# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 06 10_S162
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

162

has: the same, we say, is indeed the treasure, and no other, whereby such forgiveness is obtained."

Further, Mr. Nast lies against us, as though we taught: "that the use of the Sacrament, without the obedience of faith, makes one blessed." On the contrary, we confess concerning Baptism in our small Catechism: "It works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives everlasting salvation to all who believe it, as the words and promise of God declare;" and concerning the holy Supper: "he is truly worthy and well prepared who has faith in these words: Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. But he that believeth not these words, or doubteth, is unworthy and unprepared, for the words 'For you' require nothing but believing hearts." And in the 13th Article of the Augsburg Confession, on the use of the Sacraments, it says: "that they are signs and testimonies of the divine will toward us, to awaken and strengthen our faith thereby: therefore they also require faith, and are then rightly used when one receives them in faith and strengthens faith thereby." Likewise it says in the Apology, on the Sacraments and their right use: "But it is more needful to dispute and to know what the right use of the Sacraments is; there we must freely condemn the whole multitude of the Scholastics and rebuke their error, since they teach that those who use the Sacraments badly, if they do not put an obex (bar, hindrance), obtain God's grace ex opere operato (by the work done), even if the heart then has no good thought. But this is plainly a Jewish error, when they hold that we should become righteous and holy through a work and outward ceremony without faith and though the heart be not in it. etc. Therefore we also say that to the right use of the Sacraments faith belongs, which believes the divine promise and receives the promised grace which is offered through Sacrament and Word. And this is a certain right use of the holy Sacraments, on which a heart and conscience may venture and rely; for the divine promise can be grasped by no one save through faith alone. etc. Yea, Augustine says that it is faith in the use of the Sacrament, not the Sacrament, that makes us godly before God."

Having thus shown and refuted the accusations of Mr. Nast as slanderous and false, we will see further what notions he forms of the holy Sacraments. "We must, he says, take a general survey of what is needful for being saved. This falls into two parts, first, the grace of God, through which salvation is obtained for us and offered, and wrought in us according to the conditions of the Gospel, and second, faith, through which, as the condition, it is accepted on our part, etc. If, then, the grace of God in Christ Jesus is the only efficient cause, and faith working by love the only condition of our salvation: where is room left for an indwelling, saving efficacy of the Sacraments?"

We answer to this that in the Bible, for the crooked leaps of the Nastian fanatical spirit, there is indeed no room left, and that Mr. Nast, who yet presumes to be a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, knows neither what a Sacrament is, nor what the Word of God is, nor what faith is.

Not faith, because and in so far as it works by love, makes blessed, as Mr. Nast raves, but the faith that lays hold on the Lord Jesus makes blessed. True, justifying faith is indeed the mother, source, and root of all good works and virtues; good works must of necessity follow faith; they are fruits of faith and testify that faith is living and of the right kind: but to justification the good works avail nothing. It remains as the Apostle says: By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast. (Eph. 2, 8. 9.) That faith therefore justifies, it has not from love, by which it works, not from the good works which it brings forth, but from Christ, whom it lays hold on. For whoever believes in Christ is justified by God, or declared righteous, in that God imputes to him the righteousness and merit of Christ and for its sake pronounces him free and clear from all sins. For all that the Lord Jesus Christ has done and suffered, he has done and suffered for us, for our sake and in our stead; for us he fulfilled the whole law of God, our sins he took upon himself and endured the punishment for them which we had thereby deserved, namely the pain of temporal and eternal death, and for our righteousness' sake he was raised up by God the Father, for an everlasting testimony that he has accomplished the work of redemption and has fully satisfied divine justice in our stead. Justifying faith consists now in this, that I confidently lay hold on Christ also as my Savior, and so appropriate to myself all that he has done and suffered for me, as if I myself had done and suffered it. For the Apostle Paul says, Rom. 6, 11: Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 7. 8. He that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. 2 Cor. 5, 14. We thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead. 15. And that he died for all, that they which live should henceforth not live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again. Rom. 8, 1. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Accordingly a Christian does not hold himself to be what he is by nature in Adam, a condemned sinner, but what he is by grace in Christ, namely a justified child of God. Therefore he says with Paul: I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God; I am crucified with Christ. Gal. 2, 19. That is: In Christ, whom I have put on by faith in holy Baptism, Gal. 3, 27, into whom I am incorporated by holy Baptism, 1 Cor. 12, 13, and with whom I am by faith one spirit, 1 Cor. 6, 17, I have fulfilled the law; for Christ is mine with all that he has; his fulfilling of the law is therefore also mine. Therefore I am dead to the law through Christ's fulfilling of the law; it now concerns me no more, it is for me no longer there at all, for the law is not given to the righteous, 1 Tim. 1, 9. What it promises, eternal life, I have abundantly in Christ; for he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, John 3, 36. What it threatens to transgressors, curse, damnation, God's wrath, temporal and eternal punishment, all that I have in Christ perfectly atoned for and paid, I am crucified with Christ, risen with him, and thereby justified from all sins. — What we, moreover, must unhappily fear is that the Methodists will soon seek the ground and cause of their salvation no longer in Christ, but in their own works.

Now when Mr. Nast names as that which is needful for being saved "the grace of God, through which salvation is obtained for us and offered and wrought in us according to the conditions of the Gospel, and second, faith, through which, as the condition, it is accepted on our part"; — he is silent about the means by which God offers, appropriates, and seals to us his grace. And on this he also cannot possibly give a sufficient answer agreeable to the Word of God, for the proper nature of Methodist fanaticism consists in this, that it tempts God, in that it denies to the means of grace ordained by God, Word and Sacrament, the saving efficacy and power given them by God, and ascribes it instead to their own doing, to self-devised, falsely so-called means of grace, stormy screaming prayers, the mourner's bench, camp-meetings, etc. Methodism despises the ladder to heaven given us by God in Word and Sacrament, on which faith comes to God and says: Who shall ascend into heaven? Rom. 10, 6; it seeks, outside of and without the means of grace, to swing itself by its own doing into heaven and from there to fetch down the Holy Ghost and grace. Consequently the real Methodists will sink still into the horrible error that they also faith not.