This quick study on Law and Gospel was given at the end of service at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on May 6, 2018. The text of the study is included and you may play the audio of the study here.
Our fifth thesis is this: the most common way people mingle Law and Gospel–and one that is also the easiest to detect because it is the most crude–is… [turning] Christ into a kind of new Moses or Lawgiver. This transforms the Gospel into one of meritorious works. The flip side of this is people who fight against the idea that the Gospel is the message of the free grace of God in Christ.
Now, this is different than saying that the Christian needs to be spurred on to good works. Of course we need this. However, we draw the line at saying that these good works are meritorious, that is, that they earn our salvation or count towards it. It’s not as if Christ came to give us a higher Law or more difficult Law. It’s not as if He came to give us an easier Law. In fact, while Christ speaks Law all over the place, it’s the very same Law that Moses gave, for that even was given by Christ Himself. Christ is radically consistent.
However, when Christ gives the Law, He does so to show us how far we’ve fallen from the standard of perfection, to show how deep our sin goes, and to guide us then into good works, not for ourselves, but for our neighbors. Then, the Lord follows this up with the preaching of the Gospel. When the Son of Man is lifted up… three days and He shall rise again… whatever sins you forgive are forgiven… go and baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Christ, all over the place, gives Law and Gospel, but never that you would earn God’s favor, always showing that He has earned God’s favor for you, in your place.
This is why Lutherans and Roman Catholics have such a hard time at getting along. This is the very foundation of the rift in theology between us. Christ to the Romans is a lawgiver, who teaches how to achieve heaven with His help. Christ to Christians is the Son of God who completely wins heaven as a free gift for all mankind, no matter who they are, what they’ve done, what they’ve left undone. Christ did all of the Law for us, did it where we can’t, that we might live forever with Him.
And this is the reality, too: that these are the only two sides–either you will see the free gift of God’s grace for you, or you will do something to try to earn it. It’s only ever one or the other for all people, all humanity. It’s what everyone falls into. Either you depend fully on Christ, or you depend on yourself to varying degrees. You can’t escape it. And it’s so pernicious. If you get grace and faith wrong, you will get everything else about Christ wrong. It’s why Lutherans are famous for not preaching much about good works, but the reality is that we have the best and brightest understanding of good works. We should be good, we should be amazing at keeping the Lord’s commandments, but they don’t matter for us; they matter for our neighbor.
You will either be Christian in your speaking to others or you will fall into the errors of the world, the easiest thing to spot when your eyes are open to it. Will you keep Law and Gospel rightly divided? Or will you turn faith into a religion of works? We’ll continue with our sixth thesis next week.
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