Law & Gospel: Introduction

by Steven Newell

This post was originally posted on post-emergent.com on April  11, 2006.  I thought that it would be useful to bring this and other postings to ExtremeTheology since this is extreme theology.  This is the first of a four part series.

When you ask Christians to divide the Bible into its two great themes, they’ll post likely say “Old  Testament and New Testament”. This works until you ask if there is any gospel in the Old Testament or Law in the New Testament, they may say “NO!” Well, starting in Genesis, we see the two great themes of Law and Gospel introduced. Law and Gospel is the method that the great reformers of the Sixteenth Century came to understand the proper way to read and understand the Bible. This is also seen in St. Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome, as well as throughout the Old and New Testaments.

What is Law

Most Christians would say that the Law is the 10 Commandments or the Law of Moses. While that is correct, it is only part of the Law. The Law is want God has commanded us to do and not to do. While we benefit from a written Law, God’s Law existed prior to Moses. Just read Genesis and the story of Cain and Able. While Cain knew that murder was wrong, it was not written on a stone tablet for everyone to read (Genesis 4). Another example is Joseph. How did he know adultery with Potiphar’s wife was a sin when she tried to seduce him? (Genesis 39:9)

 Paul wrote that the Law of God has been revealed in His creation so that we are all without excuse. (Roman 1:20). Claiming to not know God’s law is like telling the policing officer that you never saw the posted speed limit sign, as he writes you a ticket of going 60 in a 40.

Jesus was also a law giver. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us that it is not just our actions, but our thoughts and intentions that break the Law. If I am angry with another, it is the same as murdering them in God’s judgment. Jesus did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17).

With God’s Law, God demand perfect obedience. Anything less is unacceptable to a holy and righteous God. (Galatians 3:10). God doesn’t grade on the curve or give partial credit for our attempt to following the Law.

What is Gospel

Most Christians would say that the Gospel is either the first four books on the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) or Jesus dieing for the sins of the world. Again, that is part of the answer. The Gospel is God doing for man what man cannot do to fulfill the Law. In Genesis 1, God gives His creation man as a gift. Adam did not earn this gift. After Adam and Eve broke God’s Law, God shows his love by providing for Adam and Eve. This love is shown by God’s promise of Christ and the punishment of Satin (Genesis 3:15) as well as providing clothing for them (Genesis 3:21). Even after their rebellion, Adam and Eve still received God’s blessing through children.

Through Genesis, God shows us the gospel with Noah, Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Joseph and the rest of Jacob’s family. The history of Israel shows us the gospel in God redeeming Israel despite their consist sin. The gospel, as shown in the Old Testament, points to Christ.

 The Gospel is God’s gift to us. Through the Old Testament, God’s grace was always free, just as it is in the New Testament and now. There is nothing we can do to merit what God gives us.  St. Paul stated this best in Romans 3:22-24:

 
“This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

Throughout the New Testament, the gospel does not come to those who obey the Law, but those who realize that they cannot and must rely on Christ.

What does this mean?

When we understand Law and Gospel, we then can truly comprehend how sinful we really are and how great the salvation that God gives us through Christ’s sacrifice. If we fail to understand the proper distinction between Law and Gospel, we can confuse how we are saved and how to live the Christian life.

Martin Luther coined the phrase “Theologian of Glory” and “Theologian of the Cross” to help explain this confusion. The Theologian of Glory, or those who believe and teach this belief, focus on what we do to please God through our actions while the Theologian of the Cross focus on what Christ did for us on the Cross since we cannot do anything to please God.

Jesus gave us the best example of the two theologians in his parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. While the Pharisee prayed on how righteous he was, the tax collector said “God, have mercy on me, a sinner”. Jesus stated the tax collector, not the Pharisee, was justified before God. (Luke 18:9-14).

Comments

[Larry - KY]

The whole Law/Gospel distinction was one of those tremendous Gospel “epiphanies” for me at a very very very long and increasingly dark doubting almost suicidal lack of assurance times in my life. I was battling between believer’s baptism and “am I elect” among other things. The only thing that kept me ‘holding’ on was my wife and the fear that if I’m ‘not elect’ then why usher in my death sentence. It was about a 5 to 6 year ordeal that literally, no joke, no exaggeration, a 7 day a week, all waking hours consuming of my mind and soul, “am I really saved”. I used to rake my inward self, past experiences, changes in my life, raw raw raw to the n-th detail. I’m not exaggerating at all. I tried every “evangelical” formula out there from promise keepers to witnessing to some mission work, rededicating, praying 2 to 3 hours early in the morning before work you name it. I tried the old Puritan inward raking books, which made things worse, try examining yourself say according to Edward’s “Religious Affections”, the only thing you will be SURE of is you are utterly hopelessly lost. It consumed my home life, church life and work life and more than a few times thoughts of ending it all, like Judas, arose – especially the most intense moments. Take a mix of “evangelicalism” + “post Calvin puritan Calvinism” + “Election” + “believers (fale idealology) baptism” + “memorial view of the Supper” and you have a SURE FIRE mix of NEVER having the faith.

