# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1861_S75
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

75

(Submitted by Dr. Sihler.)
Report on the Preaching of the Correct Doctrine of Justification.

(Continuation and Conclusion.)

There now follows, as an appendix to this work, a demonstration of the way in which the evangelical, that is, Lutheran, doctrine of justification is essentially damaged, falsified, and corrupted — chiefly through the intermingling of the Law into the doctrines of repentance, of regeneration, of renewal, of the sacraments, of the Church, of the preaching office, and of the thousand-year kingdom. Above, an attempt has been made, as far as necessary, to show how the doctrine of justification is to be handled, pure and unadulterated, according to the rule of the Gospel, in preaching. And all the parts have been set forth, from God's gracious counsel for the redemption of the fallen human race before the foundation of the world, down to the faith of each individual poor sinner.

But the pure and unadulterated evangelical preaching of justification extends much further than is comprehended in the points above. For a preacher might perhaps be quite well satisfied with the demonstration above and express his agreement with it. And yet it could be that he himself, in preaching other articles of Christian doctrine, perhaps without knowing it, decidedly damages and defiles this doctrine of justification — which is, after all, the sum of the whole Gospel, and runs, more nearly or more remotely, through all the individual doctrines.

Were he to do this, however, he would be just as little able to discover the same or other damages and cloudings of this doctrine in the spoken or printed sermons of others, and to judge doctrine at all. Nor would he, in such a case, be any more able truly and evangelically to found and build up the flock of Christ committed to him, even if he himself presented that very article of justification purely and rightly, in accordance with the Gospel, to his people. It shall therefore be attempted in what follows to show how this doctrine can be injured, indeed corrupted this way and that, in the handling of other articles of doctrine, whereby the comfort and the power of this doctrine would in turn be weakened or even taken away from the members of the congregation and the hearers. The essential and underlying cause of all defilements and corruptions of this doctrine, proceeding from other doctrines, is of course an overpowering extension or intermixture of the Law and its works into the Gospel, or a humanly self-made, work-righteous intermixture and damage. Nevertheless, the manner and way in which this happens is, in its outward appearance, quite manifold and various. Let us ask, then, first of all, how the pure evangelical, that is, Lutheran, doctrine of justification can be damaged from the preaching of repentance; the answer is this, that this can happen in several ways.