# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1864_S186
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

...how, as faithful shepherds and teachers, they are to teach, reprove, correct, train, and comfort their flocks with and according to God's Word, in and toward righteousness. —

After these introductory preliminary remarks, mention should now be made that Timothy and Titus, to whom the present epistles of St. Paul are primarily addressed, served the Gospel in a twofold manner. For one thing, they were evangelists, that is, helpers of the Apostle in preaching the Gospel on his journeys for the conversion of the heathen. Then, on occasion, they also held the service and office of oversight and supervision of several congregations and their ministers, together with their own preaching of the divine Word, both by commission of the Apostle and, as goes without saying, with the consent of the congregations.*)

For this purpose, then, Timothy was left behind by him at Ephesus, where, according to church tradition, he exercised oversight of the congregation of the city, and probably also of the surrounding places, for fifteen years, and was afterward stoned by the heathen. Titus, left behind by the Apostle on the island of Crete with the same purpose, is said to have died there in the ninety-fourth year of his age.

To both of these, his beloved sons and at the same time brothers in Christ, St. Paul now gives, in these three epistles, fatherly instruction as to how they are to attend, in accordance with the Gospel, to this office of theirs of oversight and supervision as well; namely, first, to the end that the pure doctrine of the Gospel should prevail and be defended against its legalistic falsification, since it is from this doctrine, and from its believing reception, alone, that all good works and Christian virtues flow; and second, to the end that everything arising from the Christian liberty of the congregation, in this or that salutary arrangement and human ordinance, and serving the good peace and ecclesiastical well-being of the congregation, should proceed honorably and in good order, so that neither God's honor nor love of neighbor be violated. (To be continued.)

*) For of the so-called "Apostolic Church Order" of the papists and the Romanizing Lutherans of our time, the evangelically minded apostles knew nothing, thank God. For they had no other calling, and desired nothing else, than through their testimony of Christ, publicly and especially, to kindle true faith in Christ in their hearers, thereby to impart to them the forgiveness of sins, and so to make them blessed. They wished to be only "helpers of their joy, but not lords over the faith" and the conscience of Christians. And although, in accordance with the love of Christ and their own wisdom, they assisted the congregations among whom they happened to be, or to whom they wrote, with their fatherly counsel to make right use of their Christian liberty in the service of love, and, in keeping with that liberty, to establish various salutary arrangements and human ordinances for the common good, yet they themselves were far from making, contrary to the character and nature of the Gospel — which has to do only with faith and love — binding church laws out of these, obligating the consciences of Christians to obedience. This happened only later, contrary to the Gospel and the practice of the apostles, through the early-arising intermixture of Law into the Gospel, in both doctrine and practice, and through the pride and dominion of individual bishops and, finally, of the Pope — whom, here in this country, a motley mass of petty enthusiast-popes unconsciously apes, although they otherwise display a great abhorrence of him.