Confessing Evangelical

14 Responses to “Have Lutherans got “law and gospel” wrong? Discuss.”

1. # The Boar’s Head Tavern »on 24 Jun 2007 at 6:50 pm

   [...] The theologian of the bar brought it up. John H responds: Are Lutherans wrong about this Law/Gospel distinction? Too much emphasis as compared to the New Testament? [...]

2. # Adam Mortonon 24 Jun 2007 at 8:10 pm

   Check out Formula of Concord, Epitome, article V, Concerning Law & Gospel (btw, I’ve got the Kolb/Wengert translation in hand):
   3. Therefore, everything thast condmens sin is and belongs to the proclamation of the law.
   4. However, the gospel is, strictly speaking, the kind of teaching that reveals what the human being, who has not kept the law and has been condemned by it, should believe: that Christ ahs atoned and paid for all sins and apart from any human merit has obtained and won for people the forgiveness of sins, “the righteousness which avails before God,” and eternal life.
   5. However, because the word “gospel” is not used in just one sense in the Holy Scripture–the reason this dispute arose in the first place– we believe, teach and confess that when the word “gospel” is used for the entire teaching of Christ, which he presented in his teaching ministry, as did his apostles in theirs…then it is correct to say or to write that the gospel is a proclamation of both repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

   So we note here that the Lutheran reformers weren’t entirely dense. The gist of it is that the concepts of law and gospel as held in contrast to one another are basically the concepts of command and promise. The law kills, the gospel makes alive; and so on. That doesn’t answer all the question, but it answers part of it. Alastair recognizes some of this when he says, “A simplistic distinction…” Then let’s not allow that distinction to be simplistic. The calls to “obey” the gospel need attention.

   1 Peter 4:17 refers to “those who do not obey the gospel of God” (NRSV)–the Greek here (apeithountwn, present active participle from apeithew) does mean not obeying, but the same root also at times has a sense much closer to believing or being persuaded. It’s all over the NT. Granting that “obey” is just fine here, the question is what is meant? The verse is, “For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; if it begins with us, what will be the end for those who do not obey the gospel of God?” It seems to me that nothing difficult for the Lutheran position is being said here–the next verse refers to “the ungodly and the sinners”. We’re seeing the word “gospel” used in its more expansive sense here to indicate the entire teaching of Christ–both law and gospel. Note how 1 Peter goes on into exhortations in chapter five, qualifying what he means by the exhortations to the elders precisely so they’re not taken as law: “not under compulsion but willingly, as God would have you do it–not for sordid gain but eagerly.” That is, there’s concern here that what is described proceeds out of faith. Compare this to FC epitome art. 6, “The fruits of the Spirit, however, are the words that he spirit of God, who dwells in believers, effects through the reborn; they are done by believers (insofar as they are reborn) as if they knew no command, threat or reward.”

   Luke 3:18 is a simple case. John is announcing the coming of the Messiah, that is, Christ. This is surely gospel as Lutherans mean it, though the word can also be law to unbelief (“but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire”). Even if the verse (“So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people”) is taken to probably include his calls to repentance and moral teachings, this would still fall into the expansive use of the term “gospel”, though I think it’s probable that what is meant is his proclamation regarding the Messiah, who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The point is that the moral teaching or the condemnation can be distinguished from the word of promise that raises up.

   Matthew 28:20 is another easy one. If Lutherans claimed that the law should not be preached to Christians (we don’t–FC 6 explicitly condmens this position) then we might contradict Jesus here.

   Where Alastair really goes wrong is in that last highlighted sentence. The message that “Christ is Lord and Judge of all” is in no way, in itself, gospel as Lutherans mean it. It certainly implies judgment. On its own, then, it is a word that kills, rather than makes alive–if the LORD is coming, who can claim to be righteous before him? Nobody, of course. That’s not “good news” at all–it’s condemnation. That Christ is Judge of all, but we are not to worry because we have been declared righteous by his blood, well, that’s good news. But to say that our justification “requires” obedience is a misunderstanding. Back to 1 Peter–”Not under compulsion but willingly”, that is, purely out of faith. Or take up Paul and note how a good tree bears good fruit, and we’ve been grafted into the true vine. Faith has no need of the law; it does willingly, without compulsion. Obedience follows naturally from it. If justification “required” obedience, then we would be justified by our obedience, and the promise would be completely nullified. The “gospel” would be just another set of requirements for us to meet, the promises of God just another set of threats, and our condemnation would be assured. So the real danger here is argument of the form (and this is overwhelmingly common): “Jesus died for you, so you should do X”, where X is “thing that a good person would do.” But then Jesus dying for me is just another kind of imputation of guilt, not of righteousness–I would act out of guilt or my own vanity that I’m a “good person”. Faith cannot work that way. What is called for is not vanity but repentance and faith.

