# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1860_S121
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Questions of the Day. 121

election (ἐκλογή, choice) which it obtains (v. 7), of the fullness of
its number coming in (v. 12), of a grafting-in of the natural branches
into their own olive tree (v. 24), of a being-saved of all Israel
(v. 26) — all of which points simply and solely to the attainment of
salvation in Christ, but not also to a "priestly" calling for the
Gentiles. That is not to be found in v. 12 either. The "riches" praised
here, which are only to be increased through the fullness of Israel's
number, are elsewhere, after all, the same riches here and there, and
thus are brought about here and there in the same way; therefore, if
there only through the mission-work of the few, so here too only
through the same work of the many. But when the author himself must
confess that "the chosen people has, by and large, not fulfilled its
calling," and has been "rejected" by God, and yet nevertheless thinks
that upon the final fulfillment of the priestly calling of this people
rejected by God depends the ultimate fulfillment of the great divine
plan of salvation — that the redemptive work which the Son of God,
rejected by this people, nonetheless accomplished for the salvation of
the whole world despite this rejection, Christ's dearly-won,
all-sufficiently efficacious merit, and his work of redemption endowed
with all saving power, must nevertheless, for its final completion,
wait upon the priestly assistance of this very people that rejected
him; and that there remains for this people now still, besides the
return to salvation in Christ, the being grafted back into their own
olive tree, the "overflowing riches of his grace" — something still
higher, more exalted, apart, which was properly intended for this
people, not in Christ, but in a certain sense before him, and must now
come to fulfillment, merely so that what was won and wrought through
Christ, who appeared in the fullness of time — that overflowing riches
of the divine grace revealed in Christ Jesus — may, for such persons
who in any case already, even without that, are "no longer strangers
and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the
household of God, kings and priests before God" (Rev. 1:6), come into
the perfected exercise of glory: or if the work of salvation of Christ
is thus to be made dependent upon the entrance of a people, as such,
into a certain position — and thus always upon human dependency —
then we confess that this goes against not only our whole Christian
understanding, but also against the total impression forced upon us
by the entire Scripture. But it will not otherwise be provable either;
the author has at least not proved it. Neither has Dr. Auberlen, to
whom he appeals, nor Baumgarten, whom he likewise (though with a
certain regret) brings in. Nor, either, with the reproach of a
"spiritualism, working into the hands of unbelief, that dissolves
everything away," which the author (p. 83) raises against those who,
following the example of Christ, who says, "if you were Abraham's
children, you would do Abraham's works" (John 8:39), and of the
apostle, who teaches, "they are not all Israel who are of Israel"
(Rom. 9:6), see in Israel only the Israel of promise, the Israel which
the election concluded in Christ, and