# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1864_S40
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

40 Some Remarks on the Teaching of the Supreme Church Council of the Ev.-Luth. Church in Prussia, etc.

... comes from the immediate calling of the Holy Spirit, to proclaim ever and again those glorious things in the world; this, this alone is what the Son of God has commanded, and is therefore of divine law. Let anyone produce even a single passage in which the Head of the church, who has power over all flesh, gives us anything else than either the promises of the gospel or the confirmation of the holy natural law! To the office of the church no division is given in its concept.

It comprises essentially the keys of the kingdom of heaven, a power of the church itself, and thereby now everything that follows from it; it is therefore that of the Word, through which alone the church on earth comes to be and remains, out of faith. God has ordained no fixed conduct in the outward organism of the church, which itself cannot be of immediate divine origin, but can only proceed from the invisible creation of the Holy Spirit, that is, from the church in spirit and faith. The latter does this freely, by virtue of its spiritual gifts, so that the commandment of love may be carried out in peace for edification. Just as the distinction, in the concept of the church, between a fellowship of salvation and a constituted one is a grave error, so it is no less dangerous, consistently with this, first to place an office of earthly and one of heavenly goods into the nature of the church, and secondly to break up the latter, as the office of the Word, into two sides wholly corresponding to the false distinction of the church — except that the ordered erection of the offices itself belongs to the other side of the latter. Just as the church is essentially only the congregation of believers, so its office is essentially only the preaching of faith. This is one service in the proper sense of the word, rooted in the Holy Spirit, in Christ's redeeming service through His servant-form, a servant's calling for Jesus' sake. An office of order is coordinate with, and conditions this original office of the means of grace, just as little as the constituted church conditions the fundamental side. Christ is the exalted Head only of those who, by believing the universal reconciliation with God, stand with Him in such a connection that they not merely live in Him — naturally — but also have a spiritual life that stems from the life of Christ in the Spirit, so that He lives in them. Where the office of the Word is, there is the life of faith, and where this is, there is the office of the Word; the other offices are but the various outflows that spring from this one source. By the spiritual gifts, he to whom they are chiefly ascribed as imparted from Him (just as the exercise of these gifts belongs chiefly to the Lord, that is, to Christ, and the powers for them chiefly to the Father as the primal source, 1 Cor. 12:4–6) wills to glorify the Son of God in His church — not [glorify Him] in the heart, which He does through faith — He who has procured the Holy Spirit for it. As saving faith is the condition that a church can exist on earth, and with it the office of the Word, so the spiritual gifts, not necessary for salvation, are the conditions of the remaining offices. They serve for the glorification of Christ