Law and Gospel
Jan 28th, 2009 by Nathan White
Law and Gospel –Pretty simple, huh? Pretty basic doctrines of the Christian faith, right? One would think that the visible church is agreed on exactly what is Law, what is Gospel, and what is that perfect balance between the two, but it sure seems like nothing is more hotly debated amongst Christians in our day.
Law
Let’s get something straight: ‘Law’ is any command in scripture. Doesn’t matter if it comes in the Old Testament, New Testament, in red-lettering, or before sin entered the world.
Some people think there is something inherently different between Old Testament Law and New Testament Law. It is, as if, the New Testament commands are somehow more gracious or more possible for us to attain, while the Old Testament commands are just too difficult, too condemning, and unrelated to the Church (which is, ironically, the Israel of God). But the Bible simply does not support these conclusions. On the contrary, the specific commands in the New Testament are *more* demanding, *more* revealing, and certainly *less* attainable in our flesh.
Have you ever actually considered how impossible the Sermon on the Mount is to obey? Turn the other cheek, sell all you have and give to the poor, love your enemy, and deny yourself daily and take up your cross? Anyone who thinks that these are easier or more obtainable than Laws given in the OT has clearly not understood our Lord, His righteousness, and our utter depravity.
Let me be clear: the scriptures clearly teach that we are not under the Old Covenant; that is, we are not bound by the law as a Covenant. But it’s not just the OT law that we are ‘freed’ from, as a Covenant, in Christ. For we are essentially ‘freed’ from the NT law as well, in Christ. I’m not talking about obedience and ethics here; I’m talking the ‘binding’ nature of the law to bind us and damn us for our disobedience. It doesn’t matter if we break on OT command (thou shalt not…), or if we break a New Testament command given by Christ or the Apostles, we are still equally guilty before God, and are hopeless in escaping judgment unless forgiven and covered by Jesus Christ.
Gospel
Gospel, on the other hand, is simply an announcement, a proclamation; it is good news. The gospel is a declaration of what Jesus Christ has accomplished on behalf of sinners. It is a pointing to Christ as the promised One of old, proving from prophecy that He is the Christ, and that salvation is to be found in no other name. It is the offer of salvation through grace and faith alone. And this announcement, proclamation, declaration, pointing to, and offering of forgiveness, is found in *both* Old Testament and New Testament scriptures.
The gospel is not necessarily about something we *do*, such as repent and believe, even though it most certainly demands a response from us. And in fact, every single time the gospel is preached, all who hear *will* respond in some manner; some in belief, and some in unbelief, but all will do something. We are to call them, of course, to the obedience of the gospel, but the call to obedience is not to be confused with the message itself. For the sinner cannot obey apart from the work of the Spirit, and the Spirit works in the human heart through the declaring Word of what God has done through Christ.
But, despite the gospel being a declaration, some believe that the gospel is some sort of attainable law. Exhortations to ‘follow these steps’, ‘pray this prayer’, ‘make this decision’, ‘read this book’, etc. This gospel, being proclaimed with all the proper buzz words of ‘place faith in Christ’, and ‘it is not by our works that we are saved’, unwittingly makes human merit the centerpiece of the presentation. The gospel becomes a means to obtain what ever our heart desires, and it is easily attainable by jumping through the prescribed hoops.
Balance
We are sorely mistaken when we fail to see the binding and damning nature of the Law in the New Testament, as well as failing to see the free and gracious offer of the gospel in the Old Testament. Even worse, we are more mistaken when we make the gospel all about us and what we do, instead of about God and what He has done.
But the root of this tendency, apart from natural sinfulness, is, I believe, because we have weak and misinformed preaching of the Law in our day. This week view of the Law leads to a weak and misinformed view of the gospel. Men do not see the Law, all of it –OT and NT– as a threat to them. The OT doesn’t apply to us, most in this land believe, and the New Testament law is supposedly more about grace and leniency. There are just too many who misunderstand the very basics of law and gospel, and the result is often a maimed gospel and confusion about how we are to then live.
If men properly understood the Law, then they would properly understand that they have absolutely no hope in obeying it, and they will be crushed by its weight and will, by God’s grace, look to the only Refuge, the righteousness and forgiveness found in Christ. And, let me add here for clarity, there is absolutely no reason why this despair (at least in some form or another) should stop at salvation. For we ALL need to be driven to Christ; whether saved or lost, mature or immature; we all need to feel the weight of the Law so as to feel the overwhelming beauty and transforming power of the Gospel.
