# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1906_S30
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

30 Proceedings of the twenty-first convention

Gospel, we are in danger of falling apart in discord over it. For this reason this exhortation is important to us.

How this is to be done, the Apostle says in the preceding exhortation: "Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love." There he speaks of four things which stand opposed to that of which we spoke above, egoism, individualism, the seeking of one's own, in short, everything that is against the exhortation of the Apostle: "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." In listing the four virtues Paul wants all egoism put to an end.

Humility is the first Christian virtue. It is founded on our faith in the forgiveness of sins by grace. In this important transaction the Christian knows that he is nothing, that it does not depend on him at all. He is in and of himself irretrievably lost, and everything he is and has he owes to Christ and the forgiveness of sins in Christ. He into whose heart this has entered cannot, in intercourse with his Christian brethren, want to be something, and in this the virtue of humility expresses itself. In ordinary human life one speaks of humility in a different sense. There it is a part of the disposition which arises from the external relations of people of different stations toward one another, of the lower toward the higher. But this is not Scripture's conception of humility. It is not a virtue of those who stand in subordinate positions, but of all Christians in all positions. It does not consist, therefore, in that one who is superior to another does not pride himself on his superiority, but rather in this, that he no longer feels his superiority over other people. He cannot therefore, so long as he remains in humility, stand in opposition to another, when he looks at what he is and has and what he has become.

In the second place Paul names meekness. When someone is so minded that he is nothing and has everything from the LORD Jesus, and with this disposition faces his brethren, he cannot represent what he has to say and to stand for in a harsh, brusque manner and thereby hurt the others. The love of Christ will hold us, in all our intercourse with one another, to this, that we speak and act in a friendly, loving, gentle way in what we have to say and do, and precisely then when we stand up decisively for God's Word, pure doctrine and right practice. For us especially the exhortation to keep peace through meekness is very important.

Further Paul names longsuffering. Here he is thinking of such cases where one is hurt by another. The Apostle therefore does not only want us to conform in doctrine and life to God's Word, so that a decided man might think that if he is in the right, the other must give way. Precisely those who are in the right are exhorted to keep peace through patience and to preserve the unity