# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1863_S365
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report of the Sixth Regular Synodical Convention of the Norwegian Evang.-Luth. Church. 365

that such abstaining from labor should take place "so far as possible." Such human ordinances were later retained and renewed in all Christian lands.

If one would now speak of our obligation to keep these human ordinances, one must distinguish between the command of the civil authority and the ecclesiastical regulations. The former we must keep for God's sake, according to the Fourth Commandment, and because we are to be subject to all human ordinance, 1 Pet. 2:13. The latter, on the other hand, we should submit to only for the sake of peace and love, even if we consider them unsuitable, provided only that they are not sinful, Phil. 4:8 and 9, Rom. 14:13, 1 Cor. 14:33; for in the church no one has anything to command — there only God rules in his Word, and if we let anyone rule over us there, we become servants of the pope. So what the civil authority properly has to command here is really only the resting from labor, while the keeping holy of the day through the public use of God's Word is something that must be determined by ecclesiastical order. But if the authority, because it is Christian and perceives the benefit of the use of God's Word for its subjects, wished to command them, for instance, to go to church on this day, they would do it as Christians, because they know it is God's will that they should assemble around his Word, and because they thus have this obligation regardless, whether the authority or any other person expresses it toward them or not. But if the authority commands me something that is against faith and conscience, I must refuse obedience; and if it wished to make the claim that as authority it had the power to command me the use of God's Word (whereby it would also gain the power to forbid it to me), I would have to protest and say: I need God's Word and go to church, but not because the authority commands it, but because God has commanded it to me.

Accordingly it remains our duty, even under our present circumstances, to keep Sunday holy and to abstain from work on it; but not because the opposite is in itself sin. Just as it is not sin to eat an apple, but becomes sin when the father has forbidden it, so it stands in itself free to work on Sunday, but becomes sin for us because the authority has forbidden it, and because it is church order among us to use this day for the contemplation of God's Word. To this is added that by departing from this we would offend the weak, and finally, that we are indeed commanded to use God's Word on every occasion and not to despise or neglect it, so that in most cases we would indirectly transgress the third commandment, namely through failure to use the opportunity that Sunday gives us to use the Word of God. Sound Christians who delight in the Word will naturally, with joy, use Sunday according to the prevailing human ordinance ac-