# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1863_S145
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Old Lutheran Teachers on Slavery. 145

All men, born of one Father, are bound together by an equal, brotherly tie — to which people refer that passage, 1 Cor. 5:11: "If any man is called a brother, and is a fornicator, etc." But the Apostle adds three reasons why servants should obey such masters as are companions in their faith: 1. "Because they are believers"; for fellowship in the same religion works greater love, just as the Apostle commands elsewhere to do good unto every man, but most of all unto those of the household of faith, Gal. 6:10. 2. Because they are "beloved." In Greek it is called agapetos, which for the most part means one who is beloved, or one who already truly enjoys the love of another. Jerome says, on the Epistle to Philemon, that this is the same as being worthy of love — since there too the runaway, but converted, servant Onesimus is called a beloved (agapetos) brother, v. 16, that is, worthy of being loved. Christian masters, then, are both beloved of God and worthy of being loved by men. Others explain it by the words "gentle, kind, not surly, but affable." All this comes from the Christian religion, for whose sake servants are to be the more respectful toward such masters. 3. Because they are "partakers of the benefit"; which words Chrysostom refers to the servants, as though they received a greater benefit from their masters than the masters from them — but since this the servants of believers have in common with the servants of unbelievers, this interpretation cannot stand. More rightly we, with Ambrose, understand it of the beneficence of God, otherwise called the grace of God, which he has given in Christ Jesus to servants no less than to believing masters — whence some also add the word "God": "partakers of the benefit of God," which, however, is not found in the Greek text. Since, then, all believers have the same grace from God in Christ, no one has cause to despise another, still less has the believing servant cause to refuse his believing master the services he owes him.

These are the rules for servants, which, according to the Apostle's admonition, are not only to be taught but also to be impressed upon them, because it is the way of servants that, against their masters — of whom they know that these are equal to them in respect of spiritual benefits — they easily grow proud, if they are not often reminded of their duties. From the subject of servants he passes to false teachings — those held by such as either despise the teachings concerning household relations and therefore, pretending to higher wisdom, devise new but useless things; or are otherwise not sound in the faith." (Commentary on the Epistles of Paul, Frankfurt, 1664, pp. 1367–69.)

Michael Reichard, in a Latin disputation held at Wittenberg in the year 1617, answers the question, "Does servitude conflict with Christian liberty?" as follows:

"Erasmus of Rotterdam writes, on Eph. 6:5: Among Christians