3. # ubergooberon 24 Jun 2007 at 10:47 pm

   Doug Wilson said something interesting about the law/gospel distinction. He distinguishes between the law/gospel hermeneutic and the law/gospel application.

   Says Wilson, “I affirm the traditional three uses of the law. One of those uses, that of convicting sinners and making them aware of their need for a savior is the use of the word law in the law/gospel distinction. The only quirk I bring to this is that I believe that the law is not found in one part of the Bible and the gospel in another. The whole thing is law and the whole thing is gospel. So I reject a law/gospel hermeneutic, but I do not reject a law/gospel application in the lives of men by the Holy Spirit. For a man in rebellion, everything about the Bible convicts, including the gospel. The message of the cross is the stench of death to those who are perishing. For a man forgiven, the whole thing is good news — even the preamble of the Ten Commandments is a promise of gospel. God is the one who brought us up out of the land of bondage.”

   http://www.dougwils.com/index.asp?Action=Anchor&CategoryID=1&BlogID=3888

   I found this to be insightful and helpful…Federal Vision or not.

4. # John Hon 24 Jun 2007 at 11:09 pm

   Ubergoober: that’s not a million miles away from what I was saying on the BHT just now:

   The law/gospel distinction can be misunderstood in some key ways. One is to think that it is about parcelling out the words of Scripture and saying this paragraph/sentence/book/Testament is “law” and that one is gospel. Rather, I’d say these are two overall messages that are intertwined through the whole of Scripture and that are often difficult to disentangle in particular passages (e.g. many of the utterances of John the Baptist). But I believe it is still the case that, overall, Scripture has a twofold message of law and gospel.

   Adam: thank you for your post. I found what you said very helpful. I do think that “Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead” is gospel, but only because of what the apostles were then able to add: “And everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins in his name”. And I hope to have more to say on Luke 3:18 tomorrow.

5. # Alon 25 Jun 2007 at 12:33 am

   Adam,
   My problems with the Law/Gospel distinction are chiefly with the manner in which these stipulated definitions obscure the biblical meanings of those terms and the nature of the biblical distinction between them. I also have a problem with a Law/Gospel hermeneutic. When I read my Bible I want to be sensitive to the contrast between command and promise and the manner in which the word of God’s grace works. However, I believe that interpreting each passage in terms of ‘Law’ or ‘Gospel’ ends up forcing Scripture into an alien grid, when there are far more natural categories of thought that arise from the text itself.

   A command/promise contrast is present in Scripture on occasions. However, this contrast is quite different from the Law/Gospel distinction and is nowhere near as prominent in the text as Lutherans and some Reformed seem to think. The Law itself promises the renewal of the heart and the restoration of the people of God. The Law as given to the people of God is wrapped in many glorious promises — both explicit and implicit — speaking of the manner in which God will fulfil His covenant despite human impotence and failure to keep it. It is not surprising that the stipulated definitions result in a lot of confusion. Parts of the Law become identified as Gospel and parts of the Gospel as Law. I think that this is a good sign that the terms themselves are unhelpful.

   Furthermore, the Gospel sees the fulfilling of the Law in many respects as the ‘Law of the Spirit of life in Christ’. Biblically the Law/Gospel distinction is far more complex. It is a distinction between infancy and maturity. It is a distinction between two ages of redemptive history. It the distinction between promise and fulfilment. It is the distinction between something that is weak and death-dealing on account of the flesh and the age of life in the Spirit of Christ. It is the distinction between something that is exclusive to Jews and something that is open to Jews and Gentiles alike.

   The Law contains far more imperatives than the Gospel. Much of the reason for this is on account of the new maturity of the people of God. We are no longer spoken to as children, but as mature people in Christ we live the life that the Law itself couldn’t give by the Spirit. There is an accent on persuasion, rather than prescription. The Gospel does command on occasions, but the Gospel elicits a willing obedience, and does not operate by compulsion. On the other hand, we must be careful of thinking of the Law too much in terms of compulsion. The word ‘Law’ is misleading here; ‘teaching’ might be a better way of reading the term ‘Torah’.

