# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1858_S313
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Glory of the Lutheran Church. 313

...thank God, frequently; and the errors that are found in the public confession recede into the background in the sermons preached in the congregations — especially when the preachers are personally believing men who strive to bring their hearers to salvation through the Word of God — while, on the other hand, the saving truth of Christian doctrine comes to the foreground. That this is so is something we ought to rejoice over and thank God for, instead of troubling ourselves to prove that outside the Lutheran church only error is preached — which, thank God, is not true — or at least to present it as a mere possibility, that it might perhaps happen somewhere sometime. Can a good conscience indeed be kept in this, when one belittles the demonstration of God's grace and mercy and refuses to see and acknowledge his works where he sets them before our eyes? If error is preached here or there (ah, how often and how strongly, from many pulpits of Lutheran congregations!), then let us by all means condemn the error, and I feel within me, thank God, a living and vigorous zeal to do so; but let us take care not to fail to acknowledge God's Word where he gives it, and not to remain silent out of self-love and self-satisfaction, and not to fail to praise him for doing so.

But I am pressed to say where, according to Scripture, the church is.— The old answer to this question is well known: Where the Spirit of God is, there is the church. But further: there is a Christian congregation, a Christian assembly, wherever people baptized in the name of Christ, and confessing him as the sole Mediator, Redeemer, and Savior, come together to bend their knees in his name, to hear his Gospel, and to celebrate the sacrament of the Supper. Wherever that happens, there, according to Scripture, a Christian congregation is visibly assembled. For I am indeed supposed to say where the church of Christ is, and there I believe I must first answer in this way: that I say where I think I must, according to Scripture, acknowledge a Christian assembly. But if the sense of that question is meant to be: who, according to Holy Scripture, belongs to the church or congregation of Christ, and if I am to answer the question so put, then I say: he belongs to the church of Christ who is a Christian; for to be a member of the congregation or church of Christ and to be a Christian are, in my eyes, one and the same thing; for in my opinion it is the Christians who constitute the church of Christ. But if what one actually wants answered is the question: where is the true church of Christ? then I give the answer out of our confessional writings, in which it is said clearly and unambiguously that properly it is the truly believing who are the body of Christ on earth. — Since I have already, in earlier volumes of the Kirchenblatt (1856, p. 98 — alongside which I ask that the 1857 volume, p. 4f., also be read, where essentially the same thing stands as is said in No. 6 of this year, and p. 25f., where I explained why I reject the Union, notwithstanding that here and there in the united church God's Word is preached), expressed myself on this at length, I do not believe I need repeat here what I said there.