# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 03 19_S116
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

116

must one rightly understand it when Christ says: ""Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them"" etc., that there the power is not established of him that speaks, but of those who believe." (Sermon on the Gospel for the Sunday Quasimodogeniti, in the Kirchenpostille.)

What, then, do those do who deny to the preachers of the Gospel the power to forgive sins on earth? They deny them thereby not merely a prerogative which they supposed themselves to have by virtue of their office; no, they deny them thereby nothing less than the power to preach the Gospel in its true sense to men, and thus deny the perfection of the redemption of Christ. Yea, it is faith therein and the right knowledge thereof that those lack who reject the power to forgive sins on earth. He who believes from the heart that Christ has already blotted out the sins of all men, how can he take offence that to a man, especially when he declares that he wishes to receive Christ, it is called out: Thy sins are forgiven thee? He who believes from the heart that Christ has obtained grace for all men, how can he take offence that a man who confesses to believe this is also assured: Thou also hast found grace? He who believes from the heart that all men are already reconciled by Christ's death and justified by His resurrection, and that God so loved the world that He has already "given" and presented to it His dear Son with all His merit, how can it seem strange to him that this is also actually spoken and assured to a man in the name of God through absolution, and that nothing is demanded of him but that he accept this in faith as though he heard the voice of God Himself from heaven?

Learn from this, dear reader: precisely because our Church has the article so pure and clear and in its whole fulness: that Christ has perfectly redeemed all men and that therefore man is righteous and saved before God by grace alone, through faith — precisely for this reason has our Church also held the precious doctrine of absolution so firmly from the beginning. And so long as this sun, namely the doctrine of justification by faith alone, does not set in our Church but shines brightly, so long will she also not let the comfort of holy absolution be taken from her; but if it were possible that that sun should once no longer shine in our Church, then indeed hellish darkness would break in over our Church also, the doctrine of absolution would fall therein, and with it the doctrine of the perfection of the redemption of Jesus Christ. The same condition, however, which holds for the whole Church holds also for each individual member of it. If a Lutheran is well grounded in the doctrine of justification, then all the prattle of the fanatics against the power of absolution will serve him for nothing further than as a clear proof how blind and ignorant these fanatics are precisely in the fundamental article of the Christian faith; if, on the other hand, a so-called Lutheran is not at home in the doctrine of the justification of a poor sinner before God, but is a stranger to it and unestablished, then he will indeed, as a child that is tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, easily let himself be persuaded that absolution is a remnant of Popery and an invention of haughty priests for the increase of their prestige.

Here, dear reader, thou hast again the proof how true it is when Luther writes of the doctrine of Christ and of faith: "All other points may shine also among false Christians and hypocrites: but where this does not abide, it is not possible to withstand any error or factious spirit. This I know for a certainty, and have tried it so much, that I could not refute (confute) the faith of the Turks or Jews, if I should have to deal without this point. And wherever sects arise or begin, have thou no doubt that they have certainly fallen from this chief point, notwithstanding that they prate much of Christ with their mouths, and almost adorn and deck themselves. For this point suffers no sects to arise; inasmuch as it cannot be but that the Holy Ghost must also be there, who suffers not sects to begin, but gives and maintains concord." (Exposition of the 117th Psalm, near the end.) —

But, dear reader, there is yet one thing to which I would call thy attention, and by which I must show thee how great and ruinous the error is of those who deny to the preachers of the Gospel the power to forgive sins on earth; it is this: that thereby, so far as in them lies, they rob Christians of the highest and most needful comfort.

It seems indeed as though, even if absolution were rejected, men would still retain comfort enough; for do not the opponents of absolution also have the Gospel? Do they not also have Baptism? Do they not also have the Lord's Supper? — It is true, they have these; but in that they reject the absolution spoken through men, they take out the comfort which lies in those means of grace. For what is the comfort that lies in the Gospel, other than that absolution is contained therein, or that the Gospel, read or heard, gives forgiveness of sins to all who believe it? What is the comfort that lies in Baptism, other than that absolution is contained therein, or that Baptism "worketh forgiveness of sins, delivereth from death and the devil, and giveth everlasting salvation to all who believe, as the words and promise of God declare"? What, finally, is the comfort that lies in the Lord's Supper, other than that absolution is contained therein, or that "in the Sacrament forgiveness of sins, life and salvation are given us through such words: ""Given and shed for you for the remission of sins"""? This comfort, as the true kernel, the opponents of absolution take out of all these means of grace, and leave, so far as in them lies, to their hearers nothing but the empty shell. Think not, dear reader, that something is here laid upon the preachers of the sects of which they are not guilty. It is, alas! only too true. Do they not say it themselves without concealment: Whoever relies on the mere word has a dead faith, for the letter is dead, the Spirit, the Spirit must do it, it alone maketh alive?*) Do they not speak just as blasphemously of holy Baptism? Do they not say: What shall washing with water help thee? that is a powerless ceremony; the baptism of the Spirit thou must experience!? And do they not, finally, speak just as contemptuously also of the holy Supper? Do they not say: what shall the oral eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ profit thee? The flesh profiteth nothing!**) The spiritual Supper in the heart, which thou keepest in the stillness of thy chamber or at the altar of prayer, that, that does it. — Believe not, therefore, that in the rejection of absolution it is only a question whether a preacher may say the words: "I forgive thee thy sin in Christ's stead"; or that men only wish to repudiate the presumption of the preachers to be a kind of mediator between God and men, and the hierarchical principle that the power to forgive sins is a privilege of the priests and a power resting only in their office, and that therefore a layman, if he wishes to obtain forgiveness, needs for it a preacher and his official absolution. This the Roman Church indeed teaches; it says, for example, in the Roman Catechism: "As no one can enter into a (fortified and high-lying) place without the help of him to whom the keys are entrusted, so we well understand that no one is admitted into heaven

*) It is a horrible and truly blasphemous perversion of Scripture to call the Word of God a dead letter. When the holy Apostle writes: "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life" (2 Cor. 3, 6.), the context teaches that by the letter the Law, and by the Spirit the Gospel, is to be understood. Moreover, according to this, the Law also is not a dead, but a killing letter; but what can kill must be living and powerful. God's words are spirit and are life; whoever bears them in his heart has the Spirit, even if he does not feel it; but whoever, instead of the Word of God, bears only his own thoughts in his heart, though he may, according to his feeling, be ever so full of the Spirit, is nevertheless a blind, dead, spiritless man. Christ says: "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." John 6, 63.

**) When Christ says: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing," John 6, 63., He does not mean by "the flesh" His own flesh, for this is indeed of some profit; yea, this gives, as Christ had said shortly before, "life unto the world" (John 6, 33. 51.). Christ rebukes with the words: "The flesh profiteth nothing" the carnal thoughts of the Capernaites, who supposed that Christ meant to give His flesh as food for the body, to be chewed and digested.