   The Law is fulfilled in the faithful life of the NT people of God. Like good food given to someone who is severely ill, the Law brought death to the OT people of God, but it can give strength and energy to those who have the health of the Spirit, rather than the weakness of the flesh. We can now receive the teaching of God and grow by it. As we live as mature people in Christ we are exhorted and encouraged by the teaching of God as those who are mature, rather than commanded and threatened as those who immature and disobedient.

   My claim that the gospel is ‘Jesus is Lord’ is not so much a theological claim as an exegetical one. My problem with the Lutheran approach is that, for all of its truth and theological insight, it is not what the text is actually saying. The word ‘gospel’ in Scripture is the message of the coming of the kingdom of God, something that has taken place in Christ. ‘Jesus is Lord’ is the claim that sums this up. Forgiveness is certainly proclaimed as a key part of the message of the kingdom that has come, but it is not a claim that is used to sum up the entire gospel message in the same way as the claim ‘Jesus is Lord’ does.

   The gospel message certainly implies judgment and condemnation for those who do not believe it. The message of God’s coming kingdom is the ring of doom to those who persist in doing evil and persecute the people of God. This is part of the reason why the message of the Gospel is such good news to the rest of us. The root problem here is the imposition of artificial categories onto the text and the confusion that results. The Bible makes clear that the gospel is good news, precisely as a message that proclaims condemnation on the enemies of the people of God who will not bow the knee.

   You raise the issue of justification. The problem is that the gospel cannot be reduced to justification. The good news of the Gospel is more than the good news of justification. The meaning of the term ‘justification’ has itself become unhelpfully narrowed. The people of God are vindicated/justified as their enemies are condemned and overcome. The righteous are justified as the wicked and unbelieving are judged and their faithfulness is recognized and rewarded.

   A significant dimension of the new covenant is the coming of a new obedience and this obedience is not out of view in God’s proclamation of justification. Justification is, in part, founded upon God’s commitment to produce the life of obedience in us as His new creations. God declares those who believe to be justified, in part because faith is the beginning of the new obedience that fulfils the Law, a new obedience that He is committed to bringing to completion. To use an analogy from the early Luther, justification is like the doctor’s declaration that his patient is well, on account of his commitment to ensuring the certainty of the patient’s complete healing. The patient trusts the doctor’s declaration of his future complete deliverance from illness and perfection in health. This declaration is not based on the patient’s efforts to heal himself, but on the doctor’s determination and power to achieve this end.

   In addition, part of the glory of the new covenant is that God’s word of command is an empowering word. Commands are never left behind; they are just made efficacious. Those who obey in faith find that, despite their own powerlessness, God gives the strength in which they begin to fulfil the Law (although our obedience is always far from complete in this life). Faith is able to perform wonderful works, precisely because the strength that it draws upon far exceeds our own natural strength. It trusts that, when God commands, He will give the strength necessary to perform. The new covenant word of command is like the command given to the cripple to take up his bed and walk. Every command becomes a promise. To the believing one, the commands of God can thus become life-giving.

6. # Adam Mortonon 25 Jun 2007 at 12:47 am

   John–

   Good point on “Jesus is Lord….” But then, that’s always the kicker–by itself, even “Jesus, true God and true man, died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice” isn’t necessarily gospel, if we have no reason to think this atonement applies to us–it is gospel only because it is a word of life for the hearer. This is why you can’t just take a razor blade to the Bible and cut it into law parts and gospel parts. So good work by Doug Wilson on the notion of a law/gospel hermeneutic–personally, I also try to stay away from calling it a hermeneutic. We (Lutherans) don’t mean that law and gospel are the correct interpretive lens for scripture (what a Calvinist notion that is), but that the contents of scripture relate to us as one or the other. Application seems a fair word–it has to do with proclamation and hearing. Interested in what you’ve got on Luke 3:18.

7. # Adam Mortonon 25 Jun 2007 at 1:51 am

   Alastair–

   If you charge that Lutherans, and those Reformed and pretty much anyone else who tries to make this distinction often do a very sloppy job of it and teach it poorly, I’ll certainly grant you that. In fact, I’ll go further and say that it’s been taught so very poorly that much of what you’re identifying as the law/gospel distinction just isn’t it. Not your fault–people who get this wrong vastly outnumber those who get it right. If that’s a charge you want to make against it–that in practice it often gets mixed up and does damage–I’m certainly listening.

