Law and Gospel, Simply Explained

God's law is gracious and his gospel is obligatory. The Law-Gospel Distinction often advocates a graceless law and a lawless gospel.

May 28, 2021

Dear friends and supporters,

If you believe in salvation by grace alone though faith alone by Christ alone (as you should), you might also have heard of the Law-Gospel Distinction (LGD) popularized by Martin Luther and Lutherans, but also by many Calvinists, including Calvin himself. But then again you might not have heard of it, and if so, this is a good thing, because there is no necessary relation between the two. You can hold to a fully gracious soteriology (salvation doctrine) without embracing the LGD. In fact, I suggest you should abandon that paradigm, which, if left unchecked, severs the Old from the New Testament, imposes alien theological categories on God’s word, and leads to an antinomian gospel and a graceless law.

One should embrace an entirely gracious soteriology, including justification by faith alone in which’s Christ’s righteousness is imputed to our account, while equally repudiating the LGD, at least as it has been prominently understood.

The LGD Defined

What is the LGD? Let Luther himself tell us in his Galatians commentary at 3:2 —

The Law and the Gospel are contrary ideas. They have contrary functions and purposes. To endow the Law with any capacity to produce righteousness is to plagiarize the Gospel. The Gospel brings donations. It pleads for open hands to take what is being offered. The Law has nothing to give. It demands, and its demands are impossible.

Luther divides the entire Bible into Gospel and Law. Whatever God gives freely without demand is Gospel. Whatever God demands without grace is Law.

The first thesis of the Lutheran C. F. Walther’s definitive work The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel is this:

The doctrinal contents of the entire Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testament, are made up of two doctrines differing fundamentally from each other, viz., the Law and the Gospel.

In the same vein, in his sermon “How Christians Should Regard Moses,” Luther had preached:

Now the first sermon, and doctrine, is the law of God. The second is the gospel. These two sermons are not the same. Therefore we must have a good grasp of the matter in order to know how to differentiate between them. We must know what the law is, and what the gospel is. The law commands and requires us to do certain things. The law is thus directed solely to our behavior and consists in making requirements. For God speaks through the law, saying, “Do this, avoid that, this is what I expect of you.” The gospel, however, does not preach what we are to do or to avoid. It sets up no requirements but reverses the approach of the law, does the very opposite, and says, “This is what God has done for you; he has let his Son be made flesh for you, has let him be put to death for your sake.” So, then, there are two kinds of doctrine and two kinds of works, those of God and those of men. Just as we and God are separated from one another, so also these two doctrines are widely separated from one another. For the gospel teaches exclusively what has been given us by God, and not – as in the case of the law – what we are to do and give to God.

Luther’s radical theological dualism is seen in his comments at 2:13 —

To divide Law and Gospel means to place the Gospel in heaven, and to keep the Law on earth; to call the righteousness of the Gospel heavenly, and the righteousness of the Law earthly; to put as much difference between the righteousness of the Gospel and that of the Law, as there is difference between day and night. 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.

A vital characteristic of the LGD is its assessment of law as accusatory, burdensome, threatening, and spiritually lethal. This is why the gospel, in fact, is necessary: the gospel lifts the burden that the law (righteously) imposes. The law and the gospel are messages that must be preached in precise sequence. According to Luther (at 3:11 and 3:23)

The Law enforces good behavior, at least outwardly. We obey the Law because if we don't we will be punished. Our obedience is inspired by fear. We obey under duress and we do it resentfully. Now what kind of righteousness is this when we refrain from evil out of fear of punishment? Hence, the righteousness of the Law is at bottom nothing but love of sin and hatred of righteousness.
But the Law is also a spiritual prison, a veritable hell.

Terminological Confusion

Unfortunately, Luther’s theological terminology isn’t biblical terminology. In his book Symphonic Theology, Vern Poythress writes: “No term in the Bible is equal to a technical term of systematic theology.” This isn’t necessarily a problem, as long as everybody knows how the words are being used.

Unfortunately, the LGD equivocates on its terminology. The word “law” in the OT is tôrâ (Torah). It means direction or instruction. It certainly does not mean God’s requirements in distinction from God’s gifts. So what God calls instruction or direction many people under the influence of the LGD have come to believe refers to “demands . . . demands [that] are impossible. . . a veritable hell.”

Nor does gospel denote any teaching of the Bible that reveals God’s gifts without requirement (see “Gospel or Salvation?”). The gospel presupposes and imposes obligations, and these obligations in no way threaten grace.

These points require unpacking.

A Gracious Law

For one thing, Luther and other LGD supporters equate law partly with the Mosaic law, since that segment of God’s revelation allegedly imposes demands but does not offer gifts. I wonder what the Psalmist (likely David) would have thought had he read Luther’s statement that the law is a “veritable hell.” This is the same David who rejoiced, “O how love I thy law! [I]t [is] my meditation all the day” (Ps. 119:97). Read Psalm 119 and ask yourself whether David would have endorsed the LGD when it teaches that God’s requirements are burdensome, torturous, and impossible to keep.

