not converted and has a new heart; but not on account of the conversion or of this new heart is he saved, but he must first appear before God as a poor sinner who has nothing at all that could please God and who would deserve to come into the abyss of hell; then let him appeal to God's mercy and take comfort in the fully valid redemption of Jesus Christ and lay hold of his whole merit; then he is made righteous. It must be stressed with full earnestness that God's wrath has been turned away from all men through Christ's doing and suffering, and that through the Gospel everyone is invited: Now take the grace! Should a preacher step before a congregation with the thought: God's wrath still rests upon these, and they must be moved to reconcile him — it would be terrible; but because he knows the redemption has already taken place for all, God's wrath against all is extinguished, therefore he can confidently say: "Be reconciled to God"; only take his hand of grace. The Formula of Concord therefore also indicates that even Pharaoh was not condemned because he was rejected by God according to an unconditional decree, but because in his hardening he persisted against God's drawings of grace. If no change had occurred in God's relation to men through Christ's suffering and death, what meaning would the word reconciliation then have? We would have to strike it out of the Bible, if God, after the work of reconciliation is done, still held the same wrath against the human race as if it had not been accomplished. As certainly as it stands in the Bible: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them," so certainly there must be no wrath in his heart any more, insofar as he imagines the world in Christ. That God looks at the world so, however, is not an empty fancy, for in fact Christ has taken the cause of the world upon himself and with it also its punishment and the wrath of God, has done all that a substitute must do, and has paid everything down to the last penny. How then would it be possible for God, after all this, to look at men again with wrath and hatred? So one can picture the world as the totality of those for whom Christ has made satisfaction, and so regarded, there is pure love, pure favor, pure grace over it. But now God also looks about in the world to see how people relate to this redemption of Christ, and there he sees many who do not want to be so redeemed, who do not want to accept this reconciliation; in the most recent times they would rather be descendants of apes, rather belong to the cattle. Of course, against these there is a wrath of God burning down to the lowest hell in his heart. There is no contradiction in that. But it is a contradiction to claim that God is first reconciled through our faith. God is no longer the enemy who is to be reconciled, but man is; yet as soon as he begins to believe, he takes God's hand, and he does this