# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1861_S88
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

88 Report on Preaching the Right Doctrine of Justification.

through faith and love. Take, for example, the secular sovereign in whose
territory a Christian congregation is found, and who himself, as a
Christian, belongs to it as a member — he essentially and properly has
no more right and power in it than the least of his temporal subjects,
who likewise, as a Christian, belongs to that same congregation; and he
has no authority from God to impose on it, as secular sovereign, all
manner of laws and ordinances. Just as little have the servants of the
Church any right or power to this, as though they were a class favored
and privileged by God whom the Lord had set as His deputies and
vice-regents over the Church and the congregation of hearers, so that
they thereby had authority, in matters of indifference which belong to
the Christian liberty of each individual Christian congregation, to give
laws and to demand obedience from their parishioners in God's name
and for conscience's sake. For in the Church of Christ, according to the
Gospel, it is and remains thus once for all: One alone is the Lord and
Master, Christ; all the others — be they, in worldly fashion, princes or
subjects, or in churchly fashion, teachers or hearers — all the others are,
through the common begetting and birth from God by the divine seed
of the Gospel and through the common faith in Christ, children of God
and brothers among themselves. They all have no other law binding
them to obedience than the Word of God, by which Christ governs His
Church as a whole, as well as each individual local congregation. In it
He commands His servants and those of His congregation that they,
just as He likewise shows in His Word, preach Law and Gospel,
repentance and forgiveness of sins in His name, administer the
Sacraments according to His institution, resist false and erring teachers
by His Word of truth, and feed, tend, and guard each one of His sheep
which He has commanded to their faithful care and watch, according to
its particular need, with His Word. And for this the Lord likewise
demands in His Word from His sheep unconditional obedience toward
Him and their shepherds, under threat of His wrath and on pain of the
loss of their salvation. And these are the matters that touch on faith
and that most nearly concern His honor. Thereafter, however, the Lord
has likewise shown in His Word that in the New Testament Church, in
other matters which do not directly concern the soul's salvation, things
are not to proceed as in the Jewish church, among the children of the
old covenant and the servants of the Law. For upon these God Himself
had indeed, on account of the wickedness of their stubborn flesh, laid a
hard yoke upon their shoulders, taken them in hand at every step under
the sharp discipline of His Law, and held them captive and in bondage
under a mass of individual commands, statutes, and rights, and had also
strictly commanded unbreakable obedience to all of them, threatening
transgressors and those who failed to keep them with His wrath and
curse. And this manner of predominantly legal government God
maintained for that reason among His old covenant people, in part to