# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 10 31_S34
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

34

years' stay in that city he had not ceased to admonish every one with tears. This one testimony alone lets us take a deep look into the faithful pastoral care of the great Apostle, how he took upon himself the care not merely of the congregation as a whole, but also of every single member of it, and admonished each soul most earnestly and carefully. But the other parts of our text also point us to this very thing, and thus let us perceive what we have now to consider more closely in accordance with this text, namely:

Some Necessary Matters Which Come into Consideration in the Private Care of Souls;

and namely:

1., what is to be presupposed and laid as the foundation;

2., how necessary this private care of souls is;

3., some reminders how it is to be practiced, and

4., what comfort all upright pastors have therein.

1.

"Take heed unto yourselves," it says first in our text. Here we hear at once a chief point which is to be presupposed in right pastoral care, namely, that whoever wishes to care for the souls of others must above all things have learned to care for his own soul, and must take heed to himself that he himself know and walk the right way in which he would lead others.

This is already necessary in the preaching of the Gospel generally, if we would not preach to others and ourselves become castaways. But still more is it necessary when I am to rebuke an individual on account of this or that sin. If I myself were walking in this sin, he would surely have to call out to me: "Physician, heal thyself!" Now we are by nature, like all men, equal sinners before God, and can be saved only by grace, through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, as Paul had first converted himself to God before he could teach publicly and from house to house repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ, so we too must indeed take heed to ourselves, whether we also have recognized ourselves as poor sinners in repentance, and have found grace and forgiveness in faith in Christ. How else can we commend to others the way of true faith and say: "I believed, and therefore have I spoken"? But if we shall exercise this faith ever more, deal diligently with God's Word, and, as examples to our flocks, wish to prove our faith also in this, that we earnestly follow after sanctification in life, we shall not lack temptations of every kind, since the devil, the world, and our flesh will beset us and be against us on every side. Yet precisely therein the Lord God would make His servants into faithful pastors, who with the comfort wherewith He Himself comforts them in their distresses may afterward be able to comfort other mourners in Zion also. And in this we are again to take heed only to ourselves, that we also appropriate the consolations of the Gospel in right faith, and experience and taste their power in our own hearts, so that we also may call to others: "O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him." Therefore we should also watch over ourselves, that we quench not the Holy Ghost, and must diligently pray that He may lead and govern us; then we shall also, in the power of this Spirit, take heed to the whole flock, and, as God has patience with us, teach, rebuke, comfort, and admonish also each member of the flock with patience, as is needful.

Furthermore, according to our text it is to be presupposed here, though we cannot carry it out further now, that we have been set over the flock in right order, and so have not run into the office of ourselves, but have been lawfully called and moved by the Holy Ghost, for the love of Christ's sake, as our text says, to feed the church of God, which He, as true God and man, has purchased with His own blood. O, whence shall a preacher, who has forced himself upon a congregation, take the good conscience and the joyful opening of the mouth to rebuke or to comfort with power, by God and by virtue of office, even a single sinner, where he is not sent? Again, however, whence shall even a rightly called preacher take courage and perseverance to pursue unweariedly the hardest and mostly ill-rewarded work of the care of souls, if the love of Christ does not constrain him, wherewith He Himself, the all-holy Son of God and of man, as a good shepherd laid down His life for His sheep? —

True, to deliver a sermon which perhaps awakens notice and admiration, that can be done also by one who pursues his office only out of self-love and for the sake of his own honor; but to go after the individual lost sheep of Christ, and to tell high and low, docile and stubborn, that without this Jesus they are damned and lost; to commend to them His infinite love, wherewith He has purchased them by His holy divine blood, and again and again to entice and call them to Christ, that no other preacher will be able to do, than he who is himself moved by the Holy Ghost to believe in Christ, and can say to Him: Lord, thou knowest that I love thee; therefore I also feed thy sheep, and will bring my whole life to thee in service and sacrifice.

But when it says in our text that the Holy Ghost had made those elders "overseers," that is, watchmen and supervisors over the congregation, then it is finally presupposed also that a pastor has certain gifts and qualities of office which make him fit to be able to feed and lead the souls of others. Of these gifts and qualities also, so far as they are necessary to the preaching office generally, we must speak more fully in another place, as the holy Apostle gives the most excellent instruction thereon in his epistles to Timothy and Titus. But to the care of souls belongs especially this, that one be a wise and faithful steward, who with divine wisdom knows how to give to each one in the congregation his due, and rightly to divide the Word; that he rebuke the stiff-necked sinners with the Law, but comfort the afflicted with the Gospel; yet so that in doing so he first well try and search out the spirits, and with all caution, in the right place and at the right time, learn to wield the staff "Woe" and the staff "Gentle"; that he admonish the unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, and be patient in his heart toward all men. Besides, it is especially also a gift of God which we have to pray for, that we may be apt to teach, and not only in the public sermon know how to hold fast to the Word of pure doctrine and to set it forth clearly and plainly, but also be mighty to apply this wholesome doctrine to the manifold classes of the congregation and to the individual members of it, according to their particular condition, so that they bring the Word heard also into power and practice and faithfully comply with our admonition to the Lord; wherein it is a matter, now perhaps of rebuking opponents, at another time of answering sufficiently doubts and questions laid before us, again at another time of expounding still more diligently the counsel of God to souls desirous of salvation who gather about us. In one word: we should learn to be "all things to all men," that we may ever win at least some for our Lord Christ. Therefore, verily: if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good, a great, a heavy work, wherein not little is to be presupposed and laid as the foundation.

2.

Let us now, secondly, show from the two following verses of our text, by only a few examples, how exceedingly necessary that care of souls is. "For," it says further, "I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock." What Paul then feared has also afterward actually come to pass, as one sees from his epistles to Timothy, namely, that false doctrine "overthrew the faith of some, and did eat as doth a canker." (2 Tim. 2, 17 and 18.) And such false spirits and seducers have existed at all times, who dare to assail the foundation of pure doctrine and to lead upright Christians astray. Yes, where the Word of God comes freely into course in any land or congregation, and souls thereby attain to the knowledge of the truth, there one may rely with certainty that Satan is not far off, to sow his tares among the wheat. Therefore there is also among us probably no one who has not in his con-