# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1879_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 20 —

partakers in the same sin. And we need a spur to resist the sluggishness of our flesh in this matter too. For just as on the one side our flesh is presumptuous and eager to want to investigate what we are not to investigate, and to judge hearts accordingly, so on the other side it is timid, so that it does not want to investigate what it should investigate, and to judge accordingly in the name of God. Admittedly one often meets resistance precisely in the announcement for Communion. But that should not discourage anyone, especially when we consider that people are often warned by outsiders, even by pastors, not to put up with this; as, for example, a preacher in Germany had instructed his parishioner who was emigrating to America not to let himself be examined or tested by preachers in America regarding his faith, and had given him as the reason that the Apostle says: "Let every one test himself," so one should let oneself be tested by no one else. —

Church discipline is certainly necessary as a part of the Law, in order to compel flesh and blood, which will not follow the Gospel, as the Formula of Concord also teaches: "For the old Adam, as the unruly, quarrelsome ass, is also still a part of them (the regenerate), which must be compelled to the obedience of Christ not only by the teaching of the Law, admonition, urging and threatening, but also often with the cudgel of punishments and plagues, until the flesh of sin is entirely put off." (Article VI. Of the Third Use of the Law.)

In the home things are certainly good only when the father insists on discipline and exercises punishment; a state can prosper only when in it it is insisted upon with all earnestness that the laws be obeyed and the transgressors of them be called to account. So too a congregation and a larger church body can come to flourish only when discipline of doctrine and of life is cultivated on the members of the Church.

Admittedly brotherly admonition must be in force in the process; the members of the congregation must also admonish one another, as is clear from the saying of Christ: "If your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him between you and him alone." Every church discipline that does not begin with brotherly reproof is perverse.

Luther also maintains this in the following passage: "What hinders the ban now in our times? Nothing, except that no one in this matter does what is proper and fitting for a Christian. You have a neighbour whose life and conduct are well known to you, but to your pastor it is either quite unknown or at least not so well known; for how can he know the life of every individual in particular, how it is? Therefore, when you see that your neighbour becomes rich by unjust dealing or trade; see that he practises unchastity or adultery, or brings up his servants carelessly and negli-