Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1954, Page 43

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Rv. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America, 1954 43.

and to be justified are not to signify to declare free from sins and
to obtain the forgiveness of sins’ (Trigl., Sol. Decl., Ill, 937,

pars. 59—62).
In 1905 Dr. Bente said, “The forgiveness of sins or the verdict
of justification . . . are one and the same thing...” (Lehre und

Wehre, IL [1905], 344), and “Therefore, according to our Confes-
sions, the object which God offers to faith in the Gospel and which
faith appropriates to itself and makes to be its content is the for-
giveness of sins or the verdict of justification. God approaches
the sinner in the Gospel with the verdict ‘Your sins are forgiven
you, and through faith man seizes upon this verdict and says, ‘My-
sins are forgiven me.’ In this way the objective verdict of God in
the Gospel becomes subjective. ‘And since according to the Scrip-
tures and the Confessions justification is identical with the forgive-
ness of sins, it follows that by the passages above we have already
produced evidence to show that the object and corrolary of jus-
tifying faith is also the divine verdict of justification.” (Ibid.,
348); (emphasis mine.)

You will note from these instances cited from the Scriptures
and the Confessions, and from the writings of Doctors Pieper and
Bente, that the terms “forgiveness of sins” and “justification” are
used as exact synonyms and as completely identical. This is also
beautifully stated in the article which appeared in Lehre und
Wehre in 1893, entitled “An Excellent Discussion Concerning the
Doctrine of Justification by a German Theologian.” After estab-
lishing that the term dikaiod according to Scripture (Rom. 4:3, 5)
must mean “to justify the ungodly, or to declare him righteous,”
the writer, Pastor Paul G. Schulze-Walsleben, proceeds to answer
the modernistic theologians of his day who had maintained that
Paul’s concept of justification differed from that of Christ and of
the Synoptists. He showed that while the term dikaioéd is employed
only once by them (Luke 18:14), the Gospels are nevertheless
saturated with the Pauline concept of justification by means of the
term “forgiveness of sins.”

He says: “I would like to ask: Is not he (St. Luke) together
with the other Evangelists cognizant of the forgiveness of sins?
And what is forgiveness of sins other than the nonimputation of. the
existent wickedness of the godless and the wicked? The declaration
of Jesus to the palsied man and to the adulterous woman [der
grossen Suenderin], ‘Your sins are forgiven unto you,’ what sig-
nificance has it other than that they were justified through the
nonimputation of their guilt? Aphesis hamartion (forgiveness of
sins) is still simply and solely God’s verdict and declaration that
He will not look upon the sin before Him; or, stated positively, that
He looks upon the impious as just and holy. For that reason Paul,
in the very chapter (Rom. 4:7 ) in which he clearly teaches im-—
_ putation, refers to a passage in the Old Testament in which the
subject is the nonimputation of sin, e.g. ‘Blessed is the man to
whom the Lord does not impute sin’ (Rom. 4:7; Ps. 32:1). It is
obvious therefore that what Paul means by the righteousness which
avails before God is in substance fully covered with the ‘forgiveness
of sins.” Consequently the Synoptists also teach the imputed right-
eousness and the actus forensis.”

Pastor Schulze continues: “But someone may say to me, ‘What
about John? He had a deeper insight. He spoke of life. And: life

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