# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 09 02_S3
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

3

doctrine of justifying faith and of good works, and of the faithless and unevangelical legalism and work-mongering in which the Papists are entirely one.

Although, civilly considered, the moral obligation to abstain from brandy and similar beverages creates much external benefit, yet, viewed from the standpoint of the Gospel and of the Church of God founded upon it, it has no warrant and no validity whatever; yea, if such temperance recruiters and their recruits, in their exhorting and following, perhaps think that they are doing God a service and a work good before God: then, according to God's judgment in His Word, which alone is and remains the rule and norm of all human action, whether men acknowledge it as such or not, the matter stands exactly the reverse. But God's Word, which belongs here, judges thus: "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23), and further: "without me" (says Christ) "ye can do nothing." (John 15:5.)

Now if we put together the sense of both passages, the following truth comes to light: Every work that does not come from faith, which lays hold of Christ as our righteousness in the Gospel and appropriates Him, and which is wrought through and with us by the Christ dwelling in us through this faith, is, according to its origin and nature, sin.

From this it is evident that according to the truth of the Gospel even such works as are no open transgressions of the Ten Commandments, yea, which, for example, may be useful and beneficial to the civil community, are nevertheless sinful, accursed and damnable if they do not proceed from the righteous and saving faith and are not done for Christ's sake, or, finally, are even meant to cover one's own guilt of sin and to work one's own righteousness before God.

If, then, for example, someone, not out of faith and not for Christ's sake, should give up his whole fortune to build and maintain a poorhouse and hospital, and if therein Sisters of Mercy or Protestant deaconesses, out of free self-righteousness and work-holiness, should tend the most loathsome sick with the most untiring care, then the doing and work of both, although in its content it is not evil, would nevertheless, according to its root and disposition, be decidedly evil and sinful. On the other hand, conversely, if a woodcutter and porter stands in justifying faith in the LORD Christ and out of this faith attends to his calling, and for Christ's sake shows all good fidelity therein, then all his doing and work is altogether good and holy and a constant divine service. From the above truth it also follows clearly that Father Matthew's and all his Roman and Protestant fellows' temperance huckstering is anything but something good before God, since it does not proceed from faith.

For if they lived in justifying faith, and it in them, which is indeed an inner lamp in the Christian heart kindled by the Holy Ghost at the light of the Gospel and continuing to burn through the same, they would hardly go about land and sea in order, by way of moral obligation, to make abstainers out of drunkards, who here and there secretly act contrary to their promise, or in any case retain the evil lust strongly within themselves, and moreover frequently cover other sins before God with this their abstinence, yea, think to find their righteousness before God therein.

Then such little people, especially if they are Christian preachers, would not go far afield to set up a moral hunt against this one sin, but would first stay quietly at home and, above all, in the congregations which are committed to them by God to feed, seek to convert the drunkards to Christ by God's Word and in an evangelical manner; for only through the Gospel and justifying faith would the sin of drunkenness also be healed thoroughly from within and be transformed into the opposite virtue of temperance, that is, that one use all the gifts of God with moderation and with mastery over one's evil lust. And only in this way is it prevented that, with all outward abstinence, the evil lust for what is forbidden nevertheless remain inwardly strong and powerful, since it is consumed and swallowed up by a holy desire for and in God; only in this way, through an upright conversion to Christ and the planting and preservation of the righteous and saving faith, can it come to pass that a man does not, as before, seek his righteousness before God in the morally forced virtue of abstinence; for surely the poor man is still much worse off when not the Holy Ghost and faith in the LORD Christ, but the devil of pride drives out the devil of drink, since under the dominion of the latter, in times of sobriety, he still felt his wretched lost condition, his separation from God and his moral impotence, and sighed for help, whereas under the dominion of the devil of vainglory he considers himself strong and mighty in his own strength and therefore is much farther from Him who alone can help the poor sinner.

Now if Father Matthew and Company were to ask me, a poor Lutheran heretic, how one then sets about converting a drunkard to Christ in the evangelical (that is, Lutheran) manner indicated above, and at the same time thoroughly delivering him from within from the vice of his drunkenness, I would say thus: "My dear Father Matthew, this is not done essentially by merely striking his conscience with the moral law, painting to him quite vividly and powerfully the abomination and hideousness of this his sin, together with its dreadful consequences for body and soul, as well as for wife and children, if he has any; for this he knows quite well himself; the bites of his conscience, the pitiableness of his wretched condition he feels painfully enough, to and fro; an earnest longing to escape from this state of misery seizes him at times with great force; but precisely because he supposes he has been irretrievably cast off by God on account of his sin, that no door of grace is any longer opened to him, he plunges all the more into his favorite sin, in order to stupefy ever more the awakened conscience.

"It is therefore needful that one pursue this poor lost sheep with the Gospel in such a way that one set before his eyes, according to the three articles of the Christian faith and according to the glorious exposition of Luther, the greatness of God's love also toward him, and especially how, although in his drinking he is able thoroughly to recognize the greatness of his hereditary corruption and of his separation from God, the gracious and merciful God has nevertheless not cast him off, but has actually already taken away also his sin, guilt and punishment through the meritorious suffering and dying, through the bloody atoning sacrifice of His dear Son, and that He has in return obtained for him forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. Such a glorious and precious treasure, the absolution from all guilt of the sin in Adam and the imputation of the merit of Christ, together with the gracious indwelling of the Holy Ghost and the power for spiritual life proceeding therefrom, was also already given him in holy Baptism, where he also, through the mouth of his sponsors, renounced the devil and all his works and ways and confessed the faith in the triune God (and perhaps later in Confirmation repeated both with his own mouth).

"Alas, however, through the deceit of the devil, the world and his own flesh he has now come to the point that he has fallen from this saving faith whereby he was a dear child of God, and through the shameful service of sin, and especially of drinking, has again come under the dominion of the devil, who naturally has nothing else in mind than to destroy him in soul and body, temporally and eternally. But the faithful Savior Jesus Christ, whose loving heart thirsts also for his salvation, would help him also out of his unblessed and lost condition: and as He in the days of His flesh went after gross sinners also and helped them to a sincere conversion, as for example a Zacchaeus, the woman that was a sinner, Mary Magdalene and the thief on the cross, so would He also help him thereto by His Word; it is now needful that he thoroughly recognize and heartily repent of the shameful sin of unbelief, whereby he has also fallen into the vice of drunkenness and trodden the glorious dignity of his Christianity in the mire, especially when he looks to Gethsemane and Golgotha, where the holy and righteous God has punished the sin of every unbeliever, and thus also of the drunkard, upon the only beloved