But not just David. The apostle Paul, while ferociously denying that justification is by law-keeping, states that “the Law is holy, and the [law’s] commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Rom. 7:12). He even calls the law “spiritual” (Rom. 7:14).

OT sacrificial system

For another thing, the revelatory (biblical) law offered grace and pardon for sin when the Jews failed to live up to God’s demands. This grace was exhibited in the old covenant sacrificial system, which provided temporary atonement until Christ came to provide permanent atonement (Heb. 10:1–9). Nobody denies that these sacrifices were God’s requirement of the Jews, an integral component of law.

Moreover, the OT did not teach salvation by law-keeping, but by Messiah-trusting. Paul writes:

What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith; but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone. (Rom. 9:30–32)

The Jews tried to gain favor with God by what Paul calls “the works of the law.” That is, by keeping the law’s external demands but not the demand that they cast themselves by faith alone on the coming Messiah. That is, the OT Jews did not follow the OT law’s teaching that salvation is by faith alone, not by law-keeping.

The OT did teach justification by faith alone:

For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.
But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works:
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
And whose sins are covered;
Blessed is the man to whom the LORD shall not impute sin.” (Rom. 4:2–8)

Abraham was justified by faith before the law, and David was justified by faith under the law. In short, the law did not teach justification by law-keeping, but it did teach justification by the Messiah-centered way that wasn’t substantively different from the NT.

A gracious law covenant

What is true of the sacrificial system is true of the entire Mosaic covenant. It is not a category of stipulations, demands, and threatenings lacking God’s grace, forgiveness and the message of eternal life. The revelatory law as the stipulation of God’s covenant with Israel is introduced in Exodus 19. Jehovah lays out the covenant “preamble” as follows (vv. 4–6):

“‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words which you [Moses] shall speak to the children of Israel.”

Does this introduction impose requirements and demands lacking God’s gracious, loving provision of salvation, “a veritable hell”? Hardly. In fact, it is hard to imagine a more grace-enriched message. And if this covenant preamble to the revelatory law is a grace-enriched message, it’s hard to believe that the requirements of law itself are burdensome demands that do not reflect God’s grace and are the polar opposite of God’s message of eternal life and salvation (“gospel”).

Luther and the LGD recognize that the law testifies to Jesus Christ; but by inconsistently identifying the Mosaic law with “law,” defined as what God gracelessly demands and not what he freely gives, they turn the revelatory law into a message antithetical to the gospel.

It’s true that the law was never designed as a code by which man can achieve salvation. Salvation is received, not achieved.

But this doesn’t mean the law isn’t gracious.

(continued below)

Luther and many teachers today have been wrong to pit Law against Gospel. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone through Christ alone, but God's law is gracious and his Gospel is obligatory.

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An Obligatory Gospel

Just as law is gracious, gospel is obligatory. The gospel is the good news of salvation. But the good news is not good news to sinners who spurn God’s gift of Jesus Christ, refusing to submit to God’s grace. It is not good news to sinners who refuse to turn their lives over to the world’s only true Lord.

Salvation by grace through faith alone doesn’t exclude demands. In fact, it demands [!] them. It’s true that the gospel is about believing and receiving and not meriting and achieving. But the gospel demands faith, repentance, and submission. In Romans 10:3 Paul argues:

For they [the Jews] being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.

In other words, they wanted to get righteous in their own way rather than God’s. God obligates sinners to submit to his way to be saved. This is why Jesus declared “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mt. 6:24). The gospel is not just a gift to be received; it is also a (gracious) command to be obeyed.

It is not often considered that rebellion is man’s chief dilemma that the gospel is calculated to begin eliminating from its very first gospel communication. Part of the problem in Lutheran theology, for example, is that its soteriology is shaped by Luther’s own agonizing experience wrestling with a troubled conscience before a holy God, and less by the picture of man’s rebellion against God. The gospel is then depicted in an imbalanced fashion — as a cure to man’s psychological plight.

But man’s great problem to which the Gospel is the solution is his sin — in essence, his rebellion against God. The gospel obligates the sinner to submit to God’s way for salvation, God’s way for believing, God’s way for living.

The Unity of the Bible

Law in Scripture includes grace and gospel includes obligation. The chief question is whether there really are two different messages in the Bible, one that says, “You must obey in your own power, and God accepts nothing but flawless obedience,” and another message that says, “Simply accept what Jesus has done for you and you will be saved, apart from any ongoing commitment on your part,” the first, austere message driving man to accept the second, calming one.

There are not two such messages, but one message, very different from the LGD.

That single salvation message of the Bible is: “Trust in Christ alone for salvation; and in trusting in him, you are submitting to his authority as the Savior-King.” In this understanding, man is saved solely by the grace of God appropriated by faith alone in Jesus Christ that carries with it a submissive and obedient heart, a faith that works by love (Gal. 5:6).

This message preserves grace without sacrificing obedience, and it retains submission without compromising salvation by faith in Christ alone.

