# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1861_S372
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

372 Report on the Law.

...and misfortune, because we hold the teaching of our adversaries up against our own, and say that the Pope is the Antichrist, and at the same time rebuke the teaching and shameful life of those who cling to the papacy. So Christ also says, John 7:7: The world hates me, because I testify of it that its works are evil... Therefore these are altogether harmful teachers, who nowadays, for reasons I do not know, propose and contend that the Law should not be preached in the Church. As if you meant not to teach the Law precisely there, where there is a true people of the Law — namely, greedy, arrogant people, adulterers, usurers, idolaters, etc. Would you strengthen and increase the false security of coarse and secure people with the promises of the New Testament? Yet God wills that even to this day the site where Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed by fire from heaven should stand as a memorial and mark of his wrath, and that one should preach and speak of it at all times, so that at least some may be converted and learn to fear God... At this time you find many who take offense at the preaching of the Law, though it is indeed necessary, and flee from it; for they say their consciences are burdened when they hear such preaching of the Law. But are these not, to my mind, fine Christians? They do not stop sinning; they lie in hatred, wrath, and envy, in unchastity, greed, gluttony, and drunkenness, etc.; and when they hear that such sins are being condemned, they take offense and do not want their consciences burdened! Should we then let everyone do as he pleases, and still tell him he is blessed? By no means! For here you hear that the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah must be held up to all their descendants, and indeed to the Church of God itself, so that people may learn to fear God. In the Antinomian teaching it stood thus: If someone were an adulterer, he need only believe, and he would have a gracious God. But what kind of church would that be, in which such dreadful words were spoken and preached! Therefore one ought to have made a distinction and taught that adulterers or sinners are of two kinds: the first, who recognize their adultery or sin and are terrified over it with their whole heart, and begin to feel anxious remorse and sorrow over it, and do not merely regret that they have sinned, but also desire from the heart and strive that they may not commit such sin again in the future. Such people, who are not secure in their sin but terrified, and are appalled at God's wrath, if they then hold fast to the Gospel and trust and rely on the grace and mercy of God through Christ, become blessed and have forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ. But the other adulterers or sinners, though they cannot excuse their sins, feel no pain or sorrow over them, but rather rejoice that things have turned out as they desired, and seek further occasion and opportunity to sin, and pursue it without fear. These same...