What is the distinction between the Law and Gospel? Better yet, who cares? Let’s start where we start, in our normal experiences. Have you ever struggled to believe the Gospel? To believe the grace of God for you? Have you ever sensed He was angry with you? Have you ever worried about your salvation and acceptance with God?
Well, then you need to know deep in your bones the distinction between the Law and the Gospel. And to make that distinction, let’s look at a lot of what Martin Luther has to say about it.
Luther, in one of the greatest books ever written, would say we struggle to rest in the grace of God because we do not believe the Gospel perfectly. We are frail. Therefore, “The article of justification must be sounded in our ears incessantly because the frailty of our flesh will not permit us to take hold of it perfectly and to believe it with all our heart….In actual living, however, it is not so easy to persuade oneself that by grace alone, in opposition to every other means, we obtain the forgiveness of our sins and peace with God.” We must hear the Gospel incessantly because we are tempted to believe something other than the Gospel.
What are we tempted to believe if not the Gospel? What other message or word are we tempted to believe? The word of the Law. Meaning, we are ever tempted to believe that by our works of obedience to God’s Law we can save ourselves, at least in part.
This is the conflict we live with, the conflict between believing in grace alone and believing the Law. Luther continues the quote above: “In the midst of the conflict when we should be consoling ourselves with the Gospel, the Law rears up and begins to rage all over our conscience. I say the Gospel is frail because we are frail.” Like a lion the law rages, saying, “You have failed! You’re so sinful. You’re so immature. You’re condemned!” And we question, doubt, and wonder about God’s love for us. Yes, in our minds we know the Gospel well. But Luther says, “…in actual conflict with the devil, when he scares us with the Law…we so easily lose sight of our sweet High-Priest.”
And not only the devil but our very human wiring tempts us. “Human reason can think only in terms of the Law. It mumbles: ‘This I have done, this I have not done.’ But faith looks to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, given into death for the sins of the whole world.” In other words, it is totally natural to us, when wondering about God’s grace for us, to think about what we have “done” and “not done”, to balance the scales and see how we are doing, hoping we are doing good enough to experience God’s grace. Luther even says of himself, “I must confess that in times of temptation I do not always know how to [rightly divide Law and Gospel].”
The point here is that we know we have this conflict of doubts and fears of God’s anger and wrath and Martin Luther says it’s all about understanding the Law and the Gospel. Right here in this conflict we find our need for a right distinction between the Law and the Gospel. This is so important that Luther says, “The person who can rightly divide Law and Gospel has reason to thank God. He is a true theologian.”
What exactly is this distinction? It is so stark that Luther says there is as much difference between the Law and the Gospel as between “day and night”. Hear it first in summary and then let’s make it really clear: “The Law has the right to tell me that I should love God and my neighbor, that I should live in chastity, temperance, patience, etc. The Law has no right to tell me how I may be delivered from sin, death, and hell. It is the Gospel’s business to tell me that. I must listen to the Gospel. It tells me, not what I must do, but what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has done for me” (Luther). Do you hear a distinction? One thing seems to do one thing while the other thing does another thing.
Simply, God’s Law is about who you are and how you are to live. It commands and demands. It tells you what to do and what not to do. And the law offers no help, support, or mercy. It can’t deliver from sin, death and hell in the event of failure. As a sinner, the law will only ever command and pronounce you guilty. The Law will only ever convict, probe, prod, and prick, revealing your guilt. If you read the 10 Commandments, for instance, and think, “I’ve done that perfectly,” you just revealed the sin of pride. “The Law reveals guilt, fills the conscience with terror, and drives men to despair.” “The Law terrorizes the conscience. The Law reveals the wrath and judgement of God.”
But praise God, “This doctrine [of the Gospel] differs greatly from the Law.” Simply, the Gospel is not about who you should be and how you should live. It doesn’t command, demand, probe, and prick. The Gospel is news. In your sin, you need commands and advice as much as someone drowning needs swim lessons. In your sin, you need to be told that something has been done for you. You need good news. The Gospel is Good News for you: Jesus Christ saves sinners single-handedly. “The Gospel does not threaten. The Gospel announces that Christ is come to forgive the sins of the world. The Gospel conveys to us the inestimable treasures of God.”
And here is why this is so difficult to believe with all our hearts. We naturally want to justify ourselves by the Law. Luther says this is the sin of all sins: “The white devil of spiritual sin is far more dangerous than the black devil of carnal sin because the wiser, the better men are without Christ, the more they are likely to ignore and oppose the Gospel.” We naturally want to become so good that we don’t need Jesus; we don’t need God anymore. We want to be so righteousness that we can ignore the crucified Savior. This is our normal way of thinking.
What we should do is first listen to the Law in full force. Luther says the tricks of the devil and the message of the Law work to our advantage because they point us back to Jesus. That’s the point, actually. God gave the Law to convict us of sin and send us to the Savior. And once we listen to the Law as it convicts us of sin, we run to Jesus. “When the conscience is disturbed, do not seek advice from reason or from the Law, but rest your conscience in the grace of God and in His Word, and proceed as if you had never heard of the Law. The Law has its place and its own time.
