# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1914_S8
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

8 Proceedings of the twenty-fifth convention

Christians should now also strive to become ever more like their Brother, the Lord Christ, in disposition. He increased in wisdom. (Luke 2:52.) So also Christians should make it their concern to be strengthened in the inner man and to have Christ dwell in their hearts through faith, and to be rooted and grounded in love, so that they may comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and also know that to love Christ is far better than all knowledge. (Eph. 3:16–19; cf. 2 Pet. 1:5–7.)

Christ did not suffer by chance, nor did he fall into death by accident. He was delivered up according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. (Acts 2:23.) The Son of Man went his way as it was determined (Luke 22:22) and as it was written of him (Matt. 26:24). Therefore he was also quite willing and ready to drink the cup which his Father handed him: "Not as I will, but as you will." (Matt. 26:39.) And he was patient in his suffering; he reviled not again when he was reviled; he threatened not when he suffered; but he committed it to him who judges righteously. (1 Pet. 2:23.) In patience and submission to God a Christian is to become ever more like his Brother. He knows that nothing befalls him without God's will. Even the hairs on his head are numbered, and not one of them falls off or is bent or perishes without the will of the Father. (Matt. 10:30; Luke 12:6, 7.) "To those who love God all things must work together for good." (Rom. 8:28–30.) We are called to suffer and to endure, since Christ also suffered for us and left us an example, that we should follow in his footsteps. (1 Pet. 2:20, 21.)

Christ loved the brothers. He loved his own who were in the world, and loved them to the end. (John 13:1.) So also a Christian who is born of God is to love the brothers who are born of God. (1 John 5:1; 4:20, 21.)

10. God's Husbandry.
(1 Cor. 3:9.)

The whole world is a field of God. (Matt. 13:38.) But by nature it is a wilderness, full of stones, overgrown with thorns and thistles, a dwelling of all sorts of vermin and wild beasts. Now, however, the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is at work upon it with his Gospel, to transform this wilderness of the world into a cultivated, fruit-bearing field, vineyard, orchard. God the Father so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that all who believe in him should not perish but have eternal life. Jesus Christ so loved the world that he willingly lived a life of poverty, having nowhere to lay his