Law/Gospel as a distinction was a, “I’ve never heard this before”, it was like hearing the Gospel, in a sense, for the first time again. Next was theology of Cross Vs. theology of Glory, which was a BIGGER epiphany for me, it made tremendous sense to me because I “lived” that Disputation. Luther’s HD was like a biography of myself to me.

I use to tell my wife constantly back then, desperate and dying inwardly, “how do you know?” I’d tell her, “How sweet it was for Mary to hear from the very lips of Jesus, His voice, His words…Mary your sins are forgiven you. How sweet it was to hear God say HER name and ‘YOUR sins are forgiven you’ from God’s own mouth and voice.” What I was showing there by how I was living it out, but unaware of in a formal sense, was the DIRE NEED to hear the “FOR YOU” that Luther so spoke of as crucial to the Gospel. I heard it in general and understood it ‘for others’ but didn’t hear “FOR YOU (Larry)” and the PRIME deceiver on this was “believer’s baptism”. The devil via that doctrine of his had kept Christ one inch yet infinitely from me.

The first time I heard a Lutheran show in baptism how the “FOR YOU” is there, it is God’s work and not mine or the pastors, God writing His name upon me, and particularly the name of Jesus meaning He will save His people from their sins, my whole life changed for me. Suddenly those verses I didn’t know whether were mine to have and rest in or not, like Romans 8, “If God is for us who can be against us…”, opened up to me and heaven poured out upon me as paradise came to me and was mine. Before hand those verses sounded good (for others) and terrifying (for me), because I could hear them for others but not for me. It only served to increase the forsakenness of myself, thinking, I don’t even have this grace (making Law out of Gospel is WORSE than just plain Law). But when the FOR ME came in, and especially in Holy Baptism, Jesus delivered me again from the enemy’s hands.

If people could just believe and “get” that, see the Gospel and Cross there and FOR THEM in baptism (and by extension the Lord’s Supper), believers baptism would fall to the Christ obscuring deception that it is (Luther SAW this in the Anabaptist, HE SAW IT CLEARLY). I’ve discussed this with dear Baptist friends of mine and all the usual arguments over that arise. But at last I tell them;

“You don’t understand how sure and why it is certain to me that ‘BB’ is complete error and devilish. It’s not because I’m trying to be mean or trying to ‘be right’ for the sake of winning the argument or even that some arguments are better than others. Arguments alone will NEVER get you there, you have to SEE the Cross for you there, faith alone sees it. Rather, ALL your arguments, the BEST of them, even if better than mine, are at the end of the day like so many dust balls tossed at a Abrams Tank…worthless. Why? Because they are “bad arguments”? No, not at all. Rather, because if you see Christ, the Cross, the blood in the water, the name of God written upon you FOR YOU, the Gospel in baptism no miserable argument no matter how well formulated and by the greatest of saintly men produced can pull Jesus out of your hands. God’s name in baptism FOR YOU is so powerful, THAT Gospel is life itself such that the Cross FOR YOU in baptism is worth being tortured to death for before EVER giving it up, even to the best of friends an brothers, because of what it is TO YOU and to others…In short it’s Christ crucified for me. So, much less are mere arguments of men than the sword on one’s throat to give it up.”

I FIRMLY believe that if a Baptist could just see that and trust it, they’d never turn back, I’m convinced of it. But the legalism strain blinds people from it, just as I was. Legalism darkens not enlightens scripture, I cannot plead that enough with people. E.g. In the account in the Acts of the Apostles where the Ethiopian Eunice is reading in Isaiah, that OT passage as Gospel is just like a blacked out page to “believers only”, the doctrine blacks it out. If you reference the passage he’s reading it ends in the preceding chapter where it says that I (God) will sprinkle the nations (of which the E. Eunice is, a Nations/Gentile person, i.e. not of the Jews). Believer’s only doctrine misses, due to the view, as I too did, the great Gospel there that the EE rejoiced over and how he understood to be baptized. Because in that OT passage it clearly states that it is God doing the sprinkling (baptizing) and that it will, in that day, go out to the nations (Gentiles). To this the EE says, “what prevents me”. Indeed! And then he went away rejoicing MOST assured of salvation because he KNEW God just baptized him, it was FOR HIM. WHO WOULDN”T go away REJOICING having known what God just did, there’s the ‘voice’ of Jesus, the FOR ME/YOU, saying, “Larry/whoever, your sins are forgiven YOU specifically”! But in ‘believers only’ thought, due to the legal strain in the doctrine this passage as the Gospel is as if it was never written, blackened out and useless, even though the physical words are still “visible” to the eye (seeing but never seeing, needing eyes to see and ears to hear with). Two reasons show this legal black paint over the text:

