Luther's teaching regarding the Church enables us, furthermore, to form a right estimate of the ministry in the Church. Christ wants all believers to be proclaimers of His truth and grace. The apostle whom Catholics regard as the first Pope says to all Christians: "Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light" (1 Pet. 2, 9). To the local congregation of believers, which is to deal with an offending brother, even to the extent of putting him out of the church, Christ says: "If he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. 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." There is nothing that God denies even to the smallest company of believers while they are engaged in the discharge of their rights and duties as members of the Church; for Christ adds: "Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18, 17-20). All rights and duties of the Church are common to all members. All have the right to preach, to administer the Sacraments, etc. Over and above this, however, Christ has instituted also a personal ministry, men who can be "sent" even as He was sent by the Father (John 20, 21; comp. Rom. 10, 15: "How shall they preach, except they be sent?"); men who are to devote themselves exclusively to the reading of the Word (1 Tim. 4, 13), to teaching and guiding their fellow-believers in the way of divine truth (see the Epistles to Timothy and Titus). But the ministry in the Church does not represent a higher grade of Christianity,--the laymen representing the lower,--but the ministry is a service ordained for the "perfecting of the saints and the edifying of the body of Christ," viz., His Church (Eph. 4, 11. 12; 1, 23). _Minister_ is derived from _minus,_ "less," not from _magis_--from which we have _Magister_--meaning "more." The ministry of the Church of the New Testament is not a hierarchy, endowed with special privileges and powers by the Lord, but a body of humble workmen who serve their fellow-men and fellow-Christians in the spirit of Christ, who said: "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many" (Matt. 20, 28). Ministers merely exercise in public the common rights of all believers and are the believers' representatives in all their official acts. So Paul viewed the absolution which he pronounced upon the penitent member of the Corinthian congregation (2 Cor. 2, 10). When the Corinthians had begun to exalt their preachers unduly, he told them that