# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S67
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 67 —

ness and obedience toward God's Word, but because the treasure of the merit of Christ, which even the weakest faith grasps in the promise of the Gospel, really contains a fully valid satisfaction for all guilt and punishment of sins, as well as a perfect obedience to all the demands of the Law of God."

This sentence has been added to the preceding one because, besides the false doctrine that faith is so high, meritorious a work, there is yet a further false doctrine of the Arminians to be rejected, who say: the grace of God consists precisely in this, that He is willing to let this faith count for so much that He therefore makes the believer saved. Over against this it is to be held fast that even the weakest faith, even if it were only a little spark, so far as it is faith at all, has Christ with His whole merit, because it grasps Christ, who has rendered so perfect an obedience and brought about so complete a redemption by Himself that whoever has Him is also perfectly saved. Now it makes no difference at all whether someone holds a gem with the strong hand of a healthy man or with the weak finger of a sick child, if only he holds it.

Thesis 11: "The faith of the individual does not by its power bring it about that the evangelical promise of grace, which God speaks in the Word of the Gospel or of absolution, becomes truly valid, efficacious and true, but it simply holds to the promise of grace and forgiveness as a divinely true and efficacious one, and in that it accepts the promise of God, it grasps therein at the same time the gift of righteousness and salvation and has what the words say and as they read."

The matter which is expressed here we have already discussed in detail in the preceding theses, namely that faith does not first give the content to the Gospel and to absolution. The office of faith is not to give content, but to take out the content which God has put into the means of grace; hence one never finds in Holy Scripture the expression "on account of" or "for the sake of faith," but always: "through or from faith." To this belong also all the passages of the Book of Concord in which it is said that the Gospel is of no use without faith, although the treasure is surpassing. For it is one thing that the treasure is there, and another that it is of use.

Thesis 12: "When an individual sinner by faith grasps the promise of the Gospel in Word or sacrament, and thus appropriates to himself the treasure of the merit of Christ for his justification and salvation, he is also regarded, reckoned and declared by God, as in a judicial act before the judgment seat of God, to be one who now, for his own person, is partaker of the merit and righteousness of Christ for his salvation, and thus, through the personal possession of the benefit of Christ, is also personally righteous and an heir of eternal life."