# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1861_S369
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on the Law. 369

...sin is present; but those others are condemned because they have no desire and love for it. Thus divide a Christian into two parts: that he is at once righteous and unrighteous. The Holy Spirit dwells in the heart, but not in the flesh — there dwells the devil with his seed; so a man must live on earth in such a way that outwardly he is driven and constrained by the Law, so that he does no evil, but according to the Spirit remains unconstrained, since he does good of himself. This lasts as long as he lives, until he dies. On the Last Day we shall become wholly pure in body and soul, without any evil desire; indeed, heaven and earth will become full of good." (Luther's Works, Erlangen Edition LI, 303-305; Walch's Edition IX, 520-522.)

By way of appendix there belongs here also a saying of Luther's on the necessity of preaching the Law because of the false Christians who always mingle among true Christians. The dear man of God writes, namely, in his tract "On the Councils and the Churches" of the year 1539: "Thus my Antinomians also do now, who preach very finely and (as I cannot think otherwise) with true earnestness about the grace of Christ, about the forgiveness of sins, and whatever else is to be said on the article of redemption. But this consequence (this necessary inference) they flee like the devil — that they should tell people about the third article, sanctification, that is, about the new life in Christ. For they think that one should not terrify or trouble people, but always preach comfortingly of grace and the forgiveness of sins in Christ, and should by all means avoid these or similar words: do you hear? you wish to be a Christian, and yet remain an adulterer, a whoremonger, a drunken sot, arrogant, greedy, a usurer, envious, vengeful, malicious, etc.! Instead they say this: do you hear? are you an adulterer, a fornicator, a miser, or some other sinner? Only believe, and you are saved; you need not fear the Law, Christ has fulfilled it all. Now tell me, dear friend, is this not to grant the antecedent and deny the consequence (that is, to concede the premise and deny what follows from it)? Indeed, it means taking away and annihilating that very Christ, at the very moment he is preached at his highest. And it is all mere yes and no in one and the same matter. For such a Christ is nothing and nowhere, if he is said to have died for such sinners as do not, after receiving forgiveness of sins, leave off from their sins and lead a new life. Thus they preach Christ so finely, after a Nestorian and Eutychian dialectic (or art of drawing conclusions), that Christ both is and yet is not; and they are indeed fine preachers of Easter, but shameful preachers of Pentecost. For they preach nothing de sanctificatione et vivificatione Spiritus Sancti, of the sanctification (and quickening) of the Holy Spirit, but only of the redemption of Christ — although Christ himself (whom they rightly preach so highly) is Christ, or has earned redemption from sin and death, precisely so that the Holy Spirit should make us new men out of the old Adam, so that we might be dead to sin and...