This is massive, you can’t miss this: “If it is a question of faith or conscience, ignore the Law entirely. If it is a question of works, then lift high the lantern of works and the righteousness of the Law.” When the Law has convicted you of your guilt and you’re wondering whether God has any love and grace for you, it’s time to ignore the Law. Act like it doesn’t exist. Says things like, “Mr. Law, I am a sinner. What are you going to do about it?” Abandon the Law, Luther will say, and rest in the grace of God. Because the Law is purposed by God to send us to Christ for salvation, whenever Satan uses it to scare us he is really doing us a great service. Luther writes, “In accusing me of being a damnable sinner, you are cutting your own throat, Satan.”
First, listen to the Law and then run to Christ. The second thing to say here is that you must not mix the law and the gospel. And this is the real struggle. Let’s face it, Christians don’t think explicitly, “Jesus can’t save me, I’ll turn back to works!” The deception is much more subtle. The subtly is that we know we are sinners and we know we need Jesus but we think we can add a little something to Jesus’ work. We don’t want just the Law or just the Gospel. We want glawspel.
We mix the Law and the Gospel in two ways. First, we add the Law into the Gospel. The message of God’s wild, free grace for sinners seems to good to be true. Surely it can’t be this good and easy, to have eternal life for free all because of Jesus. In our addiction to the Law we try to improve the Gospel by adding some laws to it. We think, “Yes, we need to believe in Jesus but we also need to follow Him as our Lord, obey Him, and do what He does.” No longer do we have just the Gospel but rather a concoction of Law and Gospel. We’re promised forgiveness if we obey Jesus.
This is why Luther says the devil, “….frightens us with the very person of the Mediator…misquotes the words of Christ, and distorts for us our Savior”. Jesus gets turned into a law-giver, a guide to self-salvation. He becomes a mere model to follow who sprinkles a little grace on us to help us do this and do that to accomplish salvation. The Good News becomes, “Jesus is the divine sheriff but has relaxed a bit. Don’t do the major sins too many times, ask for some grace, follow His example, and you’ll get forgiveness.” With glawspel, we think, if I believe in Jesus, have consistent quiet times, faithfully attend church, volunteer in the kids ministry, go on at least one international mission trip, share the Gospel with an unbeliever, experience the Holy Spirit, and surrender all to God, then I can rest secure in the love of God. That’s mixing law and Gospel. Think for a moment though, do any of us obey Jesus as we ought to? No! The Law tells me that’s the whole problem in the first place. But Good News, “Christ is no sheriff. He is ‘the Lamb of God, which [takes] away the sin of the world’…”
We also mix the Gospel into the Law. In an effort to obey the Law we realize it is too demanding. We just can’t be personally and perpetually perfect. Maybe we haven’t killed anyone but we have murdered people in our hearts. Maybe we haven’t committed adultery but we have slept with a lot of people in our hearts. Rather than abandoning the way of the Law to run to Christ, we just bring Christ into the Law. We sprinkle grace and mercy on the Law. We think, “No one can be perfect. That’s unreasonable. God knows that and thus only demands we give it our best shot. He will give grace for the rest.” That’s mixing law and Gospel. Think for a moment though, does the Law at any point relax it’s standards of perfect? No! The Law tells me that’s the whole problem in the first place.
Luther says about this mixing, “It seems a small matter to mingle the Law and the Gospel, faith and works, but it creates more mischief than man’s brain can conceive. To mix law and Gospel not only clouds the knowledge of grace, it cuts out Christ altogether.” When we mix the Law into the Gospel, even subtly, we cut out Christ entirely.
There is only the Law and the Gospel. Whenever we add a little bit of the law we are left with only the Law. There are only two choices for salvation. You can either be saved according to the Law, which means being personally and perpetually perfect, or you can be saved by receiving Jesus’ personal perfection as your own. And you still have only two choices as a Christian. You can approach God today on the basis of Christ’s perfection with utmost confidence or you can approach God based on Christ plus your sanctification, maturity, growth, and performance. The former is the way of the Gospel and the latter is the way failing way of the Law.
In conclusion, if you want to know how to live, listen to the Law. “If it is a question of works, then lift high the lantern of works and the righteousness of the Law.” The Law is our divine, authoritative guide for how to love God and love others. We need it. And we need to remember it can’t save us. It will continually remind us of our sin. And what do we do then? Do we mix in a little Gospel to ease our worry and doubt? No. “When the conscience is disturbed, do not seek advice from reason or from the Law, but rest your conscience in the grace of God and in His Word, and proceed as if you had never heard of the Law.” “If it is a question of faith or conscience, ignore the Law entirely.”
Again and again, when the Law convicts us of our sin and guilt, we turn to the Gospel. “The article of justification be sounded in your ears incessantly”. If it’s a question of God’s grace and love for you and your standing before Him, listen only to the Gospel. “It is the Gospel’s business to tell me that. I must listen to the Gospel. It tells me, not what I must do, but what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has done for me.”
