# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1864_S276
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

276 Christian Catechism; a Guide to Religious Instruction.

for a Christian catechism is the answer to the question: What use is Jesus' life to us? It is a mirror of the highest piety and virtue, or of perfect love toward God and man, for our imitation. If the catechism knows nothing else to tell its pupils of the use of Jesus' life, then they are indeed to be pitied. Should it not above all have taught them that Christ in his life was made subject to the Law for this very purpose, that he might redeem those who were under the Law? Gal. 4:4-5. This ought to have taken the first place in a Christian catechism as the use of Jesus' life, with the pattern of virtue to follow afterward. What the catechism says of the three basic forms of Christianity and their representatives—Peter, the apostle of hope; Paul, the apostle of faith who builds up; and John, the consummating apostle of love and representative of the united church—may indeed strike many as exceedingly beautiful and ingenious; we can only regard it as a miscarriage utterly lacking any biblical foundation. For does not Peter teach faith fully as much as hope? Does not Paul, in all his epistles, exhort to love as the fulfilling of the Law? And that John writes so clearly and emphatically: "The blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (not love, then) "cleanses us from all sin"—every reader of the Bible knows this. And what, then, is the "united church" of which the apostle of love is made the representative? Perhaps the church united out of Jews and Gentiles? God forbid! The author of the catechism would correct such an interpretation in the strongest terms and say: no, rather the Union church. But the apostle John would decline the honor of being the representative of such a church. When we charge the catechism with failing to distinguish precisely between Law and Gospel, Moses and Christ, works and faith, we are well aware that this is a grave, but not an unfounded, accusation. We have already anticipated one piece of evidence for this, when speaking of the use of Jesus' life; we must now add another: For what does the ascension of Jesus exhort you? To seek the things that are above, that I may one day become a partaker of his heavenly glory. Of the actual benefit of the ascension the catechism cannot tell us a single word, and in order to become a partaker of that glory, what matters to it is, above all, not faith, but the seeking of the things that are above. We take a third piece of evidence from the fact that it calls the Sermon on the Mount the legislation of the New Covenant from the Mount of the Beatitudes. However beautiful the thought may be, it is nonetheless mistaken. The Sermon on the Mount is not a new legislation, but an exposition of the Mosaic Law. Christ is not a new lawgiver, but a Savior who has redeemed us from the Law, and as often as he teaches the Law he performs an alien work, in order thereby to come to his own proper work: to comfort poor sinners and make them blessed. Allow us to remark on a few more points concerning the treatment of the third article. As for the