# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1861_S367
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on the Law. 367

...flesh. In Christ, raised from the dead, there is assuredly no sin, no death, no Law, though he was subject to these things in his life. But this same our Lord Christ is not yet fully raised up in his saints; rather he only begins in them, as the firstfruits, to rise from death. But in the ungodly, who are mingled together in the Church and whose number is greater than that of the pious, he is still dead in every respect — indeed he is nothing at all in them; these are wholly under the Law and must be terrified through the Law, indeed, were it possible, with actual thunderclaps. So far, then, as Christ is raised up in us, so far are we without Law, sin, and death; but so far as he is not yet raised up in us, so far are we, and remain, under the Law, sin, and death. Therefore the Law (as also the Gospel) must be preached without distinction to both the righteous or believers and the ungodly: to the ungodly, that they may thereby be terrified and recognize their sin, death, and the unavoidable wrath of God, by which they are humbled; to the godly, that they may thereby be reminded to crucify and put to death their flesh together with its lusts and vices, so that they do not grow secure (Galatians 5:24), for security takes away both faith and the fear of God and makes the last state worse than the first. It may be taken as certain that the enemies of the Law dream that sin, as it is in itself, is taken away by Christ in substance — as also the philosophers or worldly-wise men and jurists speak of it — and that they do not at all understand that sin is taken away only in this sense: that God does not impute it to man (Psalm 32:2) and forgives it out of mercy; for sin is, as it were, forgiven out of grace, not abolished according to its substance and essence, just as the Law likewise is not abolished in that sense, nor death destroyed; and all this for Christ's sake in this life, until we come to the point of becoming a perfect man and attaining the measure of the perfect age of Christ (Ephesians 4:13)." (See Luther's Works, Walch's Edition XX, 2053-2057.)

Further Luther writes in the Church Postil, on the Gospel for the fifth Sunday after Trinity: "But alongside this it is also to be known that the teaching of the Law, even among those who are Christians, must nevertheless not be wholly abolished; rather, because it is still so with Christians that they still live in flesh and blood, which stirs with sinful lusts, and must therefore remain in daily repentance, they still need such preaching and admonition for this reason: that after receiving forgiveness of sins they do not again grow secure, nor give the flesh room against the Spirit (Galatians 5:13)." (Luther's Works, Erlangen Edition XIII, 118; Walch's Edition XI, 1798.)

Further Luther writes in his "Report on M. Johann of Eisleben's...