# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1857_S237
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded and Brought Up?   237

...so-called clergy and parsons, as it does of special privileges and prerogatives of the estate of the secular authorities and of the heads of households; since in the representative church too there is essentially and properly only one estate, namely the Christian estate, in which all who truly believe are equally well-born sons of the same Father in heaven and of the same spiritual mother on earth, namely the confessing church, the pillar and ground of the truth, and citizens with equal rights of the same spiritual kingdom; and in which all confessors of the church's faith — even when, as hypocrites, they stand in no inward fellowship of the Spirit with Christ and with those who truly believe, and essentially and properly have no right of possession in the spiritual goods, offices, and powers that the congregation of believers has received from Christ — nevertheless, on account of their outward fellowship of confession with the latter, jointly exercise the same right of administration and co-governance as instruments of the believing congregation. But by the fact that this or that one of these citizens is, according to his worldly estate and calling, a person in authority or a head of a household, he has in an evangelical representative congregation no prerogative in itself over the others, and forms no separate estate within it, since he is a member of this congregation only as a Christian and confessor of the churchly faith and in no other way whatever; so that the various worldly estates are indeed contingently in the representative church, but are not necessarily and essentially of it and do not constitute it — much as Christians are indeed in, but not of, the world, and hypocrites are indeed in, but not of, the church (in the proper sense).

But as regards the so-called spiritual estate, the office of preaching is of course of divine institution, and "no one shall publicly teach or preach or administer the Sacraments in the church without a regular call." Yet precisely for that reason the bearers of this office, that is, of the authority transferred to them by Christ through His congregation, have in the representative congregation no lordly prerogatives, as though they were persons of special rank, but simply the authority of the divine Word in exposition faithful to the confession and in mediate or immediate application of the same; whereby they are precisely not to rule, but rather to serve the congregation — for whose sake their office and ministry exists, and not the reverse — in order to bring God's Word, in accordance with the rule of faith and the churchly confession, to rule in the consciences and hearts of the members of the congregation for all Christian and churchly doing and acting; so that this Word, and especially the Gospel as the means of grace of the Holy Spirit, may through the mouth of His servant work, preserve, and increase justifying faith in Christ and spiritual union with Christ in the hearts of the penitent, and brotherly and universal love in the hearts of believers, and accordingly may also found the Christian congregational life and further it more and more in every way.

(To be continued.)