10. The Ministry is the highest office in the Church.
Luther often calls the public ministry the highest office in the church. In what sense, he takes it himself abundantly. In the church, everything should be done according to God's Word or, which is the same thing, everything should remain under the standard of the Word of God. Now if someone is transferred the office of the word in a Christian congregation, he has with it the office of teaching how all other offices in the congregation are to "go". Luther writes:1643)
1641) The Irvingians also teach a church office "in threefold gradation" according to divine right: bishops, priests and deacons. Quoted in Günther, op. cit. p. 370 [Popular Symbolics, pp. 324, 327, 351].
1642) Alford remarks on 1 Tim. 3:1: "The επίσκοποι of the New Testament have officially nothing in common with our bishops. The identity of the επίσκοπος and πρεσβυτερος in apostolic times is evident from Tit. 1:5-7." The same points to Acts 20:17, what manipulations became common early in the church and later in England to make the passages of Scripture say what they did in the interest of Episcopalianism. Alford says: "τούς πρεσβυτερονς, called v. 28 επισκόπους. This circumstance began very early to contradict the growing views of the apostolic institution and necessity of prelatical episcopacy. Thus Irenaeus, III. 14. 2, p. 201: Ίn Mileto convocatis episcopis et presbyteris, qui erant ab Epheso et a reliquis proximis civitatibus' [Google] Here we see, 1. the two, bishops and presbyters, distinguished as if both were sent forth that the titles might not seem to belong to the same persons, and 2. other neighboring churches also brought in, in order that there might not seem to be επίσκοποι in one church only. That neither of these was the case is clearly shown by the plain words of this verse: He sent to Ephesus, and summoned the elders of the church. So early did interested and disingenuous interpretations begin to cloud the light which Scripture might have thrown on ecclesiastical questions. The E.V. had hardly dealt fairly in this case with the sacred text in rendering επισκόπους, v. 28, ‘overseers,’ whereas it ought there, as in all other places, to have been bishops, that the fact of elders and bishops having been originally and apostolically synonymous might be apparent to the ordinary English reader, which now it is not."
1643) St. L. X, 1592.
527 > The Public Ministry. [English ed. ~ 462-463
"If the ministry of the word is given to one, all the ministries that are established in the church through the word are also given to him, that is, the power to baptize, to bless1644), to bind and loose, to pray, to judge or to pass judgment. For the office of preaching the gospel is the highest of all; for it is the right apostolic office, which takes the foundation of all other offices, to which all belong, to build upon the first, as there are the offices of teachers, of prophets, of governors, of those who have the gift of healing." Likewise X, 1806. Luther remarks (XII, 338) on the description of a bishop who, according to 1 Tim. 3:5, is to care for the congregation of God: "Now these are the ones who are to see over all offices that the teachers wait for their office, are not tardy, that the servants distribute the goods rightly and are not lax." Furthermore X, 1648: "To whom the Ministry is given, to him is given the highest office in Christendom: he may also baptize afterwards. If he does not wish to do so, he may remain in preaching alone and leave baptism and other sub-offices to others, as Christ did and Paul and all the apostles, Apostles 6." 1645)