# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1861_S82
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

belief, in which people do not cling and hold fast to the word of the Gospel and of absolution, whether or not they derive from it, or find in it, a sweet taste; rather, the case with them is that they believe only so far as they, as they like to put it, feel the nearness of the Lord and sense the presence of the Spirit. To cling fast, without any feeling of grace at all — indeed, against the felt sense of divine wrath and the accusation of the devil, of the Law, and of conscience — to the word of the gracious promise and to the absolution of the Gospel, is to them well-nigh an impossible thing. And from this it comes about that they never attain a settled heart and conscience, one that is certain of God's grace in Christ and of the forgiveness of sins in faith in the Gospel, and that is not thrown into doubt about the fatherly heart of God — except in a passing trial — even when he sometimes shows himself strange and harsh toward them, and thrusts them into the crucible and furnace of affliction and trial, in order to purify the gold of faith more and more even from the Pietist-legalistic dross.

Instead, these Pietists — inwardly work-righteous saints — always have an anxious, restless, wavering heart and conscience. When they feel sweet and pleasant in spirit, because the Gospel has made a particular impression on their feelings, they take this feeling to be true faith, and then have no doubt that God bears a fatherly heart and mind toward them, and that they sit, as his dear children, in the very midst of his lap. But once this impression of the Gospel heard or read has passed — indeed, once they feel dry and parched, or even anxious and terrified, especially when they hear again the thunders of Sinai and conscience brings their sins up against them — they think once more that it is all over with their faith, and that God is angry with them, instead of, after the example of the Canaanite woman, defending themselves against these terrors by believingly holding fast to the gracious promise, and clinging, in naked faith, to Christ's absolution — "Be of good comfort, my son, my daughter, your sins are forgiven you" — today as yesterday, and tomorrow as today, like an infant at its mother's breast. The evangelical, that is, Lutheran, manner of preaching therefore always runs thus: You are, through and in Christ, perfectly redeemed, and for you, too, justification has already been won; and this treasure of grace is distributed to you in the word of absolution or of the Gospel, so that you may believe — that is, take this treasure of the forgiveness of sins to yourself as your own, appropriate to yourself now what is already present, and then be, and be called, justified in the narrower sense — that is, one who has accepted the justification already accomplished in Christ.

The legalistic-Pietist, inwardly work-righteous manner of preaching, however, is this: You are redeemed when you believe — that is, when, through a right, strong faith, active also in love toward others, you make yourself worthy of this gracious redemption. —

A fourth kind of damage, impairment, and corruption of the evangelical or Lutheran doctrine of justification, which at present is also asserting itself fairly considerably among Lutherans reputed to be especially excellent, is the opposite of the one just described.