Law/Gospel: A Primer: Part 1

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. It's been a long time since I've been in this high-tech studio. I'm not hearing myself. It's because I don't have the thing turned up, that's why. Well, glad you're listening today.

Thanks for tuning in, as they used to say. You can tell how old I am. You can write me, mike, at nocompromiseradio .com. I hope you... I don't know. I'm trying to... I'm distracted. It's supposed to snow, I think, 25 inches in the next 10 days.

So count me distracted. I did see this online, just to kind of start a little bit. Did you know these things had names? Okay. Did you know these things had names? Just off the top here. The space between your eyebrows is called a glabella.

Maybe you have a unibrow and you have a unigabella. Number two, the way it smells after the rain is called petrichor. Now, I don't know if that's the asphalt, the cement, in the woods. I'm not exactly sure.

The plastic or metal or metallic coating at the end of your shoelace, you know, this one probably is called an aglet. I've heard that before. Now, this is new. This is No Compromise Radio. This is new.

I am leading into Bible stuff here. Hang in there with me. The rumbling of the stomach is actually called a whamble. W-A-M-B-L-E. Whamble Bible Church. The prongs on a fork are called tines. T-I-N-E-S.

You didn't know these things had names, did you? Okay. Last one. There's a list here of 20, but this is the last one for today. The sheen or light that you see when you close your eyes and press your hands on them is called phosphenes.

You did not know what you were going to get today on No Compromise Radio. Did you know this had a name? That when you can distinguish what the Bible says to do and what the Bible says is done, there's a name for that.

Did you know that it had a name? If you look at the Bible and see, another way I could put it, maybe charges to obey and promises given, that's do and done. That's got another name in theology, and it's called, as you know, listening to this show, law, law, and gospel.

Did you know that? Of course you knew that. You didn't know about aglets maybe, and you didn't know about phosphenes, and you weren't quite sure that you had, what are those other ones I mentioned? I've already forgotten them.

Wambles, that's right. I ought not to forget wambles. Wambles is the most important part, but today we're going to talk about law, gospel, and specifically, I'm going to talk about the new book, Law, Gospel, a Primer.

Quite a few people ordering a 10 or more, so they email me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com. Give them the 40 discount. So, if you want a bunch of books, whether that's a mix and match with the Cancer Book or Discovering Romans or whatever it might be, Discovering Colossians, excuse me, mix and match.

If they're printed by NoCo Media and on Amazon, I can give you 40 off. You just have to email me first. There's no code to type into Amazon, but you email me, we drop ship the author copies. So, that's kind of fun.

We've drop shipped from 10 to drop shipping to 999. So, that's pretty good. That's the max, by the way, 999. If you want to order 5 ,000 books, we have to make five different orders. I guess technically six, right?

So, today we're going to talk about Law and Gospel, a Primer, and I'm just going to read certain chapters of the book so you can understand how it was written, why it was written, and understand more about Law and Gospel.

I can't read the whole book today, although it's small, about 100 pages designed to just hand out. You know, back in the old days, they talked about the gospel call, the general call of telling everyone and anyone, here's who the Lord Jesus is.

This is why he's come to save sinners. This is what sin is. You're a sinner. Giving them law and gospel. We would say back in the old days, make sure you preach promiscuously. That is to everyone, just no matter who it might be.

It might be he or it might be him. It might be who or it might be whom. Scott Clark says, people have a masters of divinity and don't know how to use the word, you know, the relative pronoun who or him.

Just say he or him. Who or him. Who or whom. I don't have a masters of divinity either. I'm looking outside. I'm thinking about something else. We're going to get a lot of snow. At Bethlehem Bible Church, we have something called a snow Sunday.

And we can't arrange that. God makes the snow. But if it snows a lot Saturday night into Sunday morning, then we cancel Sunday school. We cancel this particular Sunday baptisms. We cancel new members classes, new visitors class, visitors luncheon we have.