1. The legalism of “immersion” blackens it out because surely “sprinkling” has nothing to do with baptism since ‘surely’ real baptism is by immersion only (you must become a Jew first by circumcision) as the Scriptures are searched so that ‘by them we think we have life’ (they went down and came back up - legalism). See how clever the devil indirectly attacks the Gospel! Something as simple as a legalistic ‘mode of baptism’ inserted shuts out the Gospel there for the reader and ‘sprinkling’ becomes a much more Gnostic idea but ‘sprinkling’ certainly cannot be baptism. Yet, it is that very thing the gentile/nation EE saw and the reason he said what prevents me, a gentile heretofore not allowed in, from receiving the gift of God and God’s name in baptism, “Jesus” written upon him, that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ FOR HIM ON HIM.
2. The legalism of “believers only” itself kills the Gospel doubly. Since the OT Isaiah passage on God sprinkling the gentiles is not about baptism, it cannot be that God does the work in baptism which is contained in that very same verse on “sprinkling”. God surely doesn’t come in ordinary water not much more exciting than the ordinary birth of Jesus (The Divine packed in nothing more glorious than ordinary child birth), but by some ethereal conversion bolt out of the blue (more Gnostic and pagan than Christian). So, the believer only doctrine forces one to again take up and “search the scriptures and think that by them one has life”. And not surprisingly at all such a search leads back to the Acts passage in which the EE actively believing becomes a NEW work and the “great” thing to be shown the active moving of faith and upon that basis the EE is baptized. Jesus says, infants exemplify the Kingdom, but believers only says adults do. Who should one listen to? Again the cleverness of the devil is here as he shifts the object of faith - the Gospel and the Gospel in baptism as the work of God upon and FOR YOU as the life calling word “let there be light” calling into being faith itself - from the real thrust of both the OT and NT passages being shown here to “faith” itself and the EE’s confession itself, and we are to supposedly believe this is why the EE greatly rejoices. Thus, not reading the scriptures knowing, “…but these continually testify to Me (Jesus)” the OT passage is locked and blackened out for what it is and the Gospel obscured because the EE nor his profession of faith is NOT the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Thus, by this believers only understanding the EE does not rejoice because God worked ENTIRELY upon him FOR HIM, including baptism, but supposedly because he intellectually was made to understand it and affirmed his faith by confessing it.

Which is truly preaching Christ? God sprinkling/baptizing Gentiles as He prophesied He would for the surety of the truth of His Word/promise to do so. GOD not man doing the baptizing (sprinkling here) with very real otherwise ordinary water into His name by the hands of the pastor who is a mere instrument or ink pen for baptismal ink (water). God taking this “pen” and writing His name, Gospel and promise upon YOUR OWN BODY and primarily writing upon you the name of “Jesus” which means “He will save His people from their sins” and this water does and WILL bear open witness of God’s will toward and FOR you in Jesus and thus faith is created and sustained and strengthened. OR is this “really” preaching Christ: That what we are led to believe that is primary here is that they “went down and came up” proving immersion and that the profession of the EE’s faith is the Gospel. Is “going down and coming up” Gospel? Is any man’s own confession/profession of the faith Gospel? No! Thus, Jesus words are vicariously true, “you search the scriptures and think that by them you have life, BUT, BUT (emphasis added) it are these that continually bear witness/testimony to ME (Who IS life)”. Or as Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life”, NOT “I show you the way, the truth and the life”.

Larry

[Ross]

Would you agree that the emotion of anger isn't necessarily sinful, but that the key is how we express it? The classic example of this is when Jesus cleared the money changers from the temple.

[Steve]

While anger is not sinful, it can lead to sin. While Jesus provides us with an example of righteous anger, we must be very careful since we care not sinless.

It is best to follow what Paul wrote in Eph 4:26-27 where we are not to let the sun go down while we are still angery. Anger can create a situation where we could sin.

[J. K. Jones]

I like Michael Scott Horton’s discussion of “golawspel.”

Site: http://www.whitehorseinn.org

Or: http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/bio/michaelhorton.html