# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 07 17_S179
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

179

blood purchased. Yours, finally, is every gift and comfort of the Holy Ghost; in short, "all things," says the Apostle himself, "whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come."

But Paul does not say only to all believing Christians: "All things are yours," but he adds also: "And ye are Christ's." Hereby Paul makes the glory of believing Christians greater still. Hereby he declares that Christians belong to no man, not even to any of the highest Apostles; that as Christians (for here, to be sure, the discourse is not of Christians as citizens of an earthly realm), that they, I say, as Christians have no one over them but Christ; that they are no one's property but Christ's; that no one can rule over them, no one give them laws, no one command them anything, no one demand obedience from them, but Christ; that no one is their Head, their Lord, their King, their Father, their Master, their Shepherd, their Leader, their Teacher, but Christ. When the Apostle says: "Ye are Christ's," it is therefore hereby decided: Christians are not there for the sake of the preachers, but the preachers for the sake of the Christians; the Christians are not the servants of the preachers, but the preachers the servants of the Christians; hereby the preachers are cast down from every throne which they presume to build for themselves among Christians, and it is irrevocably testified by the Holy Ghost Himself before heaven and earth, before angels and men, in short and plain words: The Church is above the preachers, not the preachers above the Church; not the Church has the office and all its glory through the preachers, but the preachers have the same through the Church.

With this the same holy Apostle's words in other places about Christians agree gloriously, that they are the congregation of the Lord, which is His body, namely the fulness of Him that filleth all in all, the Jerusalem which is above, the free, which is the mother of all believers, the city of the living God, the church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, the virgin bride of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. With this agrees further what St. Peter writes of Christians: "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." With this agrees finally what Christ Himself says of His believers: "One is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them, and they are called gracious lords. But it shall not be so among you; but he that is greatest among you shall be as the younger, and he that is chief as he that doth serve;" and what Christ further says in another place of His believers: "Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."

Say, therefore, what creature dares now venture to want to rule over a believing Christian? Whoever should presume to do so, let him know: every believing Christian is a member of the body of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; as little as any creature in heaven and on earth can rule over Christ, the Son of God, so little has any created being, even if it were an angel or archangel, power to lay a command upon a Christian, as a Christian, and to make him subject to himself. Whoever undertakes this is a church-robber, he thereby lays hands on Christ Himself, he thereby makes himself God, yea, exalts himself above God, becomes a tool and companion of the Antichrist, and commits the sin of Satan, who demanded of the Son of God Himself that He should fall down before him and worship him.

Blessed therefore are all who belong to the communion of believing Christians! They are citizens of a heavenly, free, imperial city. Those among them who by their choice administer the office of government do not form a privileged estate by virtue of which they would possess something which Christians would not possess and which could come to these only through them: but those public office-bearers are only the stewards of the goods which Christians possess; they are not their lords, but their fellow-citizens and servants; but the only Lord of Christians is Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords. They are members of a great family, in which they greet as their brethren not only all the prophets and apostles, but even all heavenly spirits. They are scions of a chosen race of priestly dignity and of royal, yea, divine nobility.

Here below, to be sure, these Christians are with Christ in the state of humiliation; here, therefore, they still bear, unknown to the world, the crown of thorns of disgrace, of contempt, of subjection and oppression; still invisible to human eye, they lie as God's wheat still hidden among the tares of the visible congregations; their life here is still hid with Christ in God: but when Christ, who is their life, shall appear, then shall they also appear with Him in glory; then shall they, as priests of God, the Most High, in holy attire stand forever at the altars of heaven and offer Him eternal sacrifices of praise, and, wearing royal crowns upon their heads, in the inherited kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world, as true kings triumph and reign forever with Christ.

2.

But, my dear ones, now that we have first beheld a little in the mirror of the Word the wonderful glory of believing Christians, let me now place before your soul, 2., how this same glory was by degrees ever more loudly denied them, and what a shameful and ruinous dominion the priests before the Reformation arrogated to themselves over Christians.

That it would come to this, St. Paul already foretold as a warning to Christians in the 2nd chapter of his 2nd Epistle to the Thess. When, namely, several Thessalonian Christians supposed that the Last Day was already at hand in their times, the holy Apostle answered them with the remarkable words: "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come," namely the Last Day, "except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God." Hereby the holy Apostle foretells that in the temple of God, that is, in the Christian Church, an Antichrist or Adversary of Christ would set up his throne and arrogate to himself divine power over Christians.

This apostolic prophecy was, to be sure, not at once fully fulfilled. As long as the faithful and humble Apostles still lived and still held the office of watchman in the Church, they took care that no priestly pride should arise and dare to assail the holy liberties and rights of the children of God. Under the apostolic government of the Church the common Christians therefore had and exercised the right of choosing their preachers, the right of judgment concerning doctrine, the right to speak, to vote, and to judge in church courts and synods, the right to make church ordinances and to impose them on themselves, etc. Satan, however, did not rest even then, so that the Apostle already had to complain: "The mystery of iniquity doth already work." Even at the time of the Apostles, namely, there were found here and there teachers greedy for honor and power, who sought to wield in the Church, instead of the shepherd's staff of the divine Word, the sceptre of their own will and conceit. Thus John mentions in his 3rd Epistle a certain Diotrephes, of whom he says that he wished to be first in his congregation, would not receive brethren, and forbade those who wished to do so, and arbitrarily put them under the ban and cast them out of the congregation.

Hardly, however, had the dear Apostles closed their eyes when the wickedness, formerly creeping in secret, stirred more openly. Hegesippus, the first Christian church historian, says: Until the death of John the Apostle the Church had been a virgin,