Law-Gospel Distinction with Michael Horton & R Scott Clark

What do you get when you cross your Calvinist podcast the Heidel cast and white horse in you get this show

Thank you for watching your Calvinist podcast, my name is Keith Foskey and I am your Calvinist and today

I have with me an Amazing pair. Dr. Michael Horton is here with me along with someone.

He pulled in off the street I think he called him Scott. I think is his name Dr. R. Scott Clark is here with us and he is a

Professional podcaster much more professional than me because I don't have any of the bells and whistles that that you have on your show

I don't have anything that's gonna play music or play any sounds But those who listen to you tell me that you do that quite a bit.

I do. I know that I'd listen to you Well, I want to say thank you both for being with me today,

I know we've had a very very long day It's been a great opportunity to hear people preach the

Word of God But to ask you guys to sit down with me for this time. I know is quite an imposition So thank you both for sitting down for just a few minutes and I do want to talk about something serious and it's something that I know that you both share a passion about so the subject is

The question of law and gospel in preaching. I remember when you dr.

Clark were on my show We were discussing why you don't believe Reformed Baptist exists. Hi. I'm here no, no, no you came on the show and We were talking and you mentioned in that that you had first heard not well

Maybe not first heard but were really most impacted on the subject of law and gospel and preaching when it when when you heard

Dr. Horton talk about it. Can you share that story for just a moment? Yeah, I Went through seminary been had been an ordained minister for 10 years had been preaching the gospel but had then also been regularly confusing law and gospel and Knew there was a problem with my preaching didn't know what it was

Didn't know how to analyze what was wrong with me or my preaching a lot of things wrong with me Mrs.

Clark can analyze that for you I Really struggled with that such that I even stopped doing evening services and turned those into Bible studies so so as not to do as much damage as I thought

I was probably doing and and went off to grad school and Learned more about how to distinguish law gospel and what they were by by reading reformed texts and especially my guy

Olivianas who talked about law and gospel a lot and so I was beginning to get a conceptual idea of what the difference is, but no one had ever talked to me about how to Distinguish them in preaching and we had a conference

I think in the summer of 1998 at the seminary where I was then working and We had a bunch of you know notable people

You know, I'd list I probably left some people out when I told this story earlier But Jay Adams, I imagine

Ed Clowney was there Dirk Berg's ma Bob Godfrey Tim Keller Mike Probably you've done so many conference.

Yeah. I know I think that so there's a lot of I mean if we did that conference today You know, we'd probably fill a really big facility, you know, and and charge a lot

We just did it in the in the Basically the student lunchroom back then that was our our best place to do it and Mike gave a 20 -minute talk on distinguishing law gospel in preaching and it was so clear and it was obviously something that he'd been thinking about for a long time and and He explained it so well that in that 20 minutes

I realized this is what has plagued my preaching for 10 years and I didn't know what it was until this very moment

So that was a transformational moment because then I realized all right That this is how you this is what reformed people do

This is what Reformation people do is they look at a text and they ask these questions How do the principles of law and gospel relate in this passage?

And what am I doing? This is the thing that I needed to learn I needed to become conscious of what

I was doing is fine to preach the law and it's and it's wonderful to preach the gospel But you at least need to know what you're doing and in what way you're using the law

Are you using the law in its first use or the pedagogical use of depending on how we're numbering them people number them differently

Am I using it in the civil use am I using it in the normative use? What am I doing just to be conscious of that and then to be conscious that that this word?

I'm Expositing from the text what I found in the text. This is a law word This is a gospel word and it's not even to say that when we use and I'm not ashamed to call this a hermeneutic

I've had sometimes people have said well, I don't want to talk about a law gospel hermeneutic. I do And maybe

I'm wrong, but I think that's what we want what we want to do and a heuristic, you know something but and then to be deliberate about preaching the gospel and make sure that I'm proclaiming the good news and and Not assuming it and then most especially not not confusing the one with the other

Right, which is what I was doing I would preach the gospel and then at the end of the my sermon when I was supposed to be

I thought I better apply It and then really I thought Implicitly, I guess I need to put these people back under the law or I won't be doing my job

And that was a huge mistake. I Regret that very much. I mean there may be times where the text wants me to put them under the law fine

But I don't think as a gospel preacher. I'm obligated to leave them there Right and I want to I want to explore that maybe in a moment because that that's something that's come into my mind questions of You know commands and and and aughts aughts and aught not that that's something that you know

I have a questions about when it comes to this, but before we get there Dr.

