# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1855_S3
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Doctrine of the Holy Office of the Ministry.                3

it, and can grow out of it, as the Lord wills. Then things would stand badly for Luther's teaching, and his whole mighty scriptural proof against the Roman heresy, especially in his letter to the Bohemians, would have been a fencing into thin air, had it not proven itself irrefutable. But we believe: hardly anyone in our time will do it better than he did. And when Wucherer confesses in the preface that he owes his view, as a result, to an independent searching of Scripture, the present writer may well neutralize this by an assurance, from his own experience, of the contrary; for after God's grace, 26 years ago, freed him from the snares of unbelief — prompted and guided, to be sure, by living persons, but in the first instance through the mere study of the New Testament — the doctrine of church and office stood before his soul, not indeed with the clarity it has now, but with the same purity; and later, Scripture, Luther, and the Symbols were not in the least contradiction to it either. Only when, through the well-known preacher St. in Dresden, he was led to papistic views — the very same ones that those who nowadays call themselves Old Lutherans hold to with such tenacity — did his Lutheran conscience torment itself trying to find them in Scripture and the Symbols; but he never succeeded, and could only quiet himself with the thought that it would become clearer to him in the future how Pastor St. had Scripture on his side in this, while the symbolical books, on the other hand, had — as he himself said — defect and imperfection. A serious warning for those who, in doctrine, but above all for those who even in practice give ear to men caught up in unhappy hierarchical strivings. But to the matter at hand.

Eph. 4:11 reads, according to the original text, thus: "And he himself, Christ, gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers." To whom did he give these? He must, after all, have given them to someone. And whoever is given something has it thereafter as his own. Now Christ, in ch. 1, v. 22, is called the head over all things, given to the congregation. As, then, he is given to the congregation, so also are his servants: he as the head — these for the equipping of the saints (in the unity of the faith), for the work of the ministry (that the congregation may become a perfect man), for the building up of the body of Christ (to be filled unto all the fullness of God, cf. ch. 3:19; for v. 12 in ch. 4 corresponds with what follows, and to this correspond vv. 14, 15, and 16) — thus as serving members of his spiritual body. Compare "Lutheraner," vol. 11, p. 36.— Yet it is not only the office, insofar as it is carried out in a particular manner, but also, insofar as it was originally instituted by Christ, that is designated as a gift of grace from the Chief Shepherd and Lord to his holy congregation. The inexhaustible fullness of the content of his gift is opened up to us by comparison with 1 Cor. 3:21ff. Let no one twist the words with subtle interpretation. I may not depart from the plain sense of Scripture, unless the analogy of faith compel me to do so—