# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 04 05_S61
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

The Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall pass away nevermore."

[illegible — decorative device]

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Volume 1.

St. Louis, Mo., April 5, 1845.

No. 16.

Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the subscription price of one dollar twenty-five cents for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay half of this in advance and bear the postage themselves. — In St. Louis, each single number is sold for 6¼ cents.

(Submitted by Pastor Th. Brohm.)

On the Orderly Calling to the Preaching Office.

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It seems especially necessary in this country, among other things, to set the doctrine of the orderly calling to the preaching office in its proper light and to impress it upon Christians. Most Lutherans who come to this country — we speak of the better class among them — seldom know anything thorough about the call to the preaching office, since in Germany, under the tutelage of patrons and civil authorities, they had little or nothing to do with it; hence this part of the wholesome doctrine is a rather foreign field to them. It is no wonder that in congregations made up of such uninstructed and inexperienced people, many vexatious and harmful blunders occur when a preacher is called. Here in this land of ecclesiastical freedom, a Christian congregation indeed bears a far greater responsibility than in the old fatherland. Much is placed in its hands; it can bring a great blessing upon itself and its children if it uses its freedom rightly and in a godly manner, or else a grievous curse, if it proceeds frivolously, loading itself with teachers who tickle its ears, and no longer wishes to be subject to the divine ordinances. Well then, dear reader — since you too may sooner or later come to take an active part in the important, weighty, and responsible business of calling a preacher — let us learn from God's Word how we are to conduct ourselves in this matter in a manner pleasing to God.

Before all things we must know what the preaching office itself is. There are now many who regard the preaching office as nothing but a good, human arrangement and institution — just as a society elects its chairman, its speaker, its secretaries to look after its interests, so too does a religious society, and it appoints a preacher who preaches to it for as long as it pleases it. But no — we must not regard the preaching office in this way if we wish to be Lutheran Christians; the preaching office is a holy estate, ordained by the triune God Himself, into which He places certain persons from among mankind, so that in His stead and in His name they may preach His Word to the people and administer the holy Sacraments, and thereby edify them unto eternal life. To this office God has given great promises; through it He wills to give His Holy Spirit, who works faith in those who hear the Gospel; whoever despises this office has no promise that God will show him His grace in some extraordinary way. Just as far, then, as the Christian Church differs from worldly societies and associations, just so far must the preaching office be distinguished from the offices which such societies order among themselves. Holy Scripture calls the preachers of Christ servants and stewards of the mysteries of God (1 Cor. 4:1), ambassadors in Christ's stead (2 Cor. 5:20), God's fellow workers (1 Cor. 3:9), and calls the preaching office the ministry of the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:6). These and other glorious names God Himself gives His servants, so that we should hold their office in high esteem and honor it against all unbelievers and fanatics who despise it. It is the triune God, then, who has instituted the preaching office in His Church; it is He also who preserves and perpetuates it in the world; and He will permit no one else in His Church to exercise the public teaching office except the one to whom He Himself has entrusted it.

There have been people, in ancient times and in modern, who out of fanaticism and lack of understanding have confused the preaching office with the spiritual priesthood of all Christians, and have set up the perverse principle that every Christian may and should preach and teach, if only he understood it, or felt himself driven to it by the Spirit. It is therefore necessary to set the true relationship of the spiritual priesthood to the preaching office in its proper light. It is true, and is the highest comfort for all true, orthodox Christians, that through Christ they are spiritual priests before God, that in Holy Baptism they have received the glorious right of grace to appear before God through the one Mediator and High Priest, Christ (Rom. 5:2; Eph. 2:18, 3:12), and to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 2:5). In the Old Testament no one was permitted to touch the sacrifice except the sons of Aaron; but after the eternal Son of God had offered the sacrifice for the sin of the world, had become High Priest and sacrifice at once, and had thereby abolished the typical sacrifices of the Old Testament, He made those who truly believe in Him priests — all of them, without distinction of station, sex, or age, being permitted to approach the throne of grace with joy and to ask everything of God in the name of Jesus Christ (Heb. 4:16; John 16:23). This same spiritual priesthood, however, also lays upon every spiritual priest — that is, upon every true Christian — the duty of bringing spiritual sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving to God: namely, to present his body to God as a sacrifice (Rom. 12:1), to crucify his flesh together with its lusts and desires (Gal. 5:24), to do good to the poor and to share with them (Heb. 13:16), and especially also to confess God's Word and the faith that brings salvation, and to spread abroad God's honor (Matt. 10:32-33; Col. 3:16), and accordingly to admonish the unruly, comfort the fainthearted, bear with the weak, and turn the sinner from the error of his way (1 Thess. 5:14; James 5:19-20; Matt. 13:15); it lays upon the Christian father of the household, in particular, the duty to instruct — and to have instructed — his children and household in God's Word (Deut. 6:6-7). But although all true believers are spiritual priests, they are not therefore all teachers, but only those whom Christ has appointed to that office (Eph. 4:11; 1 Cor. 12:28-29). We are born spiritual priests in Holy Baptism; we are called to be preachers. Spiritual priests are all true believers, whether man or woman, young or old, bondservant or free; but preachers and teachers are only those among them who are called to it by God. A spiritual priest — that is, a true Christian — indeed possesses a general aptitude for the preaching office, and we wish to know nothing of the papist distinction between the so-called spiritual estate and the lay estate; according to God's will every preacher should at the same time be a spiritual priest, that is, a true Christian; but no spiritual priest — even were he so full of the Holy Spirit that streams of living water flowed from him — is to set himself up as a public teacher in the Church and meddle in an office not his own. Dr. Luther says: "There, let one watch closely"