# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 02 22_S99
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

church, that is, he does not belong to the church, he is no living stone of this spiritual building, no living member of this spiritual body.

Such a false-seeming Christian was Judas. He did everything that the other disciples did, but in his heart there was no faith; there greed reigned. Such a false-seeming Christian was also Simon, the former sorcerer; he confessed faith in Christ indeed with his mouth, and had himself baptized; but in his heart pride and arrogance reigned. Such a false-seeming Christian was, finally, also the bishop of Sardis; he showed himself alive in many Christian works; but he had, as Christ says, together with many members of his congregation, "defiled his garments," that is, he had, through sins against conscience, lost the living faith out of his heart, and had thereby forfeited the white garment of the righteousness and innocence of Christ; therefore Christ has it said to him: "Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead."

How many false-seeming Christians there may also be among us, who indeed have the outward form of Christians, but are without the living faith, without the Spirit, without the inward life of Christians — that is known to God alone; for the manifestly godless we men can indeed distinguish from the pious, but not the false-seeming Christians from the true Christians. They are the tares in the field of the church, which we are not to root out, but to let grow until the day of harvest. They are the wedding guests who here sit at table together with the Christians, until at last the King who has prepared the wedding shall himself come. What will then happen, let me now show you secondly; let me, that is, now set before your eyes, for your warning, also the fate of the false-seeming Christian in that world.

2.

We follow herein the words of Christ in our Gospel. It goes on to say: "Then the king came in to see the guests." According to this, then, there is a day on which God, who has instituted the wedding feast of his grace on earth, will hold an inspection of all the guests. So it will not always remain as it now is. Now God still holds no muster; he lets it happen that in his church thousands mingle among the Christians who are taken for Christians and yet are not; God does not yet reveal the false-seeming Christian; he lets him have the same honor as the true one, lets the same baptism be administered to him, the same word of grace be preached to him, the same absolution be spoken over him, and the same body and the same blood of his Son be given him in the holy Lord's Supper. He makes no distinction, but lets Christians and false-seeming Christians go their way together, as wheat and tares grow together in one field, shone upon by one sun, moistened by one rain and dew, and protected by one hedge. It seems, therefore, as though God himself did not know it, or as though he did not heed it, that there are some among them who indeed have works different from the manifestly unbelieving, but no different heart; it seems, therefore, as though all who conduct themselves as Christians and here live together would also one day sit together there at the wedding table of eternal life. But it only seems so. A day is coming when the King of heaven will "see" all who have presented themselves before him as "guests." How? Should anything escape him whose eyes are as flames of fire?

Let us hear further. Christ says, namely, further: "And he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment." Here we hear it. Nothing will then escape the eye of God. What no man on earth could see, God will discover in a single instant. The Christian life which a false-seeming Christian has led will then appear like a dirty, torn garment that cannot cover his naked, sinful soul. Whatever the false-seeming Christians may then undertake, in the whole world beyond there will be no corner in which they can hide themselves from God's eye, no mountain and no hill with which they could cover themselves. Before God and all the angels and the elect they will then stand in the full shame of their nakedness.

What, then, will the King of heaven do? Christ answers us on this: "And (he) said unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?" You see, God will one day call the false-seeming Christians to account, to answer for why, despite so many sermons which they heard, despite so many admonitions, warnings and chastisements which they received, despite so many drawings and stirrings of the Holy Spirit which they experienced, and despite the Christian fellowship in which they lived, they nevertheless never truly and from the heart converted, never came to a living faith and never to a new heart. But what will the false-seeming Christians then answer? — Christ tells us — he says: — "And he was speechless." — They will, then, know no excuse. Their own heart will convict them, their own conscience condemn them, and they will fear that all their upright fellow Christians, who had the same means, or perhaps even fewer than they, would, should they try to excuse themselves, appear as witnesses against them. They will therefore soon blush for shame, soon turn pale with terror — tremble — quake — and "be speechless."

But will God let it rest at this well-deserved shaming? Ah, no! Christ rather goes on to say: "Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth: for many are called, but few are chosen." O fearful sentence! Then the false-seeming Christian's hands and feet are bound; the time of grace, in which he could still do good and still walk the way to heaven, is thus cut off from him. He must go out of heaven, where God and the Lamb shine as the sun; he must go out into the everlasting "darkness," where no light of comfort ever again dawns for him, where no praise of God is heard any more from his hypocritical lips, but rather "weeping and gnashing of teeth," that is, unbearable glowing heat and, at the same time, unbearable dreadful cold will torment him. No true Christian who here called him brother will then be with him; his fellowship will be the damned and the spirits of hell; — and all this without end; no star of hope of a future redemption lights the false-seeming Christian's dark night; they know it, they must bear their torment — not a hundred, not a thousand years — no! — from eternity to eternity. — —

What, then, shall I now say, after having stood with you before God's throne, having listened with you to his strict sentence and having watched with you its execution — what shall I now say in closing? — I call out to you all: Ah, my dear, precious brothers and sisters, let us, for God's sake, in this matter think not of our neighbor, not of this one or that one, whom our own wicked heart perhaps holds to be a false-seeming Christian, but let us all think of ourselves. Let us consider: with God and our salvation there is no trifling! Let us not cast this warning of his word to the wind. Let us examine ourselves before the Lord comes to inspect us. Let us not be content with a mere semblance of Christianity, but present ourselves to the Lord as we are; let us here daily fall at his feet as poor sinners, earnestly strive after salvation, believe in Christ from the heart, follow Christ from the heart, serve him from the heart; then he will one day acknowledge us also as his own; indeed, when we one day enter into eternity, it will be asked: "Who are these which are arrayed in white robes? And whence came they?" And the Lord himself will answer: "These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Amen. Amen.

Why are the words of institution, "This is my body; this is my blood," properly to be understood?

(Continuation.)

We have indeed denied in the last number, and, we think, also established, that one may not proceed so arbitrarily and take the little word "is" for "signifies"; we have, however, at the same time conceded that in Holy Scripture too the figure of speech is not seldom employed which is commonly called a trope, namely, that in Holy Scripture too a word is not seldom used, not in its proper and original, but in a figurative, pictorial, and generally in a meaning which it has acquired only through a certain transference.