We then can understand why C. van der Waal can write: “The law was not outside of Christ, for the law and the gospel are not contradictory concepts, but, rather, interchangeable.”

Not two laws, not two ways, not two means of justification — one holy gospel and law that tell man in whom he must trust and whom he must obey.

The Central Faith of the Primitive Church

A principal reason that Christians often go wrong in the law-gospel issue is that they tend to see the Bible’s principal message as one of individual soteriology: “How can I be saved?” As noted earlier, Luther held this view. He was plagued by a bad conscience. “How can a man be just before God?” But that is not the chief question the Bible is trying to answer.

Luther was convinced it was, though, and his followers (and not only Lutherans) transformed his own existential battles into a soteriology and even a hermeneutic (Bible interpretation). Some Christians today see the distinction between gospel and law at the heart of the Christian Faith, and they perceive justification by faith alone as the organizing principle of Christian theology and the Faith itself.

In contrast, the central message of the primitive Church as found in the Bible is the Lordship of the risen Christ. Individual soteriology is a crucial aspect of the exercise of this Lordship, but Lordship is much larger than individual soteriology.

It is not God’s sovereignty as such, but his sovereignty as it comes to the fore in the Saviorhood-Lordship of Christ, that is central in the Bible. Both grace and obligation, gospel and law, blessing and judgment, are aspects of that single, unified message of Christ’s Lordship.

The chief question of the Bible is not, “What must I do to be saved?” (though vital, to be sure), but rather, “What does the Lord require?”

Practical Consequences of the LGD

Bad doctrine leads to bad practice. Theologies have consequences.

One Lutheran theologian who came to deplore this LGD and paid a heavy price for his convictions was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer, who was convicted of plotting to assassinate Hitler, was executed on Hitler’s personal command just a few weeks before the liberation by the Allies of the camp in which he was imprisoned. Bonhoeffer had come to oppose among his Lutheran brothers what he famously termed in The Cost of Discipleship “cheap grace” — the teaching that since salvation is free in Jesus Christ we dare not demand any commitment of Christians.

This view had led many Protestants to help pave the way for the general acceptance of Hitler’s National Socialism, which Bonhoeffer deplored with every fiber of his being. The LGD Christians wanted to keep the moral obligation of God’s word separate from salvation by grace in Jesus. Law is the matter of the state, and gospel is the matter of the church.

Bonhoeffer knew that God calls us in Jesus to radical obedience, and without this obedience, we are simply not true Christians. He was no friend of moralism and legalism. He believed that justification by works is blasphemy against Jesus Christ. But he knew that the call to radical obedience in the life of the believing sinner is not justification by works; it is justification by a living, submissive faith. He championed the unity of gospel and law. The “German Christians” (as they were called) separated law from gospel and thus separated obedience from profession.

Conclusion

This is a cautionary tale, and it is not theoretical. This theological horror happened less than a century ago. The vast number of LGD Protestants today would rightly recoil at such betrayal, but they should consider the implications of allowing law to drift away from the glorious gospel promises and become nothing more than “a veritable hell” whose role is to threaten and condemn all humanity.

At the core of law is the gospel, God’s gracious blessing of salvation by grace through faith alone in Jesus Christ. That law calls all sinners to trust and obey the world’s only Savior and Lord, and it does not hold out hope of salvation to any who do not trust and obey. The Bible does not set gospel against law. It does not set grace against obligation. The distinction in the Bible is never between the revelatory law and the gospel, but between the perversion of the law into a system of boastful, meritorious works-righteousness on the one hand and the gospel, in harmony with the revelatory law (Rom. 9:30–10:13; Gal. 3:21; 4:21), on the other.

Grace in the Bible is never at war with righteousness, only with self-righteousness.

Salvation is in Jesus Christ alone. It looks to him for all hope, righteousness, blessing and eternal life. And in looking to him, it looks to him as King, who commands every aspect of our being.

C. E. B. Cranfield was one the leading Reformed NT exegetes of the 20th century. The closing words of his essay “St. Paul and the Law” are also a fitting close to this e-newsletter:

[W]e are true to Paul’s teaching when we say that God’s word in Scripture is one; that there is but one way of God with men, and that an altogether gracious way; that gospel and law are essentially one, and their unity, so far from being a mystery still hidden from us, has been once and for all revealed to us in that one gracious Word of God, whose name is Jesus Christ, in whom at the same time God gives himself wholly to man, and claims man wholly for Himself. (emphasis original)

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Next weekend Sharon and I will be in northwestern Pennsylvania where I’ll be delivering the graduation address (June 4) for Christ Dominion Academy and preaching on Sunday at Living Church International. We hope to see many of you friends from northwest Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio.

I hope to have Creational Marriage: Issues and Controversies out by the fall. Professor John Frame has kindly granted permission to publish his 60+ sermons under the title Widen Your Hearts. There’s much, much more to be published.

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Yours for the Risen Lord,

Founder & President, Center for Cultural Leadership