# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1861_S80
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

leaves undone what he wills according to the Spirit. Would that these Pietist saints not forget, but diligently take to heart, consider, and weigh what St. Paul writes in Romans 7:15-25. For in these words he describes the condition of a believer and regenerate person in his struggle between Spirit and flesh, and how very far he is — even though he has faith and the Holy Spirit — from keeping God's Law perfectly according to its spiritual nature; indeed, he can do no other than to serve the law of sin with the flesh, though against the will of the Spirit, the new creature.

And truly these words of the Holy Spirit are a real thunderclap against the blasphemous and godless assertion — made by the Methodists and kindred enthusiasts, deceived by the devil of pride disguised as an angel of light — that a Christian could already, in this life, be and live perfectly holy in himself. For then grace, Christ, the Gospel, faith, forgiveness of sin, the Lord's Supper, and the Lord's Prayer would simply cease, and nothing would be lacking except that our Lord God should fetch these perfect saints up to heaven like Elijah and Enoch. And it is certain that, unless out of God's surpassing grace they yet become poor sinners, they will as surely go to heaven as their father, the devil.

In sum: to deny faith altogether to a person because of a still weak and frail state in good works and in patience under the cross is a proud, unevangelical spirit of judgment belonging to Pietism, which reaches into the office of God, the searcher of hearts; for there is a great difference between being a weak Christian — and who, indeed, is a strong one? — and being no Christian at all.

Another part of the Pietist work-righteous already treats faith itself, in the very transaction of justification, as a kind of virtue and work, and makes justification, as it were in a multiplication problem, a product of two factors. The one is divine grace in Christ; the other is human faith. Just as 2 times 2 makes 4, so, from divine grace and human faith, comes the sinner's justification before God. But the matter in fact stands, according to Rom. 5:18, in such a way that by virtue of divine grace "through one man's righteousness, namely Christ's, justification of life has come upon all men" — that after Christ's accomplished atonement for God's wrath against all mankind, on the tree of the cross, through his blood and death, all people are, through and in his resurrection, actually absolved and declared righteous before God in his judgment. And this justification of all sinners accused and cursed by the Law is, as a wholly divine act, entirely independent of human faith, so that faith contributes nothing to it and unbelief takes nothing away from it. For Caiaphas, Barabbas, Herod, and Pilate are just as much redeemed, and justified in Christ's person — that is, the same salvation has been won for them by Christ — as St. Peter and St. John. Indeed, had Christ not been