# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 02 19_S99
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

99

that one should sanctify the day, more than the keeping of holiday. For God does not say: Thou shalt keep holy day, or make a Sabbath; that will come of itself: but, Thou shalt sanctify the holy day or Sabbath, so that it concerns Him far more that it be sanctified than that it be kept as a day of rest. And if one of the two should or could be left undone, it would be better that the keeping of holiday were omitted than that the sanctifying were left undone; for the commandment presses chiefly upon the sanctifying, and does not enjoin the Sabbath for its own sake, but for the sake of the sanctifying. The Jews, however, esteem the keeping of holiday more highly than the sanctifying, which God and Moses do not, by their own addition.

"That Moses now names the ""seventh"" day, and how God created the world in six days, wherefore they should do no work, that is the temporal adornment with which Moses at that time attaches this commandment to his people in particular. For previously one finds nothing of this written, neither of Abraham nor of the times of the old fathers, but it is a temporal addition and adornment, set only upon this people that was led out of Egypt, which also was not to remain forever, any more than the whole law of Moses. But the sanctifying, that is, teaching and preaching God's Word, which is the right, pure, and simple meaning of this commandment, has been from the beginning, and remains for ever and ever among all the world. Therefore the seventh day does not concern us Gentiles, and does not concern even the Jews themselves any longer than until Messiah; although nature and necessity compel that, on whatever day or hour God's Word is preached, one must there, as said, be still, keep holiday, or hold Sabbath. For God's Word cannot be heard or taught where one meanwhile thinks of something else or is not still.

"Therefore Isaiah also says, chap. 66, 23, that such seventh day or adornment of Moses, as I call it, shall cease at the time of Messiah, when the true sanctifying and God's Word shall come abundantly: ""It shall be,"" says he, ""one sabbath after another, one new moon after another,"" that is, it will be nothing but Sabbath, and no special seventh day, or six days between: for the sanctifying, or God's Word, will go forth daily and abundantly, and all days become Sabbaths."

3. In Luther's Exposition of the Ten Commandments of the year 1538 it says, §§ 1—3, thus:

""This is my commandment,"" says Christ, John 15, 12, ""that ye love one another""; and as Paul says, Rom. 13, 10: ""Love is the fulfilling of the law."" Where one has love, no law is needed; where one has it not, no law is enough. Therefore in this third commandment the work is commanded, nay rather the rest, that one may not provoke God to anger with works. For properly no work is commanded on the holy day. And so the first three commandments prepare man for God, as pure matter, that he may have rest in heart, mouth, and works, that is, that he may have a pure rest in the inward, the outward, and the middle man, which are the sensual, the rational, and the spiritual man.

"Here thou shalt note two things. The first: The Sabbath was commanded the Jews to keep as a type, as St. Paul plainly shows, Col. 2, 17, where he says: ""Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is in Christ."" Therefore all servile labor and handicraft, although they are good in themselves, signify the unseemly sinful works of the old man. For just as some animals were unclean on account of their signification, although in themselves they were good, clean, and sound, as created by God, and yet signified unclean and evil things; so it is with the bodily works which are forbidden on the holy day (although they are good in themselves); for they signify the future revelation of evil. So the Jews' Sabbath signifies the spiritual time which Christ, the Sun of righteousness, has enlightened, which time has no night. Is. 66, 23: ""One month shall follow another, and one sabbath another."" And St. Paul rebukes the Galatians, Gal. 4, 10, that after an outward Jewish appearance they observed days, months, and times.

"Therefore this commandment has properly ceased, yea, all the commandments, among the perfect Christians. ""The law is not made for a righteous man,"" 1 Tim. 1, 9. Yet the Church has retained some festivals on account of the imperfect, who need the Word of God. But a truly righteous man is so conformed to God that all days are alike holy to him; just as with God there is no distinction of days, place, or person. Nevertheless the weak, in whom the old man is not yet dead, need to exercise themselves in a certain service of God, in days, customs, weeks, fasting, labor, prayer, discipline, and the like, that they may attain to the growth of the inward man. And when the body is thus chastened and brought into subjection, and the disorderly lusts are mortified, they must gradually cease, and be diminished in proportion as the inner man increases. And if it should come to pass that man became perfect, such exercises would cease altogether, as St. Paul says, Gal. 3, 24: ""The law was our schoolmaster in Christ."" For the law has brought nothing to perfection. But St. John the Baptist ""went before the Lord, to prepare a perfect people,"" Luke 1, 17."

(Communicated by Pastor Röbbelen.)

Der amerikanische Botschafter

is, according to its own confession, "a paper which, abstaining from all churchly and learned controversies, proclaims only those fundamental truths of Christianity which are equally unconditionally acknowledged among all evangelical church divisions, and thereby seeks to win souls for the Lord and His kingdom, without asking after their confession."

We ask: Are there such "fundamental truths of Christianity equally unconditionally acknowledged among all evangelical church divisions"?

If, in order to answer this question, we take into view the particular doctrines of the several church divisions which call themselves evangelical, there results, to say nothing of the rest, a divergence in the following two doctrines, concerning which each may judge for himself whether they are chief and fundamental truths or unessential parts of holy revelation: in the doctrine of the justification of a poor sinner before God, and of the manner and way in which the grace is imparted to him by God, or the means of grace. Of the former the Lutherans teach that it takes place by faith alone, which God works by means of His means of grace, Col. 2, 12. The Calvinists derive it from the unconditional election of God; the Zwinglians from a faith which rests in itself and has no need of testimonies of God's grace in the sacraments; the Methodists partly from faith, partly from one's own holiness; the Baptists likewise, only with a still more decided exclusion of the foreign merit which makes righteous in Christ. Of the latter, the means of grace, the doctrine is maintained among the Lutherans alone that Word and Sacrament are the effectual instruments through which God imparts His grace and prepares His children. In all other "evangelical church divisions" the visible vessel of His grace, ordained by God in His Word, is withdrawn from faith, and an immediate operation of grace by the Holy Ghost is taught, with more or less exclusion of the Word itself. For although none, perhaps, neglects to press the Word, yet the procedure of the unbelieving rationalist teachers shows how little this affords a guarantee that the Word will be honored and used as a means of grace. Of these, indeed, very many do not reject the Bible, however much they interpret its sayings according to their own sense, because they well know that one may very well read and press the Scripture without submitting to it, and without founding one's confidence upon it as upon the infallible pledge of God's gracious will. But is there any church division in the world, besides the "Lutheran," which receives the Scripture in this its full grace-power willed by God, and, for example, holds an assailed soul to nothing else than to cling to the "It is written!" and in the written Word of God itself, without regard to its own condition, to find the same certainty of absolution which a debtor has in the torn handwriting of his creditor sent to him, concerning the debt paid for him by another? Is not in all of them the immediate dealing with God through prayer, the working of grace experienced in the heart, the lesser or greater degree of repentance and faith — in short, that which, preparatory to the apprehension of the