# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1859_S355
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A Comparison of Luther with Arndt and August H. Francke in This Regard, etc. 355

conversely, forgiveness lifts up all sin and wrath; so that neither can sin cast you into hell, nor can your piety lift you into heaven.. Here examine yourself, how much of this you can do, and whether it is as small and easy an art as the inexperienced spirits suppose; for if you could do it and believe it, then all misfortune, death, and the devil would be nothing. But because you still so bite yourself with sins, and are terrified and quail before death, hell, and God's judgment, humble yourself only, and give honor to the Word, and say: you have never yet understood it. In short, let each one reach into his own bosom, and he will find such a Christian there, one who imagines he knows the thing before he has learned its first letters. It is easily enough heard, read, and its words repeated; but to bring it into practice and being, so that it lives in us and the conscience grounds and weighs itself upon it, that is no human art. Therefore I say and admonish: those who want to be Christians should always be occupied with it, chewing it, working it, and hammering at it, so that we may yet gain a taste for it."

One sees that when Luther deals with how hard it is to believe the forgiveness of sins, he does not do so in order to frighten people away from this faith and drive them into working on their own, but rather to move his hearers to take this comfort truly to heart, deeply, as belonging to them.

If one now compares Luther with Arndt and the Pietists with regard to this first point, one finds, indeed, in the first place, that Arndt does not know how to commend the forgiveness of sins with the same joyfulness and the same courage; yet the same foundation is found in his Postil. He writes, for example, in his first sermon, in which he treats the theme: "On the spiritual healing of the soul through the forgiveness of sin, how the Lord helped the man sick of the palsy spiritually in his soul through the gracious and comforting forgiveness of sin," at the conclusion: "So we have here now the comforting doctrine of the gracious forgiveness of sin, which is the Christian's highest treasure in this world, even though everything temporal should vanish. Yes, the highest treasure that we take with us out of this world. Nothing can comfort us so powerfully in our greatest need and in the anguish of death as the saving forgiveness of sin; this, however, is a fruit of the high, holy, precious merit, blood, and death of Jesus Christ. From this fountain flows this comfort. There are three things that most assail a dying person: sin, the wrath of God, and God's strict judgment and last verdict, before which we must appear. Against this, take note of the powerful remedy: against sin — your sins are forgiven you; against God's wrath — Fili, my son, I am not angry with you; against God's strict judgment — Confide, be of good comfort, you shall not come into judgment. This is the true physician, Isa. 61:1–2: The Lord has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted and to comfort all who mourn. Therefore note the grounds of the forgiveness of sin: 1. God's promise; through Christ the most precious of all