# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1861_S45
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Referat on the Right Preaching of the Doctrine of Justification. 45

God and man are in one Person, so the doctrine of the Person of Christ is the third link.

4. But this doctrine leads back to that of the triune God, since it is impossible to treat of the Son of God without at the same time showing from God's Word the relation in which he stands both to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, and how the former is the supreme efficient cause, Christ the meriting cause, and the Holy Spirit the appropriating cause of our reconciliation and justification.

5. But since it is the unrighteous, the sinners, who need justification, there belongs here also the doctrine of the condition of human nature after Adam's fall, that is, the doctrine of original sin; and this in turn cannot truly be known apart from the doctrine of the Law.

Among the foremost links of Christian doctrine which, going forward, are joined in sequence with the doctrine of justification belongs:

1. The doctrine of the Church; for the Church comes into being only through the preaching of the Gospel, insofar as this kindles faith in Christ in a few or in many, who are then spiritually united with Christ through faith and the Holy Spirit and become members of his spiritual body, the congregation of the saints or believers. So the Son of God first preached to our first parents in Paradise the first Gospel, which kindled in them faith in him and formed the first Church, which then indeed became a pillar and foundation of the truth and propagated this preaching of Christ, becoming from generation to generation a mother of believers.

2. The doctrine of the new birth; for only he is born anew and spiritually who, through faith in Christ, has his sins forgiven, and who for Christ's sake is declared righteous in God's judgment, and in whom, in consequence of this, the Holy Spirit also dwells graciously, enlightening and quickening, Galatians 3:2.

3. The doctrine of the new obedience and of good works, or of renewal and sanctification.

For as surely as it is true that the unbelieving, unregenerate, corrupt tree can nowhere, in any way, bring forth even a single good fruit, just as surely is it true that the believing and justified one, the reborn Christian, insofar as he is indeed a new creature, always brings forth good works and fruits of the Spirit according to Galatians 5:22, as signs and testimonies of faith before men, and as an approximate keeping of the holy Ten Commandments. Yet this constant renewal and sanctification, which flows from justification, remains and always will remain but a fragmentary thing, on account of the resistance of the flesh and of corrupted nature, Galatians 5:17. Justification, however, is the complete work of the triune God, and as such neither needs nor is capable of being supplemented by works of the new obedience on man's part.

4. The doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh and of eternal life.