It does not surprise us that modern theology would have no use for the distinction between Law and Gospel. That idea is the inevitable result of the denial of the satisfactio Christi vicaria [Penal Substition], which characterizes modern theology. Certainly, if God did not fully reconcile mankind unto Himself through Christ’s vicarious satisfaction, if Christ has not, in our stead, fulfilled the requirements of the Law which binds mankind, and suffered its punishment in our stead, it necessarily follows that man must somehow by his own work and his own virtues either effect his reconciliation with God or complete the reconciliation begun by Christ. That is just what modern theologians teach. The “conservatives” among them, too, hold that the Savior’s work of reconciliation must be supplemented by man’s holiness. One of them states it thus: “We are compelled to make the transformation of man a factor in the work of the atonement.”1 That does away with the difference between Law and Gospel. What we get, as Frank puts it, is “a veritable hodgepodge”.2
This “hodgepodge” is not a harmless matter. Scripture warns us that the commingling of Law and Gospel has fatal results. It definitely tells the sinner who is seeking remission of his sins and eternal salvation that he can obtain this in no other way than by completely eliminating the Law from his consideration and placing himself under the Gospel. This is God’s method of forgiving sins and bestowing salvation: “without the Law,” (Rom. 3:21); “by faith … without the deeds of the Law,” (Rom. 3:28); “by faith in Jesus Christ,” (Gal. 2:16; Rom. 3:22); “through faith,” (Eph. 2:8); “through the Gospel,” (1 Cor. 4:15). All who refuse to eliminate the Law in the matter of obtaining grace and salvation remain under the curse of the Law, since the Law pronounces the curse on everyone who has not continued in all things which are written in the book of the Law to do them (Gal. 3:10). Luther is therefore right in saying that every Christian must know the art of separating Law and Gospel. “If this is lacking, one cannot tell a Christian from a pagan or a Jew” (St. L. IX:798). There is only one way to be and remain a Christian: Man must silence his conscience against the accusations of the Law with the Gospel, which assures him of the forgiveness of sins “without the Law.” And only those men are able to lead a holy life according to the Law who “are not under the Law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14).
-- Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, Volume 1, Divisions of the Christian Doctrine: Law and Gospel
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1. Kirn, R. E., 3d ed., XX, 574; also in his Ev. Dogm., 3d ed., p. 118. Cp. the section “Some Modern Theories of the Atonement Examined” in Vol. II.
2. Glaubenslehre, 1921, p. 124)
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