Are You Collapsing Law and Gospel?

The Need to Keep Law and Gospel Distinct

It's important that we acknowledge that we're not simply saying gospel, gospel, gospel. When we talk about the law gospel distinction, we're emphasizing, yes, we're emphasizing the gospel, and we would happily say we're gospel-centric or something like that, but we're all for emphasizing the law as well.

Using it lawfully, which means strongly, it requires perfect, exact obedience, and so we wanna be committed to both and being clear with both. We think that's what the Bible models. It's what the Protestant Reformation was about, recovering, and when you blur the two, you ruin both, and so if it's, well, the gospel has all of these demands and you have to obey all of these things, you're just blurring the two and you've ruined the gospel because it should come to us freely by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, but you also ruined the law, and somehow you've made the law gracious, and it's not gracious.

It's exacting. It's about obeying, and so that's why we like to joke and say colossal. Colossal is a bad move. It's a bad look, and it sounds bad, and because it is bad, so law and gospel, don't blur the two, but emphasize the two.

How a Legalistic Preaching Style Crushes the Conscience

I grew up in dispensationalism, went to a dispensational college and seminary, and I can remember thinking that I was really upholding the law in my understanding of preaching and teaching, but I really wasn't, in that I made the law achievable in my preaching and teaching, and what it ended up doing is putting an unbearable burden upon me and everyone else that was around, because I thought

Imperatives.

Yeah, and I thought, man, we need to, you know, the world wants to shy away and they want to downplay obedience, and the Bible emphasizes obedience, and so we need to emphasize and preach obedience to the law, and that's really what my preaching and teaching was like, and yeah, I'll put gospel, of course, and grace, we are saved by grace alone, but what I didn't understand was I really saw the gospel as means of removal of sin, and it was a half gospel, which is why your book, another plug for Pat's book, Active Obedience of Christ, is a part of the gospel, right?

It's a part of the good news of what Christ accomplished, not only passively receiving our punishment, but also actively earning our righteousness, so what ended up helping me was that the law got put back where it belonged, where the fence was no longer climbable.

I couldn't get over the wall because no one can get that high. When I first understood the concept of the law crushing me, that's when I realized, oh, I have to have the gospel, and there's nothing in the gospel for me to do because the gospel relieves the crushing blow of the law.

That's when Jesus' words, when he says, come to me, all you who are heavy laden, I understood what he meant, like, ah, I feel the weight of the law now, and he kept trying to put the weight of the law, like on the rich man, he would put the weight of the law on people, and they were like, I can carry it.

Yeah.

Then you have half a law. You don't have the whole law.

Sounds blasphemous and awful, and it is blasphemous and awful. I think Martin Luther was just told by his mentor again and again, he had all this guilt, and just love God, love God, love God. Luther got to the point where he said, I don't love God.

I hate God.

I hate him.

Wow.

Yeah, that's terrible, but the reality is, all of a sudden now, things are starting to click. Things are starting to make sense because he really was grasping the fact that he didn't love God appropriately as he must, and that's what led him to desperation to then eventually see Christ, so.

The Sweetness of the Gospel After the Law Has Done Its Work

That's what made me fall in love with a lot of Reformation theology and writers was because they would beat you brutally with the law. I mean, just pound you, and then they're like, are you done? Are you exhausted?

Great, because now you're ready for the gospel, and the gospel becomes sweet, and you learn to live by the gospel and not live by the law, and when I make statements like that, people think, you know, you're antinomian.

It's like, well, no, there's a difference of I walk by faith in Christ and therefore obey versus I walk by faith in the law because I think obeying the law produces righteousness, right, my faith must be in Christ, and that's why the distinction matters because if you think about it in this way, I remember the first time I started understanding the covenant of works, and I remember, I wish I knew who the author was.

I totally give him credit right now, but he was reading Genesis 315, you know, first mention of the gospel, and he says, what demands are in this description of God's promise of restoration? And I was like, oh, wow.

There's nothing, he never tells them anything. He says, this is what I'm doing, and then from my understanding, they just went forward believing that, right? There was a declaration of what would be done, and that's so important to understand.

They did break the law, don't eat of the fruit. They did do that, and then what was gonna restore it? It was the works of Christ, not the work of Adam and Eve, but that, for me, just biographically really helped me understand you really have to keep these apart because if you collapse them, you actually are without hope now.