# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1912_S10
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

10 Proceedings of the twenty-fourth convention

2.

In our time people are not free of self-contradiction in judging division in the Christian Church. On the one hand they lament division and point out, rightly, how much more the Christian Church could accomplish if it were not divided but also outwardly wholly united. On the other hand they often talk as though division did not mean much, indeed perhaps were even something good and intended by God. Every church body, it is said, has its particular gifts and merits. That is a perverse, human judgment. The apostle's judgment is different. He says: "Watch out for those who cause division and offense contrary to the doctrine which you have learned." He does not call division something good or even merely indifferent, but an offense. The mere fact of division is already an offense to the world and to weak Christians. The world excuses its unbelief by it, and weak Christians are led astray in their faith. The offense strikes the eye still more when we add that the division has arisen through departure from the doctrine of Christ. To teach another doctrine than Christ's Word is a blow in the face of Christ, who alone wills to teach and govern the Church through His Word. To teach another doctrine than Christ's Word is also a blow in the face of Christians, whose Christian dignity and glory consist in this, that they are not subject to human word but subject to Christ's Word alone. And finally: to teach another doctrine than Christ's Word can only ever happen to the harm of souls. Life and death are at stake. Human word, however well meant, can never save a humanity dead in sins. Only God's Word can do that. All human word in the Christian Church is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of the grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, even when men imagine that with their "conception" or "development" or "supplementing" of Christian doctrine they could lead the whole world to the light. Only God's Law, so far as it is taught without weakening and without human addition, makes man a truly poor sinner. Only God's Gospel, so far as it is proclaimed without admixture of the works of the Law, produces faith in Christ, gives the highest good here on earth, the certainty of grace and salvation, and gives strength and desire to walk the narrow way to eternal life. Every alteration of the Gospel by an admixture of human works, whether one calls them outright merit or merely correct conduct, is poison and death for the spiritual life, and sets itself as an obstacle, a snare, an offense between men and the grace and salvation obtained for them by Christ. Hence the zeal of the apostle, that he pronounces the curse on all who teach the Gospel of Christ otherwise than as he taught it, Gal. 1:8.