So all those things. I had premarital counseling scheduled for tomorrow, pulpit supply ministry, teaching. All that stuff is canceled except the 1015 service. We push to 1030 and just say, snow removal takes a while.

Get here when you can. If you can't get here and it's not safe because you live at a higher altitude or you're older, you don't have four wheel drive. We have the live stream, et cetera. So tomorrow, snow Sunday.

And I'm looking outside because we already called it snow Sunday. So everybody knows, and it's going to be a lot of snow. A lot of snow. Today, Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry. We have some videos, by the way.

Some Mario Escobar filmed me doing some shows, some no-co shows that would be podcast like we normally do and also videocast. So I think maybe the new format is going to be very soon. Changed maybe a little bit.

At least Monday is a rerun of the sermon. So you get that of the previous day, actually eight days earlier. So we're not that bogged down. We have some time. So sermon on Sunday, on Monday that was preached on Sunday.

Easy for me to talk. Friday, a rerun out of the 4 ,400 shows we've done. And then Wednesday should be a new show. And it's probably going to be video version as well on YouTube. We lost our YouTube channel for reasons maybe known and unknown.

And so we're putting some older videos back up we found. So if you are not on YouTube, go to YouTube and subscribe to the No Compromise Radio site. I think we used to have 5 ,000 followers. Now we have about 30.

Maybe you could be 31. Today, Law and Gospel from my book, Law, Gospel, a Primer. Now before I read anything, I wanted to write this as an introduction. Primers are easy, introductory, not technical. I know that there are other writers that are much more academic, much more scholarly, much more technical.

I'm just a frontline infantry guy and will let the Harrison Perkins and the Mitch Chases and the Scott Clarks and others write those things. And I appreciate their ministries. Who else writes? Oh, I was going to say Fesco.

I mean, between Fesco and Perkins, man, those guys, I think they write in their sleep. I just think they, I don't know, maybe they hook up some electrodes to their brains at night and it just comes out.

But I wanted to write a book that was just simple and easy. And just, you could hand to lay people, you could have a quick Bible study. And so it has a variety of questions. Generally, is section one, is it difficult to understand?

What about church history? Is it Lutheran? Is it easy to confuse the two? General questions like that. Section two has law questions. What is the law? Is God's law good? Is God's law flexible? And many more.

Section three, any guesses what might be there? Gospel questions. What is the gospel? Is it Christ-centered? Should we see Christ and his benefits together? Then section four, practical questions. Is law gospel for believers?

Should you preach it to yourself? Section five, law errors. What's antinomian and what's legalism? Like I could put a bunch of other errors in there, but trying to keep the book small. Gospel errors. What if the gospel is assumed as one?

And then the summary. So that's the book, Law, Gospel, a Primer. And I'm going to read a little bit today on No Compromise Radio. What are we going to do? We're going to read some of the book. Now, one last thing.

I know you want me to get to this. Hang on. On the left side of the page, there's the question. Is the law gospel new or novel? I then say the answer with one sentence. So there's the question. There's the one sentence answer.

Then I elaborate on my one sentence answer. This is interesting. This cricket thing keeps going. I don't know what's going on with my soundboard here, but the cricket thing just keeps going over and over.

I've silenced it, but it just over and over and over. So then two or three paragraphs, I explain my one sentence answer. That's on the left side of the page. On every page, it's the same way. And then the right side of the page, there are quotes from typically reformers, both Lutheran and reformed, and sometimes newer ones.

A Jerry Bridges quote here or there, because he's a good intro drug for all this. And that's on the right side. So everyone's the same. Left side, simple. What's the question? What's the answer? Right side, here's some quotes.

So for instance, is law gospel new or novel? This is page five. No, it is biblical and especially emphasized during the Reformation. See, that would include Lutheran and Reformed. Some people might be new to the law gospel paradigm.

