# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1864_S182
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

182 The Epistles of St. Paul to Timothy and Titus, or the Apostolic Pastorale.

these epistles. In these, so far as God grants the ability, it is to be shown, with particular application to the ministers of the Word, what St. Paul writes concerning Holy Scripture, and thus also concerning these his own letters. For 2 Timothy 3 reads thus: "All Scripture, given by inspiration of God, is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work." And in Romans 15:4 he further says of Holy Scripture that it also serves for comfort.

Just as, then, the whole of Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments is, in these five respects, needful and useful for all Christians in general, so is this especially the case with the pastoral epistles of the dear Apostle with respect to the shepherds and teachers of the Church. For from these epistles they can learn what and how, according to the direction of the Holy Spirit, they ought to teach, reprove, correct, train, and comfort, so that in the congregations entrusted to them, this flock of Christ, they may discharge their office entirely to the Lord's pleasure and be found faithful and competent workers.

It goes without saying that, in order to accomplish this ever better, they must stand in true faith in their Lord and Savior and must continually grow more and more in it. And no less needful is it that, by the power of this faith and of the Holy Spirit, who through faith has his dwelling and workshop in them, they be moved and driven by love for Christ to this feeding of his sheep. For when did Christ first say to the deeply fallen, and yet again graciously restored, Peter: "Feed my lambs, feed my sheep"? Only then, when this man, to whom much had been forgiven, could answer with a good conscience the Lord's question, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?": "Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you." In whatever minister of the Church, then, the love of Christ — however weak it may seem, by his own feeling and estimation — is not the moving power of all his official conduct toward the flock of Christ entrusted to him, that man is unworthy and unfit for that feeding, even if for a time he publicly proclaimed the pure doctrine; he is a faithless hireling and belly-servant — indeed, so long as he remains so, an accursed man, as St. Paul testifies in express words concerning every Christian in name and lip-service in general, 1 Corinthians 16:22.

A faithful and competent minister of the Lord and his Church can therefore only be one whose ruling disposition is faith, and love both for Christ and, for Christ's sake, for the people dearly bought by Christ, and who is also sufficiently equipped by the Lord with the necessary natural and spiritual gifts. Only such a man is able and fit, according to God's will and according to the instruction which the precious Apostle gave first to Timothy and Titus, rightly to teach his people, to reprove, to correct, to train and comfort them in and toward faith and a godly life, and finally to bring them to salvation through and in Christ. Only such a man, then, will also be able, according to this fatherly