# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1906_S29
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1906. 29

III.

Our last question reads: "How should the unity of the Spirit be preserved?" The Apostle says: "through the bond of peace." When peace is spoken of here, Paul certainly does not mean the peace of which he writes in Rom. 5:1: "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God." For there he speaks of the peace between men and God, which rests on our having a reconciled God and forgiveness of sins, so that nothing more lies between us and God. According to the context of our text it is rather a matter of the peace of Christians with one another. This results, for example, from the preceding exhortations: We are to walk according to our calling, in humility, meekness, patience, and bear with one another. This is just what matters to the Apostle, that Christians not lose the unity in the Spirit through lack of peace, quarreling and strife. One might then perhaps still ask what the expression "bond of peace" means. It can mean the bond that consists in peace, or also the bond that brings about peace. In the second sense many take it, according to Col. 3:15, where love is called the bond of perfectness, and because in our passage it is said just before: "Forbearing one another in love!" one is now to understand by the bond of peace again love, in which we are to bear with one another. But however one may take the expression, the thought always comes out: We are to preserve the unity in the Spirit by keeping peace with one another.

Now, however, the word "peace" must not be misunderstood. In the sects, in the Union, and also where things threaten to become lax among us, peace is gladly taken in such a way that for its sake purity and unity in doctrine, as well as uniformity in practice, are let go. It has been sufficiently shown above that purity and unity of doctrine must under all circumstances be preserved through God's Word. But the same holds of practice. Practice is to be guided by God's Word, and if it is so guided, it is uniform. There can therefore be no such peace for the sake of which dissension in practice would arise or be tolerated. Of a peace, then, such as the Union imagines it, in which dissension can exist both in doctrine and in practice, there can according to Scripture be no talk; rather the exhortation that we preserve the unity in the Spirit through the bond of peace is important only for those who stand firmly in doctrine and practice. Scripture presupposes such a position in the exhortation named. People who are undecided, who have no opinion, are very quickly done with keeping peace; but we, who want to hold fast to God's Word and stand up firmly for the pure truth of the