“Not many wise men according to the flesh are called,” says St. Paul in 1 Cor. 1:26. But in saying "not many," he testifies at the same time that there will always be some "wise men according to the flesh" who will accept the Word of the cross, which is foolishness to the world, as the only true wisdom. To these "wise men according to the flesh" belonged also the highly learned doctor and professor of theology Friedrich Adolf Philippi in Rostock in Mecklenburg, who died blessedly on August 29. He was born of Jewish parents, but came to a lively realization at a young age that Jesus Christ of Nazareth was the true Messiah promised to his people, and was therefore baptized. What kind of man he was was expressed by Professor Bachmann, among others, at his coffin. We cannot but share some of this with our readers. After Professor Bachmann had announced the words: “The blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, makes us clean from all sin” (1 John I, 7.) as his text, he continued as follows: "From this word, in the image of our deceased, the deepest, firmest, yes, some reason of his life comes to us first and foremost clearly. What was it that drove the young man to the feet of Jesus Christ, the Crucified, with ever more conscious and clear knowledge of the faith of his fathers? He hungered and thirsted for righteousness, his soul ached for the atonement of his sins, a righteousness he struggled in vain to gain from the works of the law, a reconciliation of which he could never be comfortably certain in all the shadowy being of the Old Covenant. Only when the New Testament did him the service of John, pointing out to him the one of whom Moses and all the prophets prophesied, as if with fingers: "Behold, this is the Lamb of God who bears the sin of the world! Only when in holy baptism, through the sprinkling of the blood of the Son of God, he was assured of the atonement of his sins and of justification before his God, only then had his soul found its full satisfaction, only then had he experienced in a certain blessed way what he later wrote as his confession under a picture of himself: "Christ is the end of the law; he who believes in him is righteous." — And this Christ, in whom he found his righteousness and the peace of his soul, was to him none other than the One to whom He testified Himself, as the One whom the whole Word of God proclaims on every page: the eternal, only begotten Son of God, incarnate in the fullness of time for our salvation. Oh, he knew it only too well and had learned it in the vain struggle of his soul, that for each, even the smallest of his sins, no other sacrifice was great enough, no other atonement fully valid, than the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And this blood of atonement, the precious merit of the God-Man, whom God also presented to him as a mercy seat through faith in his blood, was henceforth the foundation of his life, the comfort and part of his heart. Founded on this foundation in faith, from this fertile soil with all the roots of his inner man, sucking up the forces of life, he traveled out more and more completely to the firmly formed personality full of character, to the man of one mold, as which he was able to command respect and high esteem even from those who were far away, even from men of the most opposite point of view. In the complete devotion to this one truth, which completely filled his soul, as it gave all his rich human gifts the consecration of higher meaning, lay also the peculiarly attractive power of his person, which so effectively and lastingly bound the youth to him, and in not a few of his students so conditionally influenced their entire inner direction and development. — Being reconciled with God through God's blood, knowing that he was represented by Jesus, the righteous One, interceding with the Father, helped our perfected man to bear the burdens of life. This comforted him and kept him upright under the tribulations of his pilgrimage. For even in such tribulations he was not lacking, according to his God's counsel, from the first, perhaps deepest pain of his life: as a son to be torn from his parents' hearts, to see himself (as he himself used to express it) cut out, as it were, from the circle of his nearest and dearest according to the flesh, to the last sufferings of his old days. But even in such dark hours of affliction, where not only to the natural flesh and blood no light of consolation shines any more, where even to the challenged faith it often seems as if God had closed all his grace in anger, this always remained the support and consolation of his soul: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus" [Rom. 8:1]; he always clung to the certainty as to his one stick and staff: "In this his love toward God is praised. In this God glorifies his love toward us, that while we were yet enemies, Christ died for us; so shall we ever be preserved through him from wrath, having been justified by his blood"; and thus through all the anguish and temptation of his soul he wrestled his way again and again to the quiet rest of the child at the heart of his reconciled Father, to the ever new, comforting experience: “Now that we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” — And this power of the blood of reconciliation, which strengthened him and sustained him throughout his life, also proved itself to our perfected man on his deathbed, even to the last breath. In the midst of all the turmoil and torture of his slowly dying body, he always found a safe haven of peace in the open wounds of the Lamb of God, who had also been martyred for him. For all accusations of sin and weakness of soul he drank comfort and strength in the blood of his Savior, also shed for him, also offered to him in Holy Communion. Through all his thoughts and speeches, consciously as well as unconsciously, the longing for the heavenly home, which the eternal High Priest also opened for him through His entrance with His blood, always sounded through. And with the repeated prayer: Lord Jesus, have mercy! Son of God, have mercy! he closed his mouth for this world; and at the same time he received the seal from the Lord for what he believed and confessed in his whole life: “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” [1 John 1:7] — God grant the writer of this and all his readers such an end also! W. [Walther]
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