# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1861_S79
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on the Preaching of the Correct Doctrine of Justification. 79

brought about. At the same time this is also a strange inversion (which in turn has its origin in their erroneous view of a spiritual power still present in the natural man), that they let that praying precede the justifying faith in Christ, whereas it is certain, according to Scripture and experience, that true, effectual prayer necessarily presupposes this faith. For it is only through this faith — worked, in due order, by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Gospel — that the gracious indwelling of the Spirit is obtained, which then kindles prayer in the believer's heart, Rom. 8:15, 26, whether it takes the form of a sigh, a petition, an intercession, praise, or thanksgiving. And just as little as pulse, breath, movement of the limbs, and speech of the mouth are possible in a person who is bodily dead, just as little is true Christian and effectual prayer possible in a person who is spiritually dead — that is, natural, unbelieving, unjustified, and unregenerate. But as the person is reborn and made spiritually alive through faith and the Spirit, so from this there likewise follows the spiritual breath, pulse, and word of true prayer.

A third and chief kind of corruption and diminishment is suffered by the doctrine of justification through the legalistically handled doctrine of sanctification or renewal, which is practiced in a coarse way among the Papists and the enthusiasts — these spiritual blood-relations — and is also diligently pursued, in a subtler way, by the newfangled Pietists, of whom present-day Christendom is full.

As for the first of these, it is of course well known how the Papists and the enthusiasts, on both sides, teach that not faith in Christ alone, but faith in connection with works, makes one righteous and blessed before God — contrary to all the clear passages of Scripture in which the seat of the doctrine of justification lies, such as Rom. 3:23-25, 28; 4:5; Eph. 2:8; 2 Tim. 1:9, in which passages the merit of man and the works of the Law are expressly excluded.

With regard, however, to the Pietist obscuring and corrupting of the doctrine of justification on the part of their legalistically constituted sanctification or renewal, this appears in manifold forms.

Those, namely, who stand nearest to the Papists and the enthusiasts, assert that justifying faith can only be present in a person once he already has a visible proficiency in all sorts of Christian virtues and a godly manner of life. Now it is, of course, true that where one's conduct, as a settled rule, contradicts one's confession, there is no true, living faith, but only a dead, mouth-and-hypocrite faith — or rather only a delusion and self-deception that one believes, when in fact one does not. But someone can be truly a believer who has nevertheless not yet made much progress in sanctification, and who still, many times daily and hourly, even before the eyes of others, is overtaken by all sorts of ill temper of the flesh, and especially of a temperament corrupted by sin, so that he speaks and does according to the flesh what he does not wish according to the Spirit, and according to the flesh