# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1928_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1928. 19

keystone of his whole work and is therefore often emphasized and highlighted,
without thereby intending to deny the value and significance of his other
work. For it does not say that we were reconciled to God only by the death of
his Son. The little word "only" is missing. We have here an example of
synecdoche, in which a part is named instead of the whole.

Is it necessary to go into the objection of the Socinians, who asserted that
if Jesus had fulfilled the Law for us, his suffering unto death would not have
been necessary, for then men would have stood in God's sight not as unrighteous
but, on account of the obedience of Jesus, as righteous, and his death would
then have been entirely superfluous?

This argument has, to be sure, impressed even Lutherans. As is well known, a
Lutheran theologian named Georg Karg, whom people called Parsimonius in Latin,
denied that Jesus' fulfillment of the Law contributed to our reconciliation. He
let himself be blinded by the argument just cited: if Jesus had rendered
obedience to the Law as our substitute and his fulfillment of the Law had been
reckoned to us, then God's righteousness could not have punished him. But
Georg Karg withdrew his error, made a retraction and made this publicly known.
One also soon sees on how rotten a foundation this argument rests. It is one
thing to keep a commandment, and another to bear the punishment deserved by
transgression of the commandment. When a man commits a murder, it does not yet
atone for his crime that from now on he lives blamelessly. Despite his good
conduct the court will condemn him if it gets hold of him. The supposed grounds
against Jesus' vicarious fulfillment of the Law, or his active obedience, as it
is also called, quickly collapse of themselves when one looks at them more
closely.

But with the fulfillment of the Law it was not done, if God was to be
reconciled with us. We had not been neutral toward the Law. It was not the case
that we had neither kept it nor transgressed it. There is no such thing; not
to keep is to transgress. Yes, we have acted willfully against it and thereby
heaped up guilt on ourselves, on account of which God's righteousness had to
condemn us. If we were to be saved, this guilt had to be atoned for, the
punishment set upon it had to be borne. The sentence of condemnation had been
pronounced, and it had to be carried out. Then, in unfathomable mercy, Jesus
appeared as our High Priest, took our punishment upon himself, placed himself
under the rays of God's wrath in our place and so freed us from the eternal
curse that we had deserved. He did this by his innocent suffering and dying.
Christ, our High Priest, offers a sacrifice, we have heard. It is an atoning
sacrifice for the cancellation of our guilt. The sacrificial Lamb, we now see in
this thesis, is he himself. The cross on Golgotha, the accursed tree, becomes a
holy altar. The High Priest appears in order to offer. And behold, he is himself
nailed to the wood and thereby laid on the altar. So he endures what we
deserved. If he has borne the punishment, we are free from it. In this lies the
great truth that Jesus took our sins upon himself and let them be reckoned to
him as though he himself had committed them. Paul writes: "For he hath made him
to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him." How clearly it is taught here that our