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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther: for He has reserved punishment for His own good pleasure, as He
threatens in the First Commandment, -- just so also, although no one
has a right in his own person to judge and condemn anybody, yet if they
to whose office it belongs fail to do it, they sin as well as he who
would do so of his own accord, without such office. For here necessity
requires one to speak of the evil, to prefer charges, to investigate
and testify; and it is not different from the case of a physician who
is sometimes compelled to examine and handle the patient whom he is to
cure in secret parts. Just so governments, father and mother, brothers
and sisters, and other good friends, are under obligation to each other
to reprove evil wherever it is needful and profitable.
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