r Scriptural purity, that any
deviation from the clear teaching of the Bible be resisted, and
orthodoxy be maintained. Errors in doctrine are like tares in a
wheat-field: they are useless in themselves, and they hinder the growth
of good plants. Error saves no one, but some are still saved in spite of
error by clinging to the truth which is offered them along with the
error. Luther believed that this happened even in the error-ridden
Catholic Church.

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