   Now, I do not think it correct to classify each book or passage as law or gospel. The whole Bible is filled with law, and the whole bible is filled with gospel. Same basically applies to each book. That is, what is claimed here is that the Word of God comes to us not as just one word, the law, but as two words, law and gospel. Has from the beginning. So I’m in total agreement that the Torah is full of gospel, and the Gospels and Epistles full of law. I do not argue that law and gospel can be separated, as into different books. I argue that they can be distinguished; that the relationship of the proclaimed Word to a person is in these forms, and the difference between their effects is the difference between death and life. One is not more or less the Word of God than the other, or less part of the work of God than the other, as we speak of the God who kills in order to make alive here. Likewise, one is not innately more specific to the Jews than the other (though a given command or promise might well be limited in this way–the promise to David to build him a house is not a promise to me, and the command to circumcise is not a command given to me).

   It doesn’t matter so much whether we translate ‘Torah’ as ‘teaching’ or ‘law’–its threat is the threat of death, no? Soft-pedaling the law doesn’t make it less righteous, less holy, or less deadly to us sinners. Mature? If we were really mature, we would have no need of any commandment. We aren’t, so we do.

   I’d hope you take me seriously enough that you won’t continue to try to pass off that “Jesus is Lord” as the summary of the gospel is pure exegesis and not theological interpretation. After all, it’s only good news if it really is good news for us. Consider this reply to Jesus as Lord: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” And consider that Paul refers in 1 Corinthians to the gospel as the “message about the cross.” Let’s say I find it very suspicious that you claim to summarize the gospel without reference to the cross. Sure, you can claim it’s implicit–but then, what you’ve said is hardly just a bare exegesis, empty of theological presupposition. This Lordship is the Lordship of the crucified– I know you won’t argue against this, but why would you obscure it with terms that make merely implicit what is the core of our proclamation? And if I then say that this proclamation, the cross, is both law and gospel, maybe that clarifies a bit how those terms are used and distinguished.

   I don’t think you can find any sense in which I’ve “unhelpfully narrowed” the sense of justification here. If I say it’s the whole ballgame, I doubt that’s a narrowing. I don’t think you should say that faith gives strength beyond our natural strength, or speak in terms of infancy and maturity, and mix these terms with terms like death and life. The death/life imagery has nothing to do with maturation–one does not mature from death to life, nor from condemned to righteous. Our natural strength is not amplified, because it avails us not at all–rather, the powerless, who stand condemned before God because they will not obey, are picked up and turned by God so that they believe and obey without hesitation. All opposition to God’s rule is overcome–most especially that of our own wills bound to sin. If faith begins a new obedience (it does) that fulfills the law (it doesn’t), then theforgiveness we receive in the cross is totally without function–the law is already fulfilled, on the cross, and so in Him there is no condemnation. You start to speak of our obedience fulfilling the law–then Christ died for nothing. Pardon me, but if that theological conclusion is the end state of failing to distinguish law and gospel, I’m very glad somebody does so.

8. # Lito Cruzon 25 Jun 2007 at 7:11 am

   First off in the original of 1 Peter 4:17, the Greek is ἀπειθούντων, ie this has to do with unbelief, this is to wilfully disbelieve the Gospel. Literally this means to disbelieve, the root is ἀπειθέω . The usual translation is “obey” but literally that is not what is in view in a naked way. There coloring of that word seems to have something to do with faith. Indeed it also means ” not to allow one’s self to be persuaded” in the NAS Lexicon.

   To disbelieve which is the center of that Greek verb is in a way to be disobedient, it is resisting the truth.

   So first off, by the 1 Peter 4:17 passage cited, I still see no reason why the Lutherans got it wrong here. Only if you give the that verb the color of obedience as in a command of set rules will you read it that way. So so far I am not convinced by that citation that the Lutherans got it wrong.

   Lito

9. # Lito Cruzon 25 Jun 2007 at 8:32 am

   OOps, I skipped Adam’s post and reacted to your post John (sorry) so I support Adam’s argument on 1 Peter 4:17 then. I also agree – even demons believe that “Jesus is Lord” and they are terrified so that assertion has to be understood in Jesus’s doing and dying for the enemies of God – we sinners, for us.

   It is a different mindset, when we see fellow sinners acting as sinful as they are, we are filled with sadness and even angry but at the same time we know that they are sinners that need repentance and faith borne from Law and Gospel.

