# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1859_S103
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Language of the Church. 103

...lying. — Man's will is not idle in conversion, but also works something. — Conversion has three efficient causes: God's Word, the Holy Ghost, and man's will. — The free will of the unregenerate man is able by himself to do nothing toward his conversion; the Holy Ghost must assist him. — God must draw us if we are to come to Christ, but he draws only the willing. — Thou needest only to will, and God will anticipate thee with his grace.

The elect are elected not only with respect to faith in Christ, but also because they believe; their faith, which God foresaw, was the external moving cause of election.

If a man does as much as he is able, God will surely give him his grace. — Man is justified not only through faith, but also on account of faith and for faith's sake. — Man is justified through faith for this reason, that Christ, the essential righteousness, dwells in him and is united with him. — Faith does not justify without works. — Faith justifies insofar as it carries love within itself. — Believers are righteous before God, in part through the imputation of Christ's righteousness, in part through their incipient righteousness of life. — The promise of grace is appropriated to us through the faith of the heart and through the confession of the mouth.

We are justified by faith alone; but to be saved without works is impossible. — Good works are necessary to preserve faith, righteousness, and salvation.*) — Good works are not necessary for a believer. — Good works are necessary for salvation. — Good works are harmful to salvation. — The doctrine of the Law no longer belongs to the believer, is not necessary for him, and therefore ought not to be preached to him.

Christ began to be. — Christ is a creature. — When one says: God is man, and man is God, that is a figurative manner of speech. — Christ, as man, was adopted by God as his Son. — In Christ the divine and the human natures have mingled with one another. — Christ has only one will and one nature. — The incarnation of the Son of God is the first step of his humiliation. — Christ humbled himself according to his divine nature, and according to his deity was exalted to the right hand of the Father. — The deity, for the sake of the work of redemption,

*) In the Formula of Concord it says: "Although before this controversy several quite orthodox teachers used this and similar language in the exposition of Holy Scripture, by no means intending thereby to confirm the aforementioned error of the papists, yet because afterward a controversy arose over speaking in this way, from which all manner of vexatious complications ensued, it is safest of all, according to the admonition of St. Paul, to hold to the pattern of sound words as well as to the pure doctrine itself, whereby much unnecessary wrangling is cut off and the church guarded from much offense." (Art. IV, Of Good Works, Solid Declaration.)