So without question, we must preach the Law, plain and simple. We must let it cut, and cut deep. We must make it abundantly clear that human beings have absolutely no possible hope of even remotely obeying what it demands. Then and only then will we lay the proper groundwork to preach the gospel with the full intended force.
The gospel is an absolutely amazing thing; too good to be true; almost unbelievable, and pure antinomian to the legalist. But this amazing gospel has no force if the Law isn’t properly understood first. And for the Law to be properly understood, all of scripture, and all of the Law, must be brought to bear on the conscience of the sinner. We must proclaim what men need to be saved from if we expect them to care about what they are to be saved to.
I believe Michael Horton is one of the best in our day at distinguishing Law vs. Gospel. It is a topic he never seems to get off of, praise God:
“Two things are required for reformation in our church and the transformation of our society. First, the gospel. This comes when people stop trusting in any and every form of law-keeping, discipleship, or whatever they want to call it, as a means of establishing peace or fellowship with God. As we have seen, God’s demands for salvation-by-discipleship are so high that only the most self-deluded soul would attempt it. But having been saved by Christ’s discipleship, death, and resurrection alone, we do enter the high calling of discipleship ourselves. So first we need the gospel, to truly bring us into a right relationship with God. Apart from the gospel, the law can only condemn, oppress, and threaten. But once we are justified by grace apart from obedience, that same grace gives us the power to live a new life –not a perfect life, but a new life. What we need, then, is a recovery of the greatness of God’s law, first to cut our foolish pride off at the pass and cause us to despair of our own efforts at pleasing God, and then, second, to remind us of what true discipleship really is once we become God’s children by His free adoption. For both our justification and our sanctification we desperately need to recover God’s ideas of holiness, His standard for right relationships, because, quite frankly, it seems to bear only a slight resemblance to the personal and social piety of evangelicals in America today. ”
(From P173 of The Law of Perfect Freedom. 1993)
“On the contrary, the specific commands in the New Testament are *more* demanding, *more* revealing, and certainly *less* attainable in our flesh.” Good point…very true.
Would you agree Nathan that “law”, whether OT or NT, always serves two purposes: to condemn unbelievers, and guide and lead believers. King David was very clear in the Psalms how the he was encouraged and guided by God’s law.
Davide-
I agree with the three-fold use of the Law as outlined by traditional Reformed theology.
But yes, the Law serves many purposes, and I do not believe its main purpose is just to give us rules to live by. There’s so much more to it, especially when we consider how impossible it is to perfectly obey.
Also, I of course recognize all Law as the same, whether OT or NT, and when Paul says things like ‘you are not under Law’ or ‘we are released from the Law’, that he means both OT and NT law. The key is determining exactly what he means by ‘released’, and also in seeing that OT law is largely application of the Ten Commandments to the specific culture of theocratic Israel. The principle of moral law, the Ten, stay the same, but apply to us differently at times. This along with the ceremonial aspects that are not bound up in the Ten, and no longer apply.
By the way, for clarity for all who read this, I see no difference between OT and NT law. I believe they are one in the same, all grounded in the Ten Commandments (which are grounded in love to God and neighbor), and that the difference between old and new is just application.
But I separate OT from NT law in this post simply so I am properly understood.
Sorry to see you following Horton into Lutheranism.
Sorry also for the long comment that follows, but I’ve been waiting impatiently to see what you would say about this facet of Christless Christianity.
This harping over and over on the traditional Lutheran Dichotomy was the weakest feature of “Christless Christianity,” IMO. (It’s also the weakest feature of Lutheranism.) This idea that anything that tells you that you have a responsibility or that you must do something is somehow antithetical to the gospel…is in fact antithetical to what the Scripture says about itself, specifically in places like Psalms 19, verse 7 and following, and the whole of Psalms 119. King David had a different view of the Law than Luther. Or Horton, I’m afraid, although I could be reading him wrongly.
I just read a testimony from a woman who had vaguely heard of Christ. She came to the point of desperation, and picked up a Bible. She had no idea where to begin reading, so she started at the beginning. Before she was finished with the second chapter of Genesis (a book of the Law, I note) she was a born again Christian, knowing that she had been saved by God’s grace in Christ.
Horton, I think, might join Luther in having difficulty with that story. They might not even accept its possibility.
I’d contend that the major thing that makes one passage “law” and another “gospel” is the particular work that the Spirit of God is doing in the one who reads it. The bare fact of imperitive language does not automatically denote “law.” Rather “law” is a particular genre within the Bible, as prophecy and wisdom are genres. All of it reveals Christ.
