# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S57
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 57 —

(have staked their money in the lottery); if they belong to the believers, then the Gospel proclaims God's grace to them also; if not, then the message does not apply to them. They simply do not believe that God is already reconciled with the world, and that the Gospel is nothing other than the proclamation of this at God's command and an imparting according to His order. When a man is condemned to death and the judge pronounces him free, the pardon does not consist in the judge cutting him down from the gallows with his own hand, but in his pronouncing him free, and such a pronouncing free includes everything else in itself. So, when God pronounces free, He has also justified through the Word. Whoever therefore denies that the Gospel is an absolution of the world denies the Gospel of Christ altogether; then it is not a glad message but an instruction as to what a man must do himself so that God may be gracious to him. The LORD expressly says that the Gospel shall be preached in all the world "for a testimony unto them"; the glad message is thus to be proclaimed, whether it be accepted or not, or, as the apostle says, to the one a savor of life unto life, to the other a savor of death unto death. In the opposing doctrine the man must always first have faith before there is any good thing there, whereas God's Word says: Believe, and you have it. The opposing doctrine is therefore a godless doctrine, from which one ought to shrink back. What use is any exhortation to faith in it? What shall I then believe, if nothing is yet at hand? But the next thesis, on absolution, belongs directly with this thesis.

Thesis 8: "Holy absolution is a preaching of the Gospel to one or more definite persons who desire the comfort of the Gospel. It is therefore at all times valid and efficacious in itself, for God declares Himself therein, through the mouth of His servant, a God truly reconciled through Christ's blood and death, and on His part imparts the gift of forgiveness and righteousness to all who are absolved, although many do not become partakers of the gifts of grace offered in the Gospel, on account of their unbelief."

When I hear confession and absolve, I am a right Lutheran preacher only if I am certain of this: Those who were there, I have released them all in the moment when I spoke to them the word of absolution, and only those are right Lutherans who believe that they were truly absolved by God. Let no one think: If the preacher only knew what kind of man I am, he would not absolve me; now I know, however, and therefore his absolution is worth nothing. Rather, everyone should go out of church with the thought: Now God has pardoned us all and forgiven the guilt. This, however, one can believe only if one believes that the world is redeemed; for if I believe that, then absolution is only the communication of the fact to those making confession that they were redeemed 1800 years ago, and the request: Believe this now, and you are all saved. What wicked men you must be if you do not believe it! Now someone might well thin-