Intro to Law and Gospel Distinction | Theocast

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Hi this is Justin. Today on Theocast we are recording the first of three back -to -back episodes on the law of God.

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And in this first episode we're going to talk about something called the law and gospel distinction. For some of you, you may have never heard of that theological concept.

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So this episode is for you today. Even if you've heard of it before, we hope this episode is helpful and clarifying for you. We're going to talk about the distinction between the law and the gospel, how they are not the same thing but are yet complementary of one another, and how they work in God's economy of salvation.

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And we're going to talk about why this distinction is so important. So stay tuned. A simple and easy way for you to help support

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Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the Amazon Smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon Smile, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

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To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the

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Christian life from a confessional, reformed, and pastoral perspective. Your hosts today are

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John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

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We have met today, John, to do a little double dip. This is not our norm.

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We're packaging two episodes together today, and we're going to do a third one, we think, next week that's also related. So I'm just going to go and let you tell the people, because we're going to get right to this.

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We're going to be super efficient. Tell the people what we're talking about. One of the things that has dramatically helped clarify

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Scripture for me and for Justin, and continues to do so, is understanding the distinction between the law and the gospel.

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It was one of the wonderful things that was, I would say, rediscovered and clarified during the

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Reformation and has continued to be so. I'm so thankful. There's so many ministries out there today who have put a bullhorn to this distinction, and we need to turn the volume up even louder, and we need to get more voices in it, because the more people talking about it only creates more clarity.

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So today, if this is brand new, the point of this episode is that it is an introduction to the basic understanding.

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If you would have told me years ago when I was in college, John, do you believe in the distinction between the law and the gospel?

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I probably would have understood that to being the Old Testament and the New Testament. That's how

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I probably would have interpreted that. Or the Mosaic law versus the gospel. But I would have not understood this defining,

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I would say, hermeneutic that we use to make sure that when we're looking at particular passages, that we aren't adding gospel back into the law or gospel vice versa.

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So that's what the point of this is. So, Justin, we're going to jump right into that, and I'll just start with a basic definition of both.

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And then we'll explain how, as simple as my definition may be, how it gets confusing really quickly.

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And we'll walk through different passages to kind of help us do that. The easiest... Go ahead, Justin. I was just going to echo what you said personally and pastorally.

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I would contend that the distinction between the law and the gospel is as significant for our understanding of the scriptures as about any other doctrinal framework could be.

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Covenant theology is up there as well. But this framework of law and gospel that comes up out of the scripture that we see clearly revealed in the text, and then we go back to the text with this framework, it changes the game in terms of how you understand the

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Bible and how you would understand preaching. And it has changed the game for me personally as a believer, and it has certainly changed the game for me as a preacher of God's word.

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And so I want to just underscore everything that you said and kind of heartily amen this and reiterate that this is not new and that theologians through history have seen this in the

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Lutheran tradition and in the reformed tradition and have said very good things about this and have made it plain that if one does not rightly understand how to divide law and gospel, one is not a sound theologian.

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And so this is important, what we're talking about. And I would echo what you said about covenant theology.

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The covenant theology would be the color to the structure of law and gospel because really we're talking about a covenant of works and a covenant of grace.

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And so if you want to know after this episode, if you'd like an introduction to covenant theology and seeing that distinction, then you can look in our show notes.

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We have a five -part series that we put together as an introduction to that with a handout and some book recommendations.

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But let's go ahead and jump into it. We'll start with the definition and then we'll use the Bible to kind of help us, guide us in why this would be so important.

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First of all, the law. The easiest way to understand the law is that it's a command. They are commands to do