# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1914_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1914. 19

perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." (Phil. 1:6.) In this God does indeed make use of the help of human beings. The servants of the Word are his fellow workers.

As his workshop God uses every place where his Word is preached. In this sense one may put it briefly thus: the church is God's workshop; for in the church God's Word is pursued. God's workshop is not the dance hall or the theater. Only where his Word resounds does he work on the corrupted material to produce his work. Christians should therefore also not regard their churches as lecture halls or places of entertainment, but as God's workshop, in which he wants to make hostile-minded sinners into his children.

What moves God to labor so tirelessly on such refractory material? It is his great love with which he has loved us, for he is rich in mercy. (Eph. 2:4.) There was nothing good in us that God saw or foresaw. All goodness was solely in the heart of God, which was ready to break with compassion at our pitiable condition in this world and our dreadful lot in the world to come. "By grace you are saved, through faith; it is the gift of God." (Eph. 2:8.)

By grace! Here no earning counts,
Our own merits fall away.
God, who out of love appeared in the flesh,
Brings us the blessed gain,
That his death has brought us salvation
And makes us blessed by grace.

The tool with which God does his work on us is nothing other than his Gospel. By God's Word the heaven was made, and by God's Word the Christian too is made. God, who at the creation of the world commanded the light to shine out of darkness, also at the creation of a Christian commands the light to shine forth in his dark heart. The Gospel is a power of God that saves all who believe in it. (Rom. 1:16.) The Gospel is the imperishable seed from which we are born again. (1 Pet. 1:23.) The Gospel is the channel through which the power of divine love flows into human hearts, a power that does not produce a semblance of life but creates real life, and that creates a work of God, just as once the Word of God called heaven and earth into being.

God also works on human beings through cross and tribulation. The Psalmist says: "Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now I keep your word. It is good for me that you have afflicted me, that I may learn your statutes." (Ps. 119:67, 71.) And chastening yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are exercised by it. (Heb. 12:11.) The work that God does through tribulation is