# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1906_S13
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1906. 13

carried out, when the time was fulfilled, that all things might be gathered together in Christ." It is a peculiarly sublime expression, that all things are gathered together in Christ, an expression which we cannot unfold completely all at once; indeed, if one tries to think it through, one never comes to the end. In short, it is about the same thought that Paul expresses of God the Father in Romans at the end of the eleventh chapter, where he gives up trying to understand the ways and judgments of God, and adds: "For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things." So here it is said of Christ that for the whole world He is the One and All, beginning, middle and end, origin, purpose and goal. With regard to the congregation [Gemeinde] the Apostle then expresses this still more particularly (Eph. 1:22 f.): "God hath set Him to be the Head over all things to the Church." We have already said above that Jesus is presented here as the one whose Spirit pervades the whole congregation and who gives it life; but in the word "Head" there lies at the same time that He is the LORD of the congregation, precisely in the sense in which the believers use this expression of Christ. We Christians stand toward Jesus and toward God as children toward their father. It is an expression which voices the hearty, childlike trust of Christians; Paul explains this expressly (chap. 3:12) with the words: "Which He hath shown in Christ Jesus, our LORD, by whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him." Elsewhere the LORD Jesus is also spoken of as our brother (so in the Epistle to the Hebrews), and we speak of Him as our friend. Here, however, Paul uses the word LORD and shows that it is characteristic of the Christian, in contrast to the legalistic Jew and the heathen, to approach this LORD with all confidence, with all trust.

Reverence is founded on faith. One sees this from the fact that faith is now named first. Faith has already been spoken of above; here the following might still be said: Where the Apostle in Ephesians first comes to speak of faith, he at once marks it as the characteristic both of the Jews who have come to the inheritance and of the converted Gentiles. After he had said that all things are gathered together in Christ, he continues (chap. 1:11): "In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will; that we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ." Thereby he marks the believers in the Old Testament as people who hoped in Christ through faith. Then he continues: "In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation; in whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of