# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 12 09_S59
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

59

afterwards — is put into effect, and also in the public administration of the holy Gospel and of the holy Sacraments exercises that priesthood.

And this connection is testified also in plain words by the Apology (Art. 12, p. 320), where it expressly reckons also "preaching," along with "the suffering and good works of the saints," among the spiritual sacrifices in the New Testament, and cites St. Peter: "Ye are an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices."

In sum, it is and remains, on the ground of the Gospel, firm and certain truth that the Church of Christ, the congregation of the living God, which is the pillar and ground of the truth and which consists "of some children of God here and there in all the world, from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same" — has the power of the keys and therein at the same time also the power, in obedience to the command of Christ, to appoint and ordain the public administration thereof.

And in this power imparted and committed by Christ the most enlightened, the richest in knowledge and experience, the most gifted and capable believers have essentially no more share than the weakest children in knowledge, yes, the infants in the cradle; for not through gifts, knowledge, divine wisdom and experience, but alone and exclusively through faith in Christ, by virtue of which He is in the midst of them, do these and those little flocks of true Christians or spiritual priests have this power.

But now arises the new question, to whom the public administration of this power of the keys, that is, the common preaching of the Gospel together with the dispensing of the holy Sacraments, is to be entrusted and committed by these little flocks of believers?

For every one of them confesses willingly and with joy that it is Christ's command and ordinance, thus a divine command and ordinance, that this power of the keys be publicly in use, for which He indeed, according to Eph. 4, 11, has also given gifts and has indicated the disposition and qualities of those (in 1 Tim. 3 and Tit. 1) to whom such service of the public administration of the keys is to be entrusted by Him through the Church; and neither the individual believer, of sound and sufficient knowledge, nor these or those larger or smaller assemblies of the same character think in any way to detract from the fifth Article of the Augsburg Confession, which testifies that God has instituted the office of preaching and that it is God's express will, the ordinance and institution of the LORD Christ.

Herr Informator now emphasizes this also very strongly, after he has, however, first been silent about this and cunningly skipped over it, or from want of a survey of the connection of the doctrine has not taken into view, that the LORD through His Church appoints pastors or ministers to the public administration of the keys, who are at the same time His and her servants; His, in that they, being called at His command and according to His ordinance, are also ambassadors in His stead, stewards over His mysteries; servants of the Church, in that the LORD has transferred and imparted to her, as to His household, the power to appoint the stewards, so that they, in her commission, baptize, preach and administer the holy Supper, or (which is the same thing) publicly administer the keys and exercise her (the believers') general spiritual priesthood also in this form. For surely Herr Informator will not want to maintain, in like manner against the Holy Scripture, the confession of the Church, experience and history, that the servants of the LORD and of His Church have received this power immediately from Him, down from heaven.

In order now to answer that question, to whom the Church, at the LORD's command, is to commit the power of the keys first transferred to her by Him for public administration, or in other words, whom she is to call to be pastors or ministers, the answer, according to 1 Tim. 3 and Tit. 1, is briefly this: orthodox persons from her midst, apt to teach and blameless in conduct, who must, to be sure, first be proved as such. And in such an examination, even of the aptness to teach, wherever such a call is to be carried out locally, all adult confessors of the church's faith in this or that local assembly have their good right; for "Try the spirits (namely, by God's Word) whether they are of God"; thus writes St. John, 1 John 4, 1, to all; "I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say," thus speaks St. Paul, 1 Cor. 10, 15, to all the Corinthians; "Beware of false prophets;" thus preached the LORD Christ to all who listened to Him.

But what happens when this or that local little flock of confessors of the church's faith, which is gathered in the name of Jesus, after thorough and conscientious examination of the person to be called, now delivers to him the public administration of the power of the keys, or the office of the Word and of the Sacraments? This, that it surrenders the power and authority essentially and originally transferred to it (the little flock) by the LORD Christ, to administer the keys also publicly, and delivers them to this spiritual fellow-priest, found to be orthodox, apt to teach and of blameless conduct, in order to exercise them in her stead as a service or office.

Hereby arise mutual rights and duties, grounded in God's Word, of teachers and hearers, of pastors and parishioners toward one another, so that what is the right of the pastor toward the congregation is the duty of the latter toward him, and vice versa. Concerning this, however, since it lies beyond the bounds of our proof announced in the heading, we do not intend to expand at this time. Only so much be cited by way of example, that it is a right of the pastor grounded in God's Word that his parishioners owe him unconditional obedience, as to God Himself, where he teaches God's Word publicly or privately pure and clear, on pain of God's wrath and displeasure and on pain of the loss of their salvation; for in the dispensing of the divine means of grace he is God's mouth and hand to the congregation, and hither belongs the word of Christ: "He that heareth you heareth me!" and all the passages of the Holy Scripture which testify to the glory of the New Testament office of preaching. And furthermore, by virtue of divine command, for the establishment of the holy office of preaching, he has also been entrusted by his congregation with this service at the divine Word and at the Sacraments which accompany and seal it, so that no member of his congregation has right and power to interfere with his office and, in improper appeal to his spiritual priesthood, to perform arbitrarily any function thereof. On the other hand, conversely, it is the right of the members of the congregation toward their pastor, and his duty toward them, that he not only in things indifferent, as for example in the introduction or alteration of church ceremonies which are not contrary to the confession, in the building of churches and the administration of church property and other matters which belong more to the external church order, respect the Christian liberty of the church members and not by arrogated, overreaching official authority trample upon their fair cooperation, but also in more important matters, as for example in the exercise of the ban, acknowledge their right of co-execution clearly grounded in Matth. 18, 18, and not deprive them of it. —

Thus we have furnished the proof, as well from the Holy Scripture as from the ecclesiastical Symbols, that the LORD Christ has essentially and properly delivered the keys of the kingdom of heaven to His Church, that is, to the assembly of the believers and saints, the royal priests, the children of God, and has also empowered her in the manner described above to the public administration, so that the office of preaching is a particular discharge of the spiritual priesthood.

But whoever teaches otherwise proves first that he has already lost the evangelically pure, sound knowledge of the proper nature of the Church, as the assembly of the saints, the congregation of the believers, and beholds her only in the derived, temporal and transitory form of the teaching office and the body of hearers; and then, that he is consistently on the way to the legalistic-Levitical-papistical delusion, as if there were, beside and above the common Christian estate, from the time of the apostles, a special priestly estate, which is spiritually propagated from generation to generation through ordination, and to which, essentially and properly, beside and above the congregation, the power of the keys and its public handling has been commanded and entrusted by the LORD, so that the congregation has this power only by means of the bishops