# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1855_S8
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

...so are they also in this world (1 John 4:17), and whoever says that he abides in him ought himself to walk just as he walked (1 John 2:6). Now they cannot, to be sure, blot out sin and bring righteousness; but they can, in him, practice love toward their neighbor in word and deed, so that, as far as it depends on them, others too become and remain partakers of salvation. For this purpose the disciples of Christ are sent into the world. This is what includes within it the specifically apostolic calling to go out to all nations. The eternal High Priest prays for this: "Sanctify them in your truth; your word is truth; as you have sent me into the world, so I have also sent them into the world," etc. (John 17:17ff.; 20ff.; 6, 9, 11, 13–16); words which shed light for further understanding, for throughout, the discourse here is, in the first instance, only of a discipleship, to which faith qualifies one, whose fruits are to confirm the sending forth of Christ.) Thereupon he gives them the pledge of the extraordinary coming of the Comforter, and speaks the words: "Receive ye," etc. From ch. 17 it is beyond dispute that they were believers; and it was only as such that they were capable of receiving the firstfruits of the Spirit, for it is not the world — which neither sees him nor knows him (ch. 14:17) — that receives him; but with this most precious, supreme gift there is inseparably joined the other — the purely spiritual power, through the Word, to loose and to bind (v. 23); if the former, then, is promised and given only to faith (cf. Acts 10:44; 11:17), how much more the keys of the kingdom of heaven, which are only a consequence of the former. (How, indeed, should these not belong to the believers, whom Christ raises up to be lords in the house of God, and to whom he assigns the inheritance of all creatures as their own possession?) In what capacity, then, did Jesus bestow on his disciples these high, divine gifts with which he himself, according to his humanity, was anointed? Did he bestow them on them merely as apostles, or rather, in the first instance, as believers? I do not exclude the apostolate; but this is, after all, the second thing, contained as an effect within the first — inasmuch as no one can be an apostle, a prophet, a bishop, who has not first become a member of the fellowship (a membership from which, to be sure, he can later again die away) — originally they received, after the bosom of Christ's grace had been opened to them through the Holy Spirit, the right to open and close it to others as well: to pronounce to others, too, the forgiveness of sins of which they themselves had become partakers, or to announce to them the wrath of God — as disciples, as the church believing in Christ (this the text, which cannot be broken, teaches most unambiguously, with compelling evidence) — and, at the same time, as ones chosen to be princes of the church, to exercise it in public service in the congregations planted by them. Consider: according to the opposite interpretation, according to which it is not faith but the office that takes precedence, so that this right was entrusted to the disciples as bearers of their office — who, to be sure, were then also supposed to be believing at the same time, but not beforehand, as church — it follows absolutely that with the assumption of the office the Holy Spirit is given as well; for just as, to the public office, one attaches the power