# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1861_S89
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on Preaching the Right Doctrine of Justification. 89

curb the coarser outbursts of their unruly, wicked flesh through fear of
punishment; in part to separate them, especially through the barriers of
the ceremonial law, from the heathen and their gross idolatrous ways;
in part to make quite clear and impressive to them, through the
manifold "shalt" of the Law, their constant inner unwillingness and the
nature of their being corrupted by original sin, so as to bring them to
the knowledge of sin and lead them to repentance; and in part, finally,
to keep alive the longing for the Messiah, of whose coming, help, and
healing they had knowledge through the prophecies of the prophets, and
whom the pictorial writing of certain sacrifices likewise foreshadowed —
as, for example, the daily offering of the lamb and the yearly Passover
lamb.

In the church of the new covenant, however, it is not to go on in this
way; for Christ, through His meritorious life, suffering, and death, has
completely redeemed all people from the constraint, the curse, and even
the strictness of the Law — indeed, even so far as from the moral law —
so that they are no longer to be justified before God by its works; He
offers this His redemption and righteousness to all people in the Gospel
and truly imparts it to believers; "for Christ is the end of the Law's
fulfillment; whoever believes in Him is righteous." Romans 10:4.

So then, just as every individual believer, so also every smaller and
larger congregation of the same has been dearly bought by Christ
through the purchase price of His blood and death, and is to stand fast
in the freedom with which Christ has set it free, and not let itself be
caught again in any servile yoke of the Law which men would lay upon
it, as though obedience and the works of this Law belonged to the
righteousness that avails before God, and as though faith in Christ
were not sufficient.

Whoever, then, against the Gospel and faith in Christ, lets some
haughty and domineering priest — be he called Lutheran or Catholic or
whatever else — load upon him some outward churchly order or
ceremony as a work of the third or fourth commandment, and lets
himself be made to feel bound in conscience as though this obedience
were necessary for the forgiveness of sins and for salvation, has denied
Christ and lost Him, and has fallen from grace. Galatians 5.

So, then, the King and Lord, Christ, wills that His people, precisely
through the sole obedience of faith toward Him and His Gospel, should
be free, so far as this goes, from all divine and human laws, ordinances,
and ceremonies, as though the keeping of them also helped toward
righteousness before God and eternal life.

But just as Christ wills that His Church and Christendom be free
through faith, so He wills at the same time that it be willing in
brotherly love; and that is the other part in which Christ, through His
Word, governs His people — whether in a single individual, or in a
smaller or larger congregation, or in the whole Church as the totality of
all the individual congregations.

In all the matters, then, which in the Church of Christ have not been
commanded or