Horton if I could ask you do you remember the the warp and wolf of that message? I know he said it was like a 20 -minute talk and we don't have that much time tonight

But but do you have like when you when somebody asks you can you explain law and gospel? So, how do you how do you give that talk to somebody especially, you know, maybe a young minister who's just concerned about Not wanting to be a just a moralism preacher, right?

Because that's that's the failure, right? That's the problem That's when you're just preaching moralism and not the gospel. Yeah Well, I think first of all, thanks

Keith for having us on I think I think that When Scott and I were going through Westminster years ago on the

Ice Age last Ice Age We we were what we what we got very clearly was

Christ centered preaching. The whole Bible is about Christ It's gospel centered gospel driven and Imperatives grow out of indicatives that means in other words, so Christ died for our sins indicative

Now in view of God's mercies present your body as a living sacrifice Imperative so it's always

Commands are always driven by and grounded in what God has done for us in Jesus Christ There is so much overlap between that and law and gospel

The distinction between law and gospel don't confuse imperatives with indicatives people who are professors with us.

Yeah Well, that's what they that's roughly what they meant But I think what what really hit me was

Rod Rosenblatt my late colleague on the White Horse Inn Lutheran who would often bring up the law gospel distinction and As on other points

I would say, okay Let me go back and see what my own tradition says about this because I I hadn't heard that phrase.

Yeah, and Did you had you heard it mostly in Lutheran context because I hear a lot of Lutherans making this and that and you mentioned this

One of you I think mentioned today that they're that Lutherans often bring this out or call you Lutheran or something

Yeah, yeah, and I heard it. I heard it occasionally. I was like Scott. I heard it occasionally in our circles

But very rarely yeah and And now again, I'm not saying that they wouldn't have said the same thing by something like imperative indicative.

Yeah, but but that that Distinction. I thought oh, I just want to find out if we have any of that in our because I think we've been living the last gosh hundred years under a kind of 19th century

German Historiographical historiographical approach that says find out what the central dogma is of any tradition and Define yourself over against the other one.

Yep, and so Lutherans have defined themselves over against Calvinists Calvinists define themselves over against Lutherans and Both in the process become completely unmoored from history.

Yeah, and they don't realize that actually, you know There are things there. There are very few things that reformed and Lutheran people disagree on those very few things

Happen to turn out to be really important. Mm -hmm, but they're everything else we agree on and This is this is one of those so anyway,

I went back and I looked at our tradition, but good night I started seeing it on every street corner it's the the you know,

Urzinus who wrote the Heidelberg Catechism is I think he's heard of that Here and there yeah, and I've only read it in English he's he's practically written parts of it in Latin The The beginning of the commentary

Urzinus's commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism is The two parts of the whole of Scripture are the law and the gospel and it's the whole page the whole first page

So It's not just that and then Beza Theodore Beza in his confession has the

Word of God As a means of grace and and he says the first thing we have to do is distinguish the law from the gospel

I mean just Perkins says if you're gonna be a pastor in the reformed tradition You have to know how to distinguish law in the gospel and then he gives examples.

So oh my goodness. It's everywhere It's in the Puritans. It's in the I mean, Oliviana says all of Romans can be reduced to the distinction between law and gospel

All of Galatians can be reduced to the distinction between law gospel same with Calvin. I mean So he's exactly right.

It's all through our tradition and But it's it's not a way for The reason that Mike said that the story that we were sold beginning in the middle of the 19th century but but really through the 20th century and a lot of people absorb that story that central dogma story and So that's what

I was trying to say when I was talking about being called a Lutheran is that? Reformed people have frequently called me a Lutheran.

Hmm Because they assume that anybody who talks about a law gospel distinction is Lutheran and people have argued that there are prominent reformed scholars

One who has argued that while Calvin Luther had a law gospel hermeneutic Calvin had a letter spirit hermeneutic and to that I respond by saying please keep reading

Calvin's comments in 2nd Corinthians 3 which is where he's arguing because at the end of his exposition of 2nd

Corinthians 3 He says and by letter and spirit. I mean law and gospel So the I so the very idea that you could juxtapose

Calvin and Luther on that is well a unknown to Calvin and be Calvin who said

Luther is my father and and Said I am a pupil of Luther's.

