# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1908_S22
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

22 Proceedings of the twenty-second convention

of the Gospel the Church of Christ is spread in the world, and so the Church on earth becomes the spiritual mother of the individual Christians, as it is said of her in Gal. 4:26: "Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all."

But the outward fellowship of Christians has also the purpose of mutual refreshment and strengthening in faith. When the members of a family or of a whole kinship come together, when countrymen or fellow-nationals meet in a foreign land, they greet one another, have much to tell one another, have common interests to discuss; the intercourse is a source of delight and refreshment. Even more intimately than countrymen and bodily relatives are Christians bound to one another. They are here on earth in a foreign land. God has called them out of the world and translated them into the kingdom of His dear Son. In their heart dwells the one Holy Spirit, indeed the whole holy Trinity. They have one Lord and Savior, one faith, one hope; they have the same work, the same interests and aims: they want to spread the Gospel in the world and for their own persons keep themselves unspotted from the world, as they all walk the narrow way to heaven. So they greet one another as children of God, wherever they see one another or hear of one another. The Apostle Paul sends a greeting among brethren in the faith "unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours," 1 Cor. 1:2. The passages of greeting in Holy Scripture many a person has already considered superfluous, and has therefore, for example in family worship, skipped the greater part of the 16th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, because it contains only greetings. But the parts of Holy Scripture that contain greetings are also edifying and of great importance. They teach us the cultivation of Christian fellowship and so make us partakers of the blessing of Christian fellowship. — The Roman Christian congregation had not arisen through the service of the Apostle Paul. Rome had not been his personal field of labor. But the congregation lay on his heart just as much as the Gentile congregations founded by him. He writes: "I long to see you." At the end of the Epistle he fills half a chapter (chap. 16:3-16) with greetings. To the young exegete, at Rom. 16:3-16, perhaps the same foolish thoughts sometimes come as at the genealogies — superfluous! But it is a glorious example by which fellowship among brethren in the faith is demonstrated ad oculos [before the eyes] to us as willed by God and as a glorious treasure. — We live in the age of unions and reunions. Almost all who are of the same trade and business have regular meetings, the purpose of which is the discussion of common interests and also pleasure.