# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1864_S360
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

360 Proposal and Specimen for the Preparation of a Bible Commentary, etc.

should keep back from all thoughts and speculation about the divine Majesty, since no one knows God, but that we should hear Christ, who is in the Father's bosom, and reveals to us his will, appointed and ordained by the Father himself to be our Doctor and Teacher, so that we should hear him, John 1:18, Matthew 17:5. (8, 1603.)

Verse 3.

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings ªin heavenly things through Christ.

a) This is the spiritual blessing of the Church. It is prepared and dispensed to us by the blessed God through the blessed Seed, and revealed to us in the blessing and in the sweet voice of the Gospel, so that we too, being justified, receive the blessing and become God's redeemed and his children. (14, 1332*.)

Verse 4.

According as he has ªchosen us through the same, before the foundation of the world was laid, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.

a) The eternal election of God, vel praedestinatio, that is, God's ordination to salvation, does not extend at all to the godly and the wicked alike, but only to the children of God, who are chosen and ordained to eternal life before the foundation of the world was laid. (Concordienbuch, ed. Baumgarten, p. 218.*)

This eternal election of God is to be considered in Christ, and not outside of or without Christ; for it is in Christ, the holy apostle Paul testifies, that we are chosen, before the foundation of the world was laid. (Ibid., p. 232.*)

Christ is the Book of Life, in which all are written and chosen who shall become eternally blessed. (Ibid., p. 43.*)

Verse 5.

And has predestined us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself (without Christ we are enemies of God) (11, 2856) according to the good pleasure of his will.

Verse 6.

To the praise of the glory of his grace (not out of works) (9, 2802), wherein he has made us accepted in the Beloved.ª

a) Why does he not say, in the beloved Son? He means to say that there is otherwise no love or friendship except in the beloved Son, for everything else is under wrath. So when I now say, he has loved us in the Beloved, I understand thereby his Son, since apart from him there is otherwise nothing but pure disfavor, and it does not help that one pretends, I mean well, I serve God, I call upon the Creator of heaven and earth. Hear this: it is pure disfavor and wrath until you lay hold of Christ, for God wills to gather the Christian Church under one Head, who is Christ, for only so is it also loved. (Hoeck, unpublished sermon on John 3:35.)

This ought to be for us a truly excellent and great comfort in fear and adversity,

*) I hold this to be saying one and the same thing, that we are blessed in Christ with the spiritual blessing of the heavenly goods, and that Christ has been given to us for a blessing in eternity (Psalm 21:7). A priest's office, however, is to bless with such a kind of blessing as bestows gifts upon us. Otherwise there is the common sort of blessing, in which one praises those who possess goods and wishes them good fortune, before everyone, even the lowliest; and indeed the former is found throughout only among the high, the latter only among the lowly. (4, 1598.)