Yeah. Hmm. So it's just it's an untenable unhistorical Contrast Calvin doesn't know anything about that He learned to distinguish law and gospel from Luther and it's it's as much a part of our tradition as it is theirs

But we've developed this what the Marxists would call a false historical consciousness

About about who we are and think of the third use of the law for example Sure, you know one really good example of the difference between Lutherans and Calvinists is

Calvinists believe in the third use of the law and Lutherans don't yeah Well, actually the do you think that affects their sanctification view their view of sanctification?

Well, they don't hold that Actually, that's what people say. It's not true. It's not true

No, but this is this is what this is the news that gets out there It's actually in in the

Every confessional Lutheran subscribes the third use of the law. It's in the it is in the book of Concord more than that Melanchthon first invented the phrase elucidated three uses of the law in his

Romans commentary and Calvin cribbed that along with other stuff in his commentary just a little bit after that That's how the reformed tradition gets the three uses of the law, okay, it's from Calvin got it from a lengthen

I mean in Luther people say well Luther didn't use the phrase. Well, he taught the third use of the law

He did that's where Melanchthon learned it. So he didn't use the phrase, but it's in there. So there

Anyway, this is this is a pan -reformation basic and a lot of reformed people

Need to to pay attention to their own tradition and stop paying attention to a false 19th -century story about the reform and let me tell you why that's so important.

That's so important Not because we don't play footsies with people of other traditions Although it would be nice if we could if we could disagree on things that actually we disagree on Yeah, but but really the main reason is the people who most want to distinguish reformed

The reformed tradition from other traditions Have messed up The Trinity when it comes to Roman Catholicism The the the

The sacraments and justification when it comes to the

Lutherans And you know there are just It actually by reacting against These other traditions strike by trying to reinvent a doctrine of the

Trinity by trying to reinvent, you know a reform doctrine of the Trinity a reformed doctrine of justification

People end up really botching. Yeah, the the whole Reformation shared

Reformation consensus When I am preaching to get back to sort of the the focus and I'm so thankful for what we're talking about but I want to bring us back to the original question of Making sure that we're not going

Past the gospel into moralism because that because seemingly as I've been listening and obviously these are not new concepts to me

But these are things that I'm listening to you guys this weekend taking in what you're saying thinking about the potential danger

And what are the problems? Moralism is the problem and but but but is there

Is there not and this is where I'm wanting to make sure I'm clear. Is there not a call in our in our in our preaching to trust and obey and in trusting and obey a call to obedience for for the

Christian and How does that work out when we say there's a law gospel distinction? We we preach the law that we preach the gospel.

Mm -hmm. What does that look like? I mean so earlier Mike talked about the imperative the indicative and the imperative.

So the indicative is the story. It's the narrative It's so in Reformation terms. It's the announcement of the good news wherever that is in Scripture wherever you are in the history of redemption and The imperative is now that now respond appropriately

So, yeah, we we have to preach the imperative is great scriptures Replete with imperatives.

It's just it's not a matter of not preaching the imperatives, right? Somebody says well now that I'm in Christ There's no law, right?

Well, that's antinomianism and the guy who invented that word By the way is Martin Luther. He invented it in order to oppose it not to advance it.

So One you know, let me honest likes to say we've been justified in order that we might be sanctified so the we we've always wanted

God's people to be sanctified and and you do and you have and When the text contains imperatives you preach those imperatives, but you do it

If you go if your message is going to be a Christian message in view of the mercies of God in view exactly

You know, we it has to follow the gospel so what distinguishes a

Christian message from a Islamic message or or you know a

Judaizing message is is that it contains the good news and if it doesn't contain the good news is

RB Kuyper I think it used to used to say if your message could have been preached in a mosque or a synagogue

Without alteration you haven't preached a Christian message. Hmm. So What what this what sets us apart is that we preach the resurrection of a crucified rabbi and And his ascension and his glorious reign and and we want and then we want to encourage people and and lead them better Rather rather than whipping them induce them by the gospel to want to respond

Graciously to the grace that they've received in Christ. I don't doubt I mean, I know not only don't doubt

There are antinomians out there. There are first of all antinomians in principle who don't live profligate

Lifestyles, but they're in principle antinomians. They don't believe that we have any obligation to the law at all and then

They're practical. There are practical antinomians and there are plenty of those Our whole culture is in practical terms very antinomian.