They know what law is, and they're familiar with the gospel, but they're not sure how the two go together, or even if they should go together. Maybe it will help if you, the reader, understand that there's nothing novel or new about this designation.

Most theological concepts that are new should be avoided. Thankfully, law gospel is rooted in Scripture and can be seen in church history, especially in the time of the Reformation. I'm trying to write like I talk is basically what I'm trying to do.

Martin Luther and John Calvin regularly said that there are two words, there were two words that you would find in the Bible. Law, that's the first word, gospel is the second. Calvin's successor, Theodore Beza, and I'm behind on Beza briefing, echoed many leaders in the Reformation writing in the Christian faith, we divide this word into two principal parts or kinds.

The one is called the law, the other, the gospel, for all the rest can be gathered under the one or the other of these two headings. Dear Christian, you are not wading into untested and uncharted theological waters.

While law gospel might be new to you, if so, welcome, it is not new in church history. So, that's the left side. You could read it in 60 seconds. The right side, on this particular page, I have four quotes, and sometimes I have more or less, depending on how long the quote is, but I wanted to keep them all on one side of the page.

The entire scripture of God is divided into two parts, commands and promises. That's law and gospel, Martin Luther. Zacharias, your sinus, this question contains the statement and division of the whole catechism, and at the same time, accords with the division of the scriptures into the law and gospel.

My point is, I'm trying to show you that it's not new. This is something that people talked about regularly. It might be new to you. It was new to me 10, 15 years ago. I had heard about it in seminary, but I was always told it was Lutheran, and we were to avoid it.

So, it's something that both reformers and Lutherans believe. We teach and believe and confess that the distinction between the law and the gospel is to be maintained in the church with great diligence.

That's the formula of Concord, or as we say in New England, Concord, the formula of Concord. Actually, I love New England, and I've had a wonderful time here. Well, for the most part in 27 years of ministry, thankful.

I like direct people. I like blunt people. My daughters, two of them, they come back here regularly because they have a remote job or they're able to work remote, and they live in California most of the time, but they come back here and they've said, you know what, Dad?

We hope we meet a man in California who's from New England. We'd like to marry that kind of guy. They're living already in California, but they are from New England. They love Boston accents and all that stuff.

So, this is the formula of Concord. We have a city here named Concord, right? Concord. And it's by Lexington, and you can go up there and all kinds of war stuff, American Revolution stuff. There was a day that I used to argue about America and the Declaration of Independence and is it sin, is it not sin, all these other kinds of things.

I mean, it's a fair thing to think about, but personally, I could care less. So, these days I'm old enough, and I think if I don't care about something, to what degree was George Washington a Christian?

Was he a theist? Was he a deist? Was he a meist? Was he a henotheist? You should look up henotheism, H-E-N-O-theism. That's an interesting concept, but more interesting is H-E-N-N-O-theism. Avoid that at all costs.

Last quote here underneath the Islaw Gospel Newer Novel. Zacharias, your sinus again. The doctrine of the church consists of two parts, the law and the gospel, in which we have comprehended the sum and substance of the sacred scriptures.

Therefore, the law and gospel are the chief and general divisions of holy scriptures and comprise the entire doctrine comprehended therein. There you go. The next page. Does law gospel simplify the Bible?

I never thought about that. I'm new to law gospel. What do you mean simplify? If I could have the Bible simplified, that would be a help to me. That would be help to others, to new Christians, to Bible teachers, because the Bible is, of course, big, right?

Sixty-six books. Of course, divine author, human author, of course, breathed out by the Spirit of God. God wanting us to know about Him, right? His revelation. It's not like He gives general revelation in nature so that we cannot know Him.

He gives it so we can know Him. Certain things we can learn in general revelation about Him in terms of power and wisdom, and we're in awe of that. But why would God give us special revelations? So that we can't know, so that we don't know, so that we're held more accountable to the things that we can't understand.

