# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1858_S364
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

364 Confuse Not the Consciences.

If Pastor Wucherer wishes that the doctrinal dispute among Christians be carried on not with bitterness, but in love, that is also our heartfelt wish; only we cannot conceive of any true love without holy earnestness against error.

Against the above claim of Pastor Wucherer we now have the following to object, by which we intend to show that it has no basis whatsoever in God's Word, least of all in the cited passage, Romans 14:1. For there the apostle speaks of such Christians as had a pure understanding that justification comes from faith alone, without works, and thus by no means hoped to attain salvation by keeping the ceremonial law or any part of it, as did the false teachers whom the apostle combats and condemns in Galatians 3:10 and 5:1; rather, they were merely of the opinion that they could not give up observing the ceremonial law without sinning, and thus could not attain salvation without keeping it. They stood not in false doctrine, but in an erring conscience with regard to a practical question. It was a matter of eating and drinking, of observing one day above another, not of articles of faith and doctrine. This is made clear, apart from the whole context of the 14th chapter of Romans, especially by the words: "let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind" (v. 5), compared with vv. 20-23, from which it is evident that in this whole passage the subject is plainly neither faith nor the doctrine of faith, but merely how one ought to behave toward weak, anxious consciences that were afraid of sinning through things which the stronger regarded as quite permissible and not displeasing to God.

Among Christians today there are quite similar phenomena. We have met upright Christians who, for example, would not have considered it right to smoke, yet without making it a matter of conscience for others, while others enjoy their pipe with thanksgiving as a good gift of God. Further, there are Christians who are wary of doing anything the whole Sunday through other than occupying themselves with God's Word, while others hold it entirely a matter of Christian liberty whether, apart from the public services, one wishes to read Holy Scripture and the catechism, or take a walk, or do anything else not conflicting with God's commandments. These cases are analogous to the one dealt with in Romans 14. Just as little as a stronger Christian may despise, or entice to act against his conscience, another upright Christian who believes he sins if he smokes or allows himself a walk on Sunday, just so little should, according to the apostle's exhortation in his own time, a stronger person despise, or entice to act against his conscience, another who was wary of eating meat in the marketplace because it might have been used for an idol-offering, or of foregoing the special outward observance of a feast day appointed in the ceremonial law.

The whole procedure of the