# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 04 15_S131
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

131

For Jesus Christ is no other God, or Father, or Creator, than the Father and Holy Ghost is, though He be another Person. So also is the Father and the Holy Ghost.

Accordingly it is not only false, but also impossible and void, that you should wish to call the Person of the Father, as the distinct Person, Father, and not at the same time call the Son and the Holy Ghost Father; for that would be to say that the divine essence is divided, and the Son and the Holy Ghost shut out. That is nothing. For according to such manner of personal fatherhood the Father has no more than One Son, and the Son no more than One Father. Such a Father He is not to you, and you are not such a son to Him; but that is the only Son from the Father in eternity, as the 2nd Psalm, v. 7, says: "The Lord said unto me: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee;" but you, according to your age, thirty, forty, fifty years, as long as you have been created and baptized, are a temporal son of all three Persons, of One God. Quia opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa, sie cultus Trinitatis ad extra est indivisus: what God does toward the creature, that all three Persons do without distinction.

For there is one single divine essence of all three Persons, and what we or the creature do toward any one Person, that we do toward the one God, and toward all three Persons without distinction. For toward us He is one God, and in Himself three Persons distinctly; as the LORD Christ Himself says, John 14, v. 9, 10: "Philip, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" John 5, v. 23: "They shall honour the Son, even as they honour the Father." John 10, v. 30, 31: "I and the Father are one;" this we say, one thing, one essence, one God, one Lord. Here the Jews took up stones, and wanted to stone Him. John 5, 17: My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but said also that God was His Father, and made Himself equal with God, etc.: John 10, 33. Of this I will now leave off: for I had intended to write a book, and so I have fallen into preaching. Read the Gospel of John, it teaches us all this abundantly.

(Conclusion to follow.)

"Now I perceive with the truth that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him."
Acts 10, 34, 35.

(Conclusion.)

In the last number we saw, my dear readers, that the utterance of the holy Apostle Peter, which contains the heading, cannot possibly mean what, according to the assertion of the religious mixers and unbelievers, is supposed to lie in it; and we had at length arrived at the question, what then may be the real sense of these words, so often misinterpreted and misused.

As it is almost always of great importance for the right interpretation of Bible passages that one consider them in their connection with what precedes and follows and with regard to the historical circumstances concerned, so also here. But from what precedes we see that Peter had until then still been of the opinion that, if a Gentile would be saved, he must first be received into the people of God by circumcision, otherwise he was unclean according to the Law and the Gospel of Jesus could not be preached to him, nor could a believer in general have anything to do with him. For the LORD had said to the Apostles, still in the second year of His public ministry, at the first sending-out of them to the preaching of the Gospel (Matt. 10, 5, 6): "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel". True, this command was given only for a time and was revoked by Christ Himself after His resurrection; for Christ had expressly then given the Apostles the command to be His "witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1, 8), or as it is said elsewhere: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature" (Mark 16, 15); but the dear Apostles still waited for a nearer revelation, when, where, and how the former partition wall between Jews and Gentiles was to be broken through. But what happens? In the first part of the chapter from which that saying of Peter is taken, it is related that, when Peter at Joppa once, on the housetop, had poured out his heart in prayer before God and was just about to take his noonday meal, he is suddenly entranced; he sees heaven opened above him; a vessel, like a great linen sheet, is let down, wherein are beasts of every kind, the eating of which was forbidden in the Law of Moses, as unclean beasts; and in the same moment a voice sounds from heaven, which calls to him: "Rise, Peter; kill, and eat." Peter, taking this for a temptation, answers: Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean." But a second and a third time a voice sounds from heaven, which says: "What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common." Thereupon the vessel is taken up again into heaven. When now Peter is troubled over the meaning of this heavenly vision granted him, behold! two men in company of a soldier ask at the door below whether a Simon, surnamed Peter, lodges there; and at the same time the Spirit says to Peter: "Behold, three men seek thee; arise therefore, get thee down, and go with them, doubting nothing: for I have sent them." So Peter goes down at once, greets the guests, and learns from them that to a devout and God-fearing heathen centurion at Caesarea, by name Cornelius, the angel of the LORD had appeared and had given him command to send to him, Peter, that he might speak to him "words, whereby he and all his house shall be saved." (Acts 11, 14.) Obedient to the LORD, Peter therefore goes on the next day with the messengers to Caesarea, and when he enters into the house of the centurion, he finds a great company assembled, awaiting him, whom he addresses with the words: "Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean. Therefore came I unto you without gainsaying, as soon as I was sent for." When now Cornelius thereupon reports the heavenly appearance also vouchsafed to him, and finally says: "And thou hast well done that thou art come. Now therefore are we all here present before God, to hear all things that are commanded thee of God," then it says, "Peter opened his mouth," and speaks namely with great joyfulness: "Now I perceive with the truth that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him."

Can it now, these words being considered in the connection stated, be doubtful what the holy Apostle wished to say with them? — Certainly not. He means thereby, indisputably, nothing else than this: Until now I thought I might not turn to any Gentile to proclaim the Gospel of Christ to him; I thought that the people of the Jews was the only people sanctified and chosen by God, to whom this grace should be given; that the Gentile was before God unclean and common and therefore to be shunned by a servant and messenger of God; but now I perceive with the truth that God is no respecter of persons; now I see that God has just as little excluded a Gentile, as a Jew, from His kingdom of grace by an unconditional decree; that God just as little accounts a Gentile, as a Jew, common and unclean, that is, an abomination, with whom He would have and hold no fellowship; but that rather precisely through the reconciliation established by the Son of God on the cross the wall of partition which until then was between Jews and Gentiles has been broken down, and the enmity taken away, so that now in the Gospel peace might be preached to them that were afar off, as to them that were nigh, and through Christ they both might have access in One Spirit unto the Father. (Ephes.