# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S54
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 54 —

so that the Holy Spirit may always work in us through the Word and daily distribute forgiveness until that life where there shall be no more forgiveness, but wholly and altogether pure and holy men, full of piety and righteousness, taken away and free from sin, death and all misfortune, in a new immortal glorified body." (Page 458, 459.) Further: "That such merit and benefits of Christ should be offered, presented and distributed to us through His Word and sacrament." (p. 708.) Here we hear, as our Confessions attest, that through the sacraments the benefits of Christ are also presented and distributed. The ancients, when they speak of those who do not yet believe, mostly use the word offerre = to bring forward and offer. Of an imparting (conferre) there is talk only in the sense that it includes the appropriation on the man's side. On God's side, however, the sacraments impart the goods as surely as God does not lie. When therefore God says to a man: Your sins are forgiven you, He has thereby also certainly given what the words say and as they read. When we speak here of imparting, we are not speaking at all of what may take place under certain circumstances, but that an imparting power cannot be denied to the means of grace at all. To be sure, to him who does not believe nothing is imparted through them, if one wishes to speak in the strict sense of the meaning of this word. But we are speaking of what the means of grace have in themselves, and there we say: This power consists not only in their showing what God has done for us, nor only in God's knocking through them at the sinner's heart, but they also have the wonderful power that they give what the Word contains. When God says: You are My child, then through this Word I have also become His child, as the Savior says: You are clean through the word which I have spoken to you. As the Word at the creation had the power to call all things out of nothing into being, so also in the justification of the sinner, only that here man has the terrible power to resist the Word. If one now asks: How can the Word of God effect anything without at the same time imparting the grace? the answer is: It is two different things, to present and to impart. When the Word presents the forgiveness of sins, that is one part; when it works faith in the heart, so that the sinner now also grasps the grace presented, that is the other part. The better ones among the Reformed grant the first, the others deny both. Some of them do not deny that the Word kindles faith, but then, according to them, it goes off for a walk and looks to see where it will find God. God's Word, however, teaches, and a Lutheran believes it too, that in the Word there is already forgiveness of sins, life and salvation, and faith grasps this too. When the Reformed also sometimes grant that the Word of God also has an effecting, a converting power, they nevertheless all suppose that the forgiveness of sins must be fetched from heaven.