# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1855_S7
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Doctrine of the Holy Office of the Ministry.                7

...the divine authority to call, they, after the departure of their glorified Master, let Joseph and Matthias be put forward by it for election through the lot of the Lord — through the lot, as the sole instance in the Acts of the Apostles, as befitted the period between the Ascension and Pentecost, from which point on the Holy Spirit was sent in an extraordinary manner for guidance (cf. Wucherer, p. 34f.); and Paul receives even from a disciple who was no apostle, nor one to whom the office is otherwise ascribed, his first laying on of hands (Acts 9). (The second was given him at Antioch by prophets and teachers for his first journey as apostle to the Gentiles, ch. 13; yet at the very beginning of his apostolate the Lord does not even send him first to Jerusalem, to the apostles or presbyters there, although everywhere he went he freely exercised his office, ch. 9:15, 20; 27f.; 11:26.)

After this we turn to Acts 20:28. Here again we find the same manner of expression as in 1 Cor. 12:18, 28. It was a mediate divine calling that these elders of Ephesus had, as in ch. 14:23; through the choosing congregation and the appointing apostle (cf. Acts 6:3, 5, 6), just as, through the impartation of his gifts, the Holy Spirit had set them in place. But a mediate and an immediate calling are not essentially different from one another. In Christ's place his holy congregation appears on earth as the continuation of the activity of its exalted Head — who, precisely for that reason, is invisibly quite near it and present everywhere — so that, through Christ, by means of his fellow-heirs of the kingdom, as organs of the Spirit's now merely ordinary working, there steps forth out of the hidden womb of the invisible church, as its generative source, the office in its most proper realization, as the summit and most glorious fruit of that church. What outward Christendom, the visible fellowship of the called, does, is grounded first of all in the spiritual power and the preponderant influence of that inward church — only that, the more mortally sick the body is, the less the soul is able to show itself. Nevertheless the preachers are always, at the very least outwardly, set into their service by God, who holds everything in his hands and governs even the designs of men — only that he often gives in wrath, where grace is despised, and where disorder and fault, abuse of the general priestly right, factionalism, and scandals can frequently intrude in the process.

We come now to the most important and by far the most striking passage, in which the others converge as rays toward a center. It is John 20:21–23. The Risen One brings to his disciples, out of the grave, the peace of God as the accomplished fruit of his cross, and says to them: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." (The sending of Christ into the world — whom the Father sealed — took place so that the world might be saved through him; and herein the love of God toward us was made manifest, that the eternal Son, as Savior, gave himself up for us. What he did and taught belongs, in their measure, to all his disciples as well; for just as he is, so