# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1861_S50
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

at the same time the knowledge of sin through the Law continually increases more and more, without, however, imparting either the desire or the power to fulfill it, or even inclining the will of man toward it, so the sinful man falls ever more into that state of despair in which he hates God and his Law from the bottom of his heart and is angry with God, as the one who has laid upon him the unbearable yoke of the Law and yet has given him no power or desire to keep it. In such a wretched state he rages and storms, at least inwardly, against God, wishing that there were no God and no Law at all, and that he might live according to his own pleasure, after the flesh, without any law and without its threat and curse.

In sum, the right spiritual exposition of the Law brings the sinful man to the knowledge of his satanically corrupted condition, and proves itself upon him to be the letter that kills and that thrusts him down, already in this life, in his conscience, into the abyss of hell. And if there were no other preaching and doctrine than that of the Law, men would be the most wretched of all creatures on earth and would be no better off than the devil and his angels. For out of the constant recognizing and feeling of divine wrath in their conscience through the power of the Law, out of this tasting of spiritual death, they would plunge, through bodily and temporal death, into eternal death, where the worm of an evil conscience never dies and the fire of divine wrath is never quenched.

After this introduction we now proceed to our actual task, namely, how the doctrine of justification is to be preached in accordance with the Gospel. Such preaching, however, consists of the following parts:

First, then, it is to be testified that the triune God, who, according to his own oath, takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that he should turn and live, Ezekiel 33, had, in foresight of the lamentable fall into sin, before the foundation of the world, formed the gracious decree of the redemption of fallen mankind through the incarnation and the vicarious satisfaction of the Son.

Second, it is to be taught that Christ, the Son of God and of Mary, although, as to his Person, above the Law, was nevertheless, according to Galatians 4, placed under the Law, and perfectly fulfilled its demands for us, that is, in our place and for our benefit, through his active obedience. Thereby he has completely freed all men from the obligation of becoming righteous before God through the fulfilling of the Law. This he himself testifies, Matthew 5:17, 3:15.

Whoever, however, preaches otherwise, and in any way mixes in the Law and its works, as though man could thereby, even if only in part, cooperate toward the righteousness that avails before God, thereby denies God's good and gracious counsel and will, and asserts, contrary to the Gospel, that Christ did not perfectly fulfill the demand of the Law for all men. Compare Galatians 2:21.

Third, it is to be preached that Christ, through his innocent