# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1856_S306
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

306 On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Some Related Matters, etc.

third part of the treatise, where the discourse concerns all who believe; he shows, concerning the Israelites, who lay very close to his heart, how a great part of them did not receive the faith, and what follows from it, whereas in their place many Gentiles come in — for everything, he says, depends on faith alone, chapter 9, verse 1 through chapter 10, verse 4; and this way is easy and universal, prepared equally for Jews and Gentiles, chapter 10, verse 4 through chapter 11, verse 36.

From this brief presentation of the connection it is already evident how the holy Paul could not have taught any particularism of grace, but only the opposite; for just as death, like a mighty king, has reigned over all through the guilt of the first man, and one has proof enough of this habitual corruption in the exceedingly sad fruits that occur everywhere without exception, so likewise, through One, salvation has entered into the world for the whole human race, and life depends exclusively on the Mediator, without any contribution of one's own good works. The eager striving after a self-earned reward, whereby one sets arbitrary limits upon the grace of God — in general, the abandonment of the free divine mercy in Christ Jesus — is the hindrance why not all are saved; and it is precisely this that he treats in chapter 9 and following.

II. The apostle's wish and solemn asseveration for his brothers according to the flesh, chapter 9, verses 1–5. The pain and grief over the danger and misery of unbelieving Israel, and over its deep guilt, the zeal for the salvation of so great a multitude, and the furtherance of God's glory through the preservation of so numerous a people, had so overtaken the apostle that, were it granted by Christ, he sometimes wished to put himself in their place and to be, for their sake, a ban, an outcast, and to be forsaken by Christ — just as the eternal Son Himself, on the ground that we are His kinsmen, became a curse for us and was forsaken by His heavenly Father. From the highest degree of faith at the close of the preceding chapter, he now allows the highest love, kindled by the divine fire, to shine forth. He forgot himself entirely for a while, and, for the sake of the divine glory, had regard for others alone. Similarly 2 Corinthians 12:15, Exodus 32:32. The thing he had wished for could not actually take place — see chapter 8:38f., Exodus 32:33; only he who despises faith is an anathema from Christ, compare Galatians 5:4; yet the wish was holy and earnest, though with the tacit condition: if it were possible. Human words are not fully sufficient to express the desires and stirrings of heart of holy souls: Paul, filled with Christ, desires to be divested in the Jews' place — it was the Spirit of the Lord Jesus that transfigured him into His image, and it was not in the apostle's power to stir up the same affection, or another, from above within himself at any given time. Whoever wishes to grasp such things at all must have come far in the faith; therefore, of such a measure of