# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1862_S368
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

368 Is Doctrine or Life More Important for the Well-Being and Salvation of the Church?

utters his curse over the Pharisaic false teachers, but admonishes his own
to abide in his teaching, indeed says expressly that only by this shall his
disciples be known. Therefore St. Paul also admonishes the Corinthians
that they all speak the same thing and allow no divisions (in doctrine)
among themselves, but rather hold firmly together in one mind and in
one and the same judgment. According to these pronouncements of the
Lord and of his Apostle, it is therefore the teaching of Holy Scripture that
the Church has no other task, no other office on earth, than to preach the
Gospel, and that it must accordingly direct its chief endeavor toward
preserving it pure and unfalsified; since, however, there is only One
Gospel, those who by God's grace believe in it must also necessarily be of
one mind and of the same judgment, from which it is plain that pure
doctrine indeed unites and only error divides, in spite of the contrary
assertion of Dr. Kahnis. From all this, however, it follows that Luther
and his Reformation are, in this respect, entirely in agreement with
Scripture, and that the opposition to Luther's teaching in this respect is
therefore an opposition to the Word of God itself.

By this, however, the significance of life for the well-being and
salvation of the Church is by no means to be denied; rather, its proper
position relative to doctrine is to be assigned to it. For as surely as it is
true that the Church on earth has no other office than to preach the pure
Gospel, so surely is it also true that every human being who wants to be
saved must accept that same Gospel in faith — which faith is then at the
same time the beginning of the new life and shows itself active in love
toward God and the brethren. As the task of the Church is to save the
world through the pure Gospel, and therefore also to watch over the
purity of its doctrine, so for the individual Christian, if he wants to be
saved, the most important and most necessary thing is that he accept in
faith the Gospel preached to him and keep it in faith, from which it
follows of itself that he then also walks in love. From this results the
proper distinction between the significance of doctrine and the
significance of life: for the Church, doctrine is the main thing; for the
individual Christian, faith and life are the main thing. The Church has to
give what it has received, and as it has received it, and this it does
through the pure preaching of the Gospel; the individual Christian has to
accept what, according to Christ's command, the Church offers and gives
him out of its treasure, and this he does through faith in the Gospel and
the exercise of that faith in love. Every Christian, to be sure, has the
calling to preach the Gospel, but only as a member of the Church, as a
co-holder of the office which the Lord has entrusted to the Church as a
whole; but as an individual, upon whom the Church is to carry out its
office, he has nothing to do but to be saved through faith in the Gospel
which the Church preaches to him. But precisely because the life of faith
of the individual is mediated only through God's Word, because it is
created and