2 Peter 3. There are some hard things in Paul's writings. There are some difficult concepts in the Bible to understand. But God is clear. God wants us to understand. And if it's hard to understand, it's certainly not God's fault.

It's our fault. And so much of the Bible, we can't understand. We can't. C-A-N. So, it helps if we can start having categories. And, you know, we start thinking things like, this isn't apples to apples, but there's an Old Testament and a New Testament.

And there's types and shadows pointing to Christ, and now Christ is here. There are different genres of the Bible. There's narrative, and there's epistlatory, and there's apocalyptic. Right? So, when you start understanding those things, you think, okay, it's getting easier.

So, I don't have to say, you know, train a child and bring up a child in the way of the Lord, and when he's older, he won't do pardons. We take that as a promise versus a proverb. Law Gospel, does it simplify the Bible?

My answer, one sentence in bold in the book on the left-hand side page, yes, it assists the reader and makes the Bible easier to read. Well, that makes me want to read more about Law Gospel. The Bible is a very large book full of a wide variety of genres.

How can a person get their proverbial arms around it? The Law Gospel distinction helps differentiate between the promises and commandments in the Bible. In addition, it prevents promises and commandments from being blended.

This Law Gospel hermeneutic, how to interpret the scriptures, equips Bible teachers in their endeavors to rightly divide the word, assisting them in deciding if a passage is either law, do, or gospel, done.

It is hard to figure out the meaning of God's word without understanding this difference. Essentially, the Law Gospel distinction asks these two questions. Does this passage require me to do something?

Does this passage tell me about something that's been done for me? Do and done. So, that's the left-hand side of the page. Does Law Gospel simplify the Bible? The right-hand side of the page, we have quotes so that you don't think I'm making things up.

Why do people quote others? There are many reasons. The two best reasons, the two positive reasons, the top of the list, B, because the person says it better. I mean, if you're giving a speech at a university and it has nothing to do with Christianity, and you quote Mark Twain, you quote someone that just, you know, Mencken, that can just turn a phrase, you can quote who else just, you know, the way they write, you just think, that is amazing.

Louis L 'Amour in terms of just his novels. I mean, the way he writes, you think, wow, that's amazing. Ernest Hemingway. And there could be older writers as well. We quote because someone can say it better than we do.

And we want to let people understand what we're saying, so we quote these people. But A, most importantly, when we quote people, we're trying to say, I'm not the only one who believes this. Let me help you believe this by giving a secondary source, another source, a primary to me, but I probably shouldn't have said secondary, but another source, someone that you would trust, someone that proves in their life to have valid quotes, positions, theological concepts, et cetera.

When I was from Nebraska, I'd say ek, et cetera. I'd say milk. I'd say sat, when I mean sat. Martin Luther. This difference between the law and the gospel is the height of knowledge in Christendom. Every person and all persons who assume or glory in the name of Christian should know and be able to state this difference.

If this ability is lacking, one cannot tell a Christian from a Jew. Of such supreme importance is this differentiation. This is why St. Paul so strongly insists on a clean, clean cut and proper differentiation of these two doctrines.

All scripture is either law or gospel, Philip Melanchthon. The apology of the Augsburg confession states, all scripture ought to be distributed into these two principal topics, the law and the gospel principle.

Principle. Principle. Principle. Principal or principle. I was looking, did I make a mistake? Did the apology of Augsburg make a mistake? Let me reread it. No wonder my ratings are so low. I mean, come on.

You belong in the circus, Spock. I know. I need to start rewatching those shows. The apology of Augsburg confession says, all scripture ought to be distributed into these two principal topics, the law and the promises.

For in some places, it presents the law, and in others, the promise concerning Christ. Namely, either when in the Old Testament promises that Christ will come and offers for his sake the remission of sins, justification, and life eternal, or when in the gospel, in the New Testament, Christ himself, since he has appeared, promises the remission of sins, justification, and life eternal.