   Often times though, our tendency is to follow the Revivalists, concentrate on regeneration, the proper acting and behaving and for this the dosage given is “Jesus is Lord” — meaning he will come and judge you for your evil you child of Satan. This can be preached in such a way as to depict Jesus as an enemy of sinners whom he came to purchase and give his life as ransom. I of course am digressing from the point but I am injecting here a pastoral view.

   Lito

10. # ubergooberon 25 Jun 2007 at 10:37 pm

    It is, I think, an excellent illustration of the point to say that “Jesus is Lord” has in it both law and gospel, the which having its foundation in the heart of the hearer. For the unbeliever, it is law, heavy with condemnation and which he will acknowledge only through clenched teeth. For the believer it is the glad song of freedom and hope. It is gospel.

11. # John Hon 26 Jun 2007 at 12:24 pm

    Ubergoober: that is an excellent point. “Jesus is Lord” is a perfect example of how law and gospel cannot simply be separated from one another, but can still be distinguished.

12. # Confessing Evangelical » Blog Archive » Law/gospel and objective justification: series indexon 28 Jun 2007 at 10:48 am

    [...] Have Lutherans got “law and gospel” wrong? Discuss. [...]

13. # William Scotton 28 Jun 2007 at 5:07 pm

    I would like to note some of the “Law”/”Gospel” distinctions of Christ’s words in the Lord’s Prayer and other places in the Gospels of “forgive and you will be forgiven.”

    The Apology of Augsburg (with the Anglican Homilies) notes that these words of Christ in the Gospels and Lord’s Prayer apply, literally, to all Christians (i.e. if you do not forgive you will not be forgiven).

    Apology of Augsburg:
    “Christ preaches repentance when He says: Forgive, and He adds the promise: And ye shall be forgiven, Luke 6, 37. Nor, indeed does He say this, namely, that, when we forgive, by this work of ours we merit the remission of sins ex opere operato, as they term it, but He requires a new life, which certainly is necessary. Yet, in the mean time, He means that remission of sins is received by faith.”
    http://www.bookofconcord.org/augsburgdefense/5_love.html

    Thus, it applies in the sense that a living faith which receives God’s forgiveness necessarily forgives–and thus that a faith which has ceased from forgiving is no longer a living faith which receives the forgiveness of God.

    The forgiveness of sins (and thus perfect righteousness apart from the merit of our works) in the Lord’s Prayer, etc is “Gospel” and the command that adheres to it essentially affirms (according to the “third use” of the Law) the necessary fruit of repentance/new life, etc (or the “inchoate fulfilling of the Law” as the Apology states elsewhere) which is produced by a true faith which receives this free gift of Salvation.

    Thus, although forgiving is a necessary fruit of a living faith which receives remission-it is not a means to earn our remission of sins (for all our good works/”inchoate fulfilling of the Law”, including our forgiving of one another, are imperfect and tainted and thus are not meritorious for our justification).

    Now this passage “forgive that you may be forgiven” certainly becomes “Law” (according to the normative “first use” of the Law–”he that doeth them shall live in them”) when it is applied as a perfect standard of obediance by which we earn or merit the forgiveness of our sins. And therefore we all stand condemned by this command of the Lord(according to this first use of the Law) for none of us have forgiven others perfectly as the Law demands.

    So, when coming to this passage, (as to all other commands of Scripture) we must cry out as the Publican before God having no true righteousness of our own to bring before the Lord but relying solely on the perfect alien righteousness of Christ for our justification–even while we affirm that there must be a living faith within us which produces the real, though imperfect/non-meritorious fruit of obediance to God’s commands as the Apology also affirms.

    God Bless,
    William Scott

    Gal 3:26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

14. # William Scotton 28 Jun 2007 at 5:17 pm

    I apologize–there was a lot of sloppy writing in my post.

    Slight modification of one of the sloppy statements (fifth psuedo-”paragraph”):
    The forgiveness of sins (and thus our perfect righteousness apart from the merit of works) in the Lord’s Prayer, etc is “Gospel”-and the command that adheres to it essentially affirms (according to the “third use” of the Law) the necessary fruit of repentance/new life (or the “inchoate fulfilling of the Law”–as the Apology states elsewhere) produced by a true faith-which receives the free gift of Salvation in the remission of sins.

    God Bless,
    William Scott

    Gal 3:26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

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