On the other hand, I’d agree with you that “gospel” is news, the information about what Christ has done for his people. But you can find this in the Law, properly speaking, as well as every other place in the Bible. Law is a particular type of Scripture: Gospel is the message of the whole Scripture.
Therefore, to picture them as two roughly equal horses yoked side-by-side is really not helpful (not that you or Horton do this, but I’ve seen it several times.) Even less helpful, to picture them somehow opposed, somehow existing in dichotomy. If we stick with horses, the whole Bible is a horse, carrying Christ to the world, let’s say; the Law is merely the back legs, if you will. Organically, it’s all one.
For a more classically Reformed (vice Lutheran) book that spoke to the same issues as Christless Christianity, I’d recommend Peter Leithart’s “Against Christianity.”
Gordan–
I think you and I are on the same page regarding Lutheranism and Horton’s adherence to it. I definitely see what you’re saying, and disagree with him in many of those areas.
However, I believe he is right most of the time when he talks about ‘getting the gospel right’. In our day, the Gospel has become just another Law, and it is preached as just another law, instead of the emphasis on what Christ has done, and that without Christ granting repentance through the Spirit, the gospel will stay outside of us.
In other words, whether you agree with Horton and/or Luther on every jot and tittle or not, you must admit that our culture has by and large gotten the issue of law – gospel way wrong, right?
By the way, I would also agree with your story. Genesis 3 has well enough gospel for anyone to get saved, without question.
Anyway, you should know me well enough to know that I do not hold to Luther’s view of the law
But is there anything specific you’d disagree with in this post? Maybe I can clarify for you.
Gordan said:
I agree with you on this. I don’t remember saying this, but maybe you took it this way because of how much I admire Horton’s work in this area.
I believe, ultimately, that the issue cannot be separated as finely as Lutheranism does. There is law and there is gospel in almost all of scripture, yes. But my concern is when we take straight law and make it into self-attained gospel, instead of letting it cut so deep, revealing our depravity, and turning us to our only hope, Christ.
No, you’re correct, I was reacting more to Horton’s book than to this particular post.
Horton’s chapter on Joel Osteen was terrific. There, he boiled down Osteen’s gospel to “Just try your hardest,” or something like that (not a quote but close.)
He enumerated all of Osteen’s principles for successful living, etc. and showed how they amount to a new plan of works-righteousness. Like I say, terrific.
But I don’t think he stopped there. I think he went on to basically assert that any preaching which emphasizes an imperitive, or tells us what we need to do, is not gospel preaching. Even if those imperitives are Scripture imperitives.
He seemed to put God’s imperitives on the same level as man’s legalistic imperitives, as if both were antithetical to the Gospel of Christ. But the difference is, you can get born again by embracing God’s imperitives in Spirit-given faith. (Thinking specifically of the greatest commandment of the Law, here.)
I appreciate your clarifications above of more of your thoughts on the relationship of law-to-gospel. We are on the same page. (Not that I seriously doubted that…:)
Gordan–
Whew! I’m glad we seem to be mostly in agreement on this. You were making me wonder about myself, if I’d really missed something there.
I heard Gene Cook on the Narrow Mind mention one time that after preaching on the Good Samaritan, he was chastised by one of Horton’s students for being too ‘law centered’ because he focused a lot on our duty to love our neighbors, rather than using the full force to preach Christ as our Good Samaritan. Gene said that he did emphasize Christ from the text, but apparently not enough. Thus I would agree with Gene, in that we have a real duty to preach law, but I would agree with Horton that any and all preaching on the law must be founded on the gospel. We preach the law, no doubt, but we preach it with the theological underpinnings of the gospel, or we’re preaching legalism.
BTW, I thought Horton’s best chapter was ‘good advice versus good news’, though, again, I wouldn’t agree with over-emphasis on Lutheranism. What did you think of this chapter?
Don’t get me wrong: I found the book extremely helpful. If that chapter is the one I’m thinking of, then I liked it a lot. I don’t have the book at my disposal right now. I think my oldest daughter may have absconded with it. But my favorite was the Osteen chapter. I was thinking that chapter title was for that chapter. I really need to locate the book again, I guess.
I did like Horton’s emphasis, which you have repeated in this last comment, that our preaching of imperitives must be done in the context of the “information” about Christ. That one thought, which has also received extensive airtime in the last year at the White Horse Inn, has really challenged my thinking when it comes to sermon preparation. And it hit me right as I was beginning through James, which was a wonderful time for it.
Very telling anecdote from pastor Cook, by the way. Kind of illustrates the sort of concern I’ve had.