# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 07 17_S178
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

178

30 factious spirits before me who wished to teach me; but I refuted all their doings with this saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. And with this saying I have, by God's grace, maintained myself; otherwise I should have had to accept thirty kinds of faith... I will gladly suffer all manner of abusive words, but not yield one finger's breadth from the mouth of Him who saith: Hear ye Him!"

Yet in our day not only those who preach freedom from God's Word, but also those who preach freedom from God's order in the world, think they can celebrate Luther as their champion. It was the Reformation, so now the preachers of political freedom also cry, which laid the first cornerstone of the temple of freedom, on whose dome we are now building. It was the Reformation, namely, they say, through which at last the thrones of princes too, propped up by the superstition of the multitude, were made to totter, the spell of their alleged right to rule by the grace of God was destroyed, and the coming of age of the peoples and the freedom and equality of all men were proclaimed.—Now it is indeed true that when the Word of the Lord came again to light through the Reformation, there was preached also to the great ones of the earth what God requires of them too, and it was shown them that they also are men and have a Lord in heaven, before whose judgment they too must one day appear; it is true that Luther once not only rebuked the poor oppressed people, but also proclaimed to the princes, with the voice of a trumpet, repentance for their sins committed against the peoples they had trodden underfoot, and spoke with them as no defenseless man had until then dared to speak with them. Among other things Luther wrote to the princes thus at the outbreak of the Peasants' Revolt: "First, we may thank no one on earth for such mischief and rebellion but you princes and lords, ..who even to this day, hardened, do not cease to rage and rave against the holy Gospel; and moreover do nothing more in the worldly government than that you fleece and tax, to maintain your pomp and pride, until the poor common man can no longer, nor will, bear it. This ye shall know, dear lords, God so ordains it that men can not, nor will, nor shall endure your raving any longer. Ye must become different and yield to God's Word... It is not peasants who set themselves against you; it is God Himself; He sets Himself against you, to visit your raving upon you." So Luther spoke, an enemy of all flattery, assuredly, with the princes. But far from the spirit of rebellion, which now like a tempest from the abyss rushes through the peoples, having been awakened and unleashed by the Reformation, and far from Luther having preached civil freedom as the goal of mankind and sought therein the salvation of the world: it was rather the Reformation through which also the so-called worldly estates had their dignity restored, and in particular the divinity of the magisterial estate also was rescued again.

It is a wholly different, more important, holier freedom, my brethren, that was won for us 300 years ago. It is that freedom of which Christ speaks when He says: "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." It is that freedom of which Paul speaks when he writes: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage," and in another place: "Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men." It is, in a word, Christian freedom, of which the freedom of conscience from the ordinances of men, the freedom of Christians to be subject, in matters of faith and salvation, to no one in heaven and on earth but Jesus Christ, the eternal King of grace, is a chief part. Of this freedom, as a benefit of the Lutheran Church Reformation and as a precious jewel of an evangelical Christian, let me therefore now speak to you. May God grant it to happen to His honor and to our awakening.

Text: 1 Cor. 3, 21—23.

Hardly had Paul, my beloved, left the numerous congregation which he had founded in the great city of Corinth, when divisions had arisen in it. Some, namely, had begun here to boast of a preference over others, because they had been converted and baptized by Paul, others because by Apollos, others because by Cephas or Peter. Hence the one had boasted over the others: "I am of Paul," another: "I am of Apollos," a third: "I am of Cephas." Indignant at this, the Apostle calls out to them: "Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos?—Ministers by whom ye believed." And thereupon he finally continues in our text: "Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours. Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours. And ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." What glory, what riches, what loftiness does the holy Apostle here ascribe to all truly believing Christians! Could he possibly testify more plainly and extol more highly the freedom from all human dominion in which they stand as Christians? Since, however, this freedom, which the priests before the Reformation had, so far as in them lay, robbed from Christians, has been preached and restored to Christians again through the Reformation, but is now again in many ways denied them, even in the midst of the Lutheran Church, let me now set before you:

The freedom of Christians from the usurped dominion of the priests, a benefit of the Lutheran Church Reformation;

let me thereby

1. show that believing Christians, as Christians, according to God's Word are subject to no man, but are free lords and royal priests; let me

2. place before your soul what a shameful and ruinous dominion the priests before the Reformation had arrogated to themselves over Christians; and let me finally

3. set forth how through the Reformation this ungodly, tyrannical church government was again overthrown, the freedom of Christians was won anew, and this freedom has now become a precious jewel of our Church.

1.

"All things are yours, and ye are Christ's," in these opening and closing words of our text the holy Apostle testifies that all true Christians, be they hearers or teachers, man or woman, old or young, rich or poor, high or low, king or beggar, possess through faith a glory which cannot be expressed in words, yea, cannot be reached by senses and thoughts.

"All things are yours," says the Apostle first. Accordingly nothing is excepted which believing Christians do not have through faith; and indeed there is here plainly ascribed to them not merely the use and enjoyment of all things, but the thing itself. Christians sit, accordingly, in God's goods not merely, so to speak, as tenants on lease and rent, but they are hereby declared the only lawful possessors, owners, and lords of all things; yea, though they do not yet in fact enjoy much, nevertheless they possess everything through faith. The Apostle hereby cries to them: Yours is all that God the Father created, yours what God the Son merited, yours what God the Holy Ghost has wrought. Yours is God Himself, yours the kingdom of heaven, yours the earth. Yours are all the treasures and means of grace and all the fruits of reconciliation and redemption; yours the freedom from sin, death, devil, and hell; yours all the forgiveness instituted; yours all the righteousness acquired; yours the divine sonship and all the hope of eternal life; yours is the Word and the holy Sacraments, yours the keys of Paradise and of hell; yours all offices and rights and powers which Christ has again, with his