Mike Avendroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry. We've got the Law Gospel book, and I think maybe soon I'm going to record some American gospel series, a new series on how to teach the Bible. I don't know what it's going to be called.

I don't know the format. As you know, in NoCo, we just make it up as we go along. People ask me on those that I interview, what questions will you ask me? I don't know. I have a job. This is on my day off.

Next chapter in Law Gospel, a primer. So far, by the way, the record is someone has ordered, a pastor's order, 75 of these for his church to hand out promiscuously. So that's the record. Can someone beat the record?

Oh, this is a true ask. Could you, if you bought the book, could you give it a rating? You can be honest about the rating, but so far, I've asked a bunch of people to do ratings, and only two have done so.

I think they're five-star, but only two. If you're going to give a two-star rating, don't bother. The famous two-star rating still is the most famous in all of the ministry here, two stars. One star because the show is bad and the guy laughs at his own jokes.

Sounds like he's sitting in a room by himself, looking out at the snow. And number two, we give another star just because Jesus deserves a star. As I'm looking out my window into the snow, snow-covered hills, I have a little pope, and the pope is a solar pope, and he's standing there with his glasses.

And it looks like it's the new pope. I don't know how long he's going to live. And his hand's up and it moves back and forth like it's kind of that wave, like that you're in the Rose Bowl parade and you do that hand side wave, that little pope wave.

So he's always up there directing traffic. Is it easy to confuse law gospel? Yes, it is easy to confuse law gospel, commonly called glossable. The frequent problem is regularly seen in both the pew and the pulpit.

Be cautious not to distort the law and be careful you do not torque the gospel. Regarding the law, the bent of every sinner seems to desire a saving quality to the law. It is a transactional theology.

If I do this, God will do that. Law cannot save. Many forget that what they do is always tainted by sin. Almost every unbeliever thinks they can appease God if their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds.

By deeds, we mean law keeping. This erroneous idea thinks the law was meant to save. Regarding the gospel, a similar problem exists. That is, the good news of the gospel becomes conditioned upon what man can or must do.

Unbelievers fall prey to the idea that God is pleased to add human work to the finished work of Jesus. Another example of confusion is this train of thought. Now that I have read my Bible today and prayed, God loves me more.

I am sure you have thought that or something similar at some point in your lifetime. The work of God the Father in Christ the Son is not conditioned upon anything or anyone. If God loves any of us, it is because of the Father or through the work of the Son, not your work or mine.

And then we have Spurgeon on the opposite side of the page. There is no place in which men make greater mistakes than on the relation which exists between the law and gospel. A certain class maintained that the law and gospel are mixed.

Now listen to this line by Spurgeon, ouch. These men understand not the truth and are false teachers. I know a lot of people that kind of mix this stuff up. Maybe I'll just give them benefit out probably because I did and I wouldn't want to be called a false teacher.

They're teaching falsely, at least that. And then John Bradford, he that is ignorant of the law gospel distinction cannot, though he were a great doctor of divinity and could rehearse every text of the Bible without book, but both be deceived and deceive others as the experience thereof hath taught, nay seduce the whole world.

Therefore I say, take to thee the glass of God's law. Look therein and thou shall see thy just damnation and God's wrath for sin, which if thou dreadest will drive thee not only to an amendment, but also to the sorrow and hatred of thy wickedness and even to the brim of despair, out of which nothing can bring thee, but the glad tidings of Christ.

That is the gospel for as God's word doth bind thee, so can nothing but God's word unbind thee. And until thou come us to this point, thou know nothing of Christ. That is John Bradford. Well, my name is Mike Evendroth.

This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. Don't forget you've got quantity discounts. If you email me 10 or more, we've got the new YouTube channel. Thank you, Mario, for that work and Ben to help resurrect it with special thanks to Spencer behind the scenes.

That man is about the kindest man I know, Spencer Kennard. Mike Evendroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry.