# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1856_S261
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A Letter of Reply from the Editor to a Dear Friend, etc. 261

The manner of speech of holy Scripture itself. Thus Paul says, Rom. 9:6–8: They are not all Israel, which are of Israel. Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children; but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. Here the apostle plainly speaks of an Israel within Israel; for outwardly regarded, all who were descended from Israel were indeed Israelites, and this name could not be denied them so long as one looked only to their descent from Israel; and yet the apostle declares many of those who really are Israelites to be Not-Israelites, and shows what it is that makes one a true Israelite and a genuine seed of Abraham and a real child of God, namely, faith in the promise — as he says, Gal. 3:7: they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. Likewise the same apostle declares, Rom. 2:28–29, that there are Jews who are not Jews. And when he says, Phil. 3:18, of many members of the congregation at Philippi, that they walk as enemies of the cross of Christ, he thereby declares these, who did indeed outwardly belong to the congregation of Christ, to be inwardly separated from those who were such in truth. Likewise the apostle John says (1 John 2:18–19) of the many antichrists who had arisen in his time: They went out from us, but they were not of us; and thereby says of them that, while they still outwardly belonged to the congregation, they had never inwardly been of it, and so places them outside the true congregation, to which, nevertheless, they belonged by outward right and by name (cf. Rev. 3:1: thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead). And Christ himself calls Nathanael, John 1:4 [as printed], a true Israelite (in Greek: one in whom there is truth), and says, John 8:31, of those who are his true disciples — according to which last saying of Christ there are, accordingly, disciples of Christ who are his disciples, and yet again are not, namely, by confession and by name, but not in deed and in truth. — I would only further point out that many passages in the books of the prophets of the Old Testament, especially of the prophet Isaiah, cannot be understood at all without the assumption that they speak of an Israel within Israel, in which, then, the name that belongs to the whole is given, in a special or proper sense, to a part of the whole, the whole being outwardly regarded.

4. In commendation of the definition that the truly believing are the body of Christ on earth and thus the true church, I take the liberty of adding this to the foregoing propositions. By accepting this definition we escape the greatest difficulties into which we unavoidably fall if we reject it. For there must indeed be a true congregation of Christ on earth, a church that is one in name and in essence (cf. the passage cited on p. 120 from the Apology); if now the throng of the truly believing, scattered everywhere, is not the church of Christ, then