# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1864_S246
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

246

(Submitted by Dr. Sihler.)

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

The First Epistle of St. Paul to Timothy.

Chapter 1.

In this chapter St. Paul, after a prefatory greeting, exhorts Timothy,
left behind at Ephesus as his still-young fellow worker in the Gospel, to
ward off as best he can the clouding and falsification of the wholesome
doctrine. For just as in other congregations founded by the Apostle, so
also at Ephesus the devil had seen to it that men arose who spoke
perverse doctrines, in order to draw the disciples after themselves. Here
too they zealously pressed the righteousness of works against the
righteousness of Christ, which alone is imputed to faith. Here too, out
of a lack of or a misunderstanding of the Gospel, they had no correct
understanding of the Law, neither as to its true nature nor as to its
power and effect in preparing the way for the Gospel. And because they
were able neither to recognize nor to distinguish Law and Gospel in their
own peculiar kind and nature (in which they would have had enough to
learn their whole life long), they fell, out of pride and presumptuous
itching curiosity, into all manner of idle and useless questions, into
various hows and whys, the solution of which God has not revealed in His
Word, because this would not have been necessary or of use for faith to
His people, who here below must hold to the What — to the saving deeds
revealed in the Word.

Now after St. Paul has rejected this folly, he next gives the correct
understanding of the Law and then treats of its right use. Thereupon he
shows, by his own example, the true kind and nature of the Gospel and the
overflowing abundance of divine grace and of the love of Christ, which
made of him — a formerly blind, ignorant, unbelieving blasphemer,
persecutor, and reviler of the Lord Christ and His Gospel — a pardoned,
blessed Christian, indeed a faithful witness of the glorious Gospel of
the blessed God. And this miracle of love, of converting grace, he at
the same time holds up to other great sinners as a comforting example, to
believe likewise on the Lord Christ unto eternal life. For just as in
other places in his epistles, as for instance 1 Cor. 4:16 and 11:1, he
presents himself to believers as a model and pattern of a holy life and
godly walk, so he does here as well — as also in Gal. 2 and Phil. 3 — with
respect to the justifying faith which God's grace kindled and preserved
in him, for which he then also, in verse 17, breaks out into a fervent
praise and thanksgiving toward God.

Finally he impresses upon his son Timothy, in holding fast the true
faith in Christ, to prove the knightly service befitting a faithful
shepherd and overseer, both in the safekeeping of the pure and wholesome,