Don't tell me what to do. Yeah But what I have never seen

Not once I have never seen this I have never seen anyone who said they just really it clicked with them

The distinction between justification and sanctification between the law and the gospel between what

God does at our response Imperative indicative who really it's something clicked the paradigm shift happened

Tears are coming down their eyes and the next words out of their mouth were I Can't wait to get out of here and go send my daylights out

Yeah, not once not once have I ever encountered that all I've encountered from from people who've gone from death to life in that kind of in that kind of way really seeing the difference is

Thanks to be to God where would I be without him in that doxology just out of that praise and Thanksgiving How can

I how can I love and serve my neighbor? A lot of it gets I think to the to the definition of sanctification.

What is it? You know justification in the Westminster Shorter Catechism it is the act of God and Sanctification is the work of God but the subject of the verb in both cases is

God and and so, you know Walter Marshall talks about the mystery of sanctification and Unfortunately a lot of people in our tradition

Don't really believe it's a mystery. They think it's a machine and if you if you just Run if you set up the machine correctly turn the crank, right?

You'll get sanctification it's not really a mystery to them and as I read the the tradition in our confessions and In our best writers.

They think it's a mystery. They think this is something that that Christ accomplishes in us the

Holy Spirit accomplishes in us or that we can't explain that we can't explain which means you do things in a paradoxical way

In other words, it's preaching the gospel That makes people want to obey the law and not again.

I'm not saying we need to preach the law, right? Go look at the height go look at the Heidel blog

Look at at the resource page and look at the expositions of the other moral law If you want to talk to me you want to talk with me about the second commandment

I'll talk to you about that all day long and the fourth you have it and the others I mean the moral law it's a holy law of God and that norms our life and we need to think about that We need to apply it.

I'm not in any way shying away from that. The question is not whether it's how you get there

Mm -hmm And what and this is I learned from Mike what? Empowers us to keep that law it to the degree that we do to have as Olivia honest

Always wrote and lots of other of our writers and inchoate that's the word he always used and inchoate obedience and inchoate means

Why I recently saw it translated rudimentary. I'd like to translate it beginning and a beginning an incomplete

Obedience, so we're not talking about perfectionism, but it's the gospel. It's the

Holy Spirit it's the good news that empowers us to make us want to love

God with all our faculties and our neighbors ourselves and my cracking the whip actually

Right counter. What was it counter intuitive as it may be that doesn't actually produce

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Can I ask one last question and we'll make this the final question and I hope it doesn't spin us off into a into too much

Um recently I had the opportunity I Enjoyed doing debate and I've done a few theological debates and one of the debates that I was asked to do was on the subject of His repentance a part of the gospel and I took the positive.

Yes I believe repentance is part of the gospel my opponent was an independent fundamentalist Baptist who

Believes that repentance is a work and therefore it is not part of the gospel and my question to you

I understand the marrow controversy and Sort of the order of operations here But is it right to say if I were to say as I did that the gospel includes repentance of sin?

Is that? Well way I put it is the the gospel Announces the gift of Christ with all his benefits

Mm -hmm. And one of those benefits is repentance. Yes, and I did say repentance is a gift

It's not just like faith. It is not something we accomplish in and of ourselves It is something that God accomplishes in us.

It is, you know, it is as you said, it's him who You quoted Philippians, right?

Yeah him who works in us, right? Yeah, even you know Think of Augustine What what sort of was the trigger for his conversion

Passage on repentance from Romans 13 not from Romans 4 and God meets us where we are.

He can you know the thing God can can turn law passages into Into the means of conversion and Gospel passages can't we can we can hear as law.

Yeah, so a lot. I mean it's relational. It's not just Well, you can you know, you can read a certain tense a certain

Piece of Greek grammar that is going to tell you whether this is law or gospel So I think that's that's an important thing repent.

Secondly repentance means to change your mind. Yes So there's going to be

There's going to be works in keeping with repent that are consistent with that change of mind

But we're not yet talking about even really a change of course yet.

We're talking about I once was blind now I see yeah, I I once Said Forget God and everything related to him and now

I've embraced embraced His his son with all his benefits I'm really excited to see what's going to happen next

That's repentance and faith, but but we're not justified

Because of our repentance Nor we even justified because of our faith.

We're justified because of Christ Through faith and now no never do we have in any of our confessions?

rightly The belief that we are we are justified through faith and Repentance it is always

Justification through faith alone and Calvin even belabors that point that it's not

Justification through faith and repentance. So if people say on the one it is is repentance necessary for salvation.

