# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1861_S366
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

366 Report on the Law.

Therefore man must die if he is to be freed from sin; for the Law is the strength of sin, and sin the sting of death. These three, Law, sin, death, cannot be separated from one another. So far, therefore, as death is still in man, so far are sin and the Law in man. We receive the Law apart from Christ, that is, the letter, which is not yet fulfilled but must necessarily be fulfilled by us. In Christ, indeed, the Law is fulfilled, sin blotted out, death destroyed; that is, when we have been crucified and have died in Christ through faith, then this has truly happened in us as well: but as long as we live, we are not yet in Christ, but live apart from Christ under the Law, sin, and death. But the thing itself, and experience, testifies that even the righteous or believers are subjected to death and given over to it daily. Therefore they must, so far as they are under death, also still be under the Law and under sin. There are indeed coarse and inexperienced people, harmful deceivers of consciences, who wish to take the Law out of the Church. For such an undertaking is not only foolish and against God, but also altogether impossible. For if you wish to take away the Law, you must at the same time take away sin and death; for death and sin are, or arise, through the Law, as St. Paul says: The Law kills (2 Corinthians 3:6). Likewise: The Law is the strength of sin (1 Corinthians 15:56). Since, however, you see plainly before your eyes that the righteous die daily, it is a very great folly to imagine that they are without Law. For if there were no Law, there would also be neither sin nor death. Therefore they ought first to prove that the righteous are wholly without any sin and death; or that they no longer live in the flesh at all, but have been taken clean out of the world: then it would rightly be taught that the Law is also entirely abolished for them and in no way to be taught. But since they cannot prove this, and experience sets the opposite before their eyes, they are, beyond measure, coarse and shameless teachers, in that they presume to cast the Law out of the Church... But where they imagine that their church or hearers are, without exception, all godly people and Christians without Law, it is plain and open that they are mad and raving and do not know what they say or maintain. For that is nothing other than to imagine that all their hearers had been taken out of this life. But to hold such thoughts is exactly as if someone let himself dream that on an empty stage a splendid play were being performed, and that he were watching it. For in this world there are, for as long as it stands, always both the righteous, who live in the flesh, and the wicked (who are always the greater number) mingled together. Now, just as the Law is given, without doubt, for this reason, that it should not be rejected but should be taught, so that through it people may recognize both sin and death, or the wrath of God: so it is also given to the godly, so far as they have not yet died and still live in the...