# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1863_S81
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Old Lutheran Teachers on Slavery. 81

...kept. Rather it goes on spiritually, in the conscience, so that before God no law binds us anymore or holds us captive, but there we are all indeed free. For before this we were held captive in sin, but now all sin is gone. But whatever bondage or freedom remains outwardly is neither sin nor merit, but outward ease or hardship, suffering or joy, like other bodily good and evil, in which, either way, we could live free and without sin.

V. 24: Let each one, dear brothers, remain with God in that state in which he was called.

Here he repeats, for the third time, this conclusion about Christian freedom: that all outward things are free before God, and a Christian may use them as he wishes, taking them up or letting them go. And he adds, namely: with God — that is, so far as it concerns you and God. For you do God no service by marrying, by remaining unmarried, by becoming a servant or a free man, by becoming this or that, by eating this or that; likewise, you do him no harm or sin by letting go of or refraining from any of these. In the end, you owe God nothing to do, except to believe and confess. In all other matters he sets you loose and free, so that you may do as you will, without any danger to your conscience — even to the point that he asks nothing further about it for his own sake, whether you also let your wife go, ran away from your lord, and kept no covenant; for what does it matter to him whether you do such things or not? But because you are thereby bound to your neighbor, to whom you have become obligated, God will let no one take from his neighbor what is his through this freedom, but wants what is owed to your neighbor to be kept. For although God, for his own part, cares nothing about it, he does care for your neighbor's sake. This is what he means when he says: with God; as if he were to say: Before other people, or before your neighbor, I do not make you free, for I will not take from him what is his until he himself sets you free as well; but before me you are free and released, and can in no way come to ruin, whether you let go of or hold on to what is outward. Therefore mark well and rightly distinguish this freedom: that it does not stand the same way between you and God as it does between you and your neighbor; there this freedom exists, here it does not. The reason is this: God gives you this freedom only in that which is yours, not in that which belongs to your neighbor. So distinguish, then, between what is yours and what is your neighbor's. Therefore a husband cannot leave his wife; for his body is not his own, but his wife's. And so also, conversely. Likewise, the servant, with his body, is not his own, but his master's. Before God it would make no difference if the husband left his wife, for the body is not bound to God, but is given freely by him for all outward things, and is God's own only inwardly, through faith; but before other people the bond is to be kept. This is the sum of it all: we owe no one anything, except to love, and through love to serve our neighbor. Where love is, it makes something one's own, so that there is no danger to conscience or of sin before God in eating, drinking, clothing, or living otherwise, or so, except where