Well, of course it is It's We confess the impenitent cannot be saved.

Yeah, right. Of course the Heidelberg cat. It's in the Bible But it's in the it's in the third part of the catechism.

Oh, yeah, you can't be safe without repentance We but we're not justified through it. Yeah, I think that's really important We we discuss repentance under the

Christian life and when Olivia Olivia honest always talks about Repentance under the relative to the law

He talks about faith relative to the gospel and he talks about repentance relative to the law

So I think that's it's believers who repent so In the narrow sense, so and it also helps to distinguish between the gospel narrowly and the gospel broadly

So narrowly if if we're talking if we're saying strictly speaking Right guy comes up to you on an alley says what's the gospel right?

He sticks a gun in your ribs You're gonna say interesting scenario your life defends on this, right? Yeah, the gospel is good news

All right, and that good news leads to repentance But it isn't repentance isn't itself good news.

The good news is what Christ accomplished for me Right strictly speaking. So in a broad sense

Yeah, it's a part of the Christian message in so far as gospel can be used to describe the whole

Christian message And it and it is good news in a sense that believers do repent sure

But so we really have to define our terms Yeah, and and not to defend my position but in the conversation he was he was presenting a view that really seemed to me to lead to an that you an unrepentant position like he was explaining how he

How he went soul winning and talked to people and a person could say they believe in Jesus and then turn around and have no life change and No, no penitence

An impenitent person and there and that they would still be a Christian. Yeah, I think when people when when people sometimes when people say

Well, I think I think that repentance is part of the gospel They mean what you meant, but I think a lot of times what they mean is

They they they don't They're they're nervous about antinomianism.

Yes, they don't want I'm nervous about antinomianism to amen that they but they're they're

They they're the danger is that Imperatives become indicatives

Repent that is not is that part of Jesus proclamation of the kingdom.

Absolutely, but it's not an indicative Just by definition of the Greek language.

It's an Indict and an imperative. Yes You repent now

You repent It doesn't have to be Gospel, it doesn't have to be an indicative in order for it to be a part of the kingdom speech of her of our

Savior I mean James 2 is in the Bible and and and it Repentance is the necessary and natural consequence of the work of the

Holy Spirit in a believer Mm -hmm. Somebody tells me I'm a I'm a believer and I came forward and I accepted

Jesus But I'm living impenitently with my boyfriend and I've had this conversation or I've known people to have that was one of the examples

I used yeah. Yeah, I I had a good friend my senior pastor that I worked with in my first church

He had neighbors. They said they loved Jesus. They'd come forward They'd accepted him and they were living together

Jesus had led them to live together and they didn't have to go to church because they were members of the of the church invisible

And and I would say to them you're living impenitently You're not living as people who've been given new life and true faith, you know, you you need to repent

I mean that what James is doing is calling for a Christian congregation to repent of their unbelief and Their ill treatment of their brothers and sisters and that's what

Christians do We are a penitent people So anybody who tell so I would resist anybody who wants to make repentance or being penitent a second blessing

But that's a serious mistake okay, and and I so at that point I agree with the to a certain degree with the

Lordship people when they react to the Zane Hodges and Those Charles Ryrie in that in that world

At the same time I want to say to all of them pox on all your houses because they're reacting against each other

Go read the Heidelberg Catechism, we work this out in the Reformation But as I Just want to say thank you both for for listening to me answering my questions and these are

I mean Well, thank you and that's what I was hoping to be able to talk to you about was just things that people ask me and things that I Know that I wrestle with as a pastor and been doing it for a few years

But still learning and thankful for men like you saying you're willing to teach great to see you in person Yeah, it was nice to see you in person as well.

And and I will continue to tease you on X He's never said that before it shocked me absolutely he is he's he's such a such a nice guy

Nice guy, no, that's what I tell everybody because you are on the show and we had such a fun conversation. He's like see see

Yeah, he's yes. Yes, but thank you both gentlemen. Yes much for being with me. Thank you

Yes, god bless you. I want to thank you guys for watching the show today And if you liked this episode remember you can hit the thumbs up button and that really helps and if you didn't like this episode

Hit the thumbs down button twice. All right guys. Thanks again for watching your Calvinist podcast I'm Keith Foskey and I've been your

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