# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1922_S16
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

16 Proceedings of the twenty-eighth convention

counts for anything; if the grace of God in sovereign majesty sets both aside and, without any further regard, saves sinners, what could then still move a man to make even the slightest effort in the interest of uprightness? Then the world must surely sink morally into a swamp. To prevent that, the natural man considers it his unavoidable duty to combat the delusion of free grace and to root it out stump and stem.

When Paul went through the world with the preaching of Jesus, his teaching was not only mockingly summed up thus: "Let us do evil, that good may come!" Rom. 3:8, but he and his followers were also persecuted most furiously. Exactly the same we must expect if we proclaim the unadulterated Gospel. We shall thereby draw upon ourselves not the admiring glances of an astonished world, but biting scorn and bloody hatred.

But how are we to preach the Gospel, since we too are born in the natural mind? A fundamental change must take place in our whole outlook, in our whole emotional life, in mind and will. We must repent, we must be converted, we must be born anew; the Spirit must create through faith a new life in us, a life against which we defend ourselves with all our might until the Spirit, through the exceeding greatness of his grace, plants it in us and makes us from men of the Law into men of the Gospel, from hired servants into children of grace.

Now Jesus has appointed us and made us his witnesses by the power of the Spirit. What does that mean? What is the character of a witness? How does the activity of a witness differ from other activities?

One thing already emerges from what has been said: our task goes far beyond that of an ordinary witness. An ordinary witness has to establish the truth for people who did not know it at all or not sufficiently. Our office of witness entails that we maintain the truth before such people as, as soon as they hear it, hate and fight it and its witnesses in the most furious manner. Our witnessing is therefore not simply a matter of enlightenment. Witness is more than proclamation. We are, to be sure, also called to be messengers of the Lord Jesus and to proclaim his Gospel, but much more.

Someone may convey a message that he knows only by hearsay; the real content of the message may be hidden from him, he delivers only words; indeed, someone may be the messenger of a cause in which he himself does not believe. But a witness one can be only in a matter that one has himself experienced and undergone. Our Lord Jesus, who wants to have us as his witnesses, sees to it first that we receive the power of the Holy Spirit and through this power experience and undergo him as our Savior in faith. And that