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LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1959, Page 25

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

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DOCTRINAL ESSAY 25

of Jesus Christ” (Gal.1:11,12). Repeatedly Paul, therefore, uses
the phrase “according to my Gospel” (Rom. 2:16; 16:25a; 2 Tim.
2:8; 1 Tim.1:11). But that Gospel he had received from the
Lord. Furthermore, in his epistles Paul tells us several times that
he is quoting a word, a saying, of the Lord Jesus. He tells the
elders of Ephesus: “One must remember the words of the Lord
Jesus, how He said: It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
(Acts 20:35; cf. also 1 Cor. 7:10)

Finally, though Paul became an. apostle as “one untimely
born,” since he was called into the apostleship by the risen Lord
after the other apostles had already begun their missionary activity,
Paul nevertheless shared in the authority and responsibility which
the Lord had given His Twelve during His life on earth and in the
interim between Christ’s resurrection and ascension. Writing,
therefore, from prison and daily awaiting his execution, Paul, as
a true apostle, warns Timothy in his Second Epistle to him: “Do not
be overcome by deceivers. Evil men and seducers shall wax worse
and worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Tim. 3:13). Then he
adds the authoritative directive: “Continue thou in the things
which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing
of whom thou hast learned them.” It was Eunice and Lois, Tim-
othy’s mother and grandmother, who had first introduced young
Timothy to the Old Testament. But it was Paul, the apostle of
Jesus Christ, who had brought Timothy to a knowledge of Jesus
when he met Timothy at Lystra on his second journey (Acts
16:1-3). And it was from the apostle Paul that Timothy had
learned how correctly to interpret the Old Testament, namely, that
the Old Testament with its promises and types of the Messiah is
to be understood Christologically. Therefore Paul continues: “And
that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures of the
Old Testament, which are able,” that is, which possess the dynamic
power to instruct you for salvation by creating in you faith in
Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 3:15). And Paul the apostle characterizes the
divine nature of these Holy Scriptures in the well-known verse:
“All Scripture, since it is given by inspiration of God, is profitable
also for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness” (2 Tim.3:16). Thus Paul saw in the Gospel com-
mitted to him not a new doctrine, but rather the fulfillment of
what God had long ago promised in the sacred Scriptures of the
Old Testament. The immediate source of his doctrine which he
taught Timothy was his Gospel, that Gospel which the ascended
Lord had revealed to this last of His chosen apostles, but that
Gospel had its deepest roots in the inspired writings of the Old
Testament. This Gospel Paul left as a heritage to the church in
his epistles.

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