# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1859_S62
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On "What Do You Do for Me?" 62

...distinction from its opposite, and thus to regard the truth opposed to
it as insignificant — that we cannot do, because in conscience we may
not. That is our position with regard to Union.

It is certain: nothing is more beautiful than unity, nothing more
painful than division. Let us remember the word of the Lord: "that they
all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also
may be one in us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me" —
what is more distressing than the strife of the churches? Certainly: only
too easily do we grow accustomed to this state of affairs, which we ought
to lament and bewail daily. But: one in the truth! It would no longer be
love for it that betrayed faithfulness toward it. That compels us to
bear and maintain the outward separation until it is inwardly done away
with! Once we are of one mind, then the day of union is here; but one
need not first make it, for it has already come to be. Until then we must
contest the manufactured one. But this I will gladly confess: until then
let us rejoice more in what is common than in what is different, and let
us be more keen-sighted in seeking and finding what unites us than what
divides us! But all joy over the common ground we have found must not
let us overlook what divides. Thank God that the fellowship of believers
reaches beyond the boundaries of the churches!... But it is no less true:
nevertheless these differences are church-dividing. For they concern the
truth of the grace of God in Christ, whose stewards we are called to be.
So we must, then, as long as those differences persist, be watchmen of
this separation. And we cannot cultivate common works of love at the
cost of this service to the truth. That reporter credits the Gustavus
Adolphus Society with having "uniting evangelical principles." That is
precisely, in the eyes of the confessional Lutherans, what is
questionable about it and what holds them back.

"What Do You Do for Me?"

On the occasion of a review of Hollenberg's tract on "free Christian
activity," Ströbel writes in the 1st quarterly number of the Rudelbach
journal for this year: "Our forefathers had strong apostolic reasons for
putting nothing further into the mouth of the crucified Reconciler than
the pure Gospel: '"That I did for you!"' The salt-less patching-on of the
Law, '"What do you do for me?"', is grounded not on God's Word but on
Zinzendorf's pencil, and preaches in this connection another Christ than
the one who came, not to be served by us, but to serve us and to give his
life as a ransom for us; — it is a suppression of the Gospel by the
re-established Law. And as legalistic as its catchword is, so too is the
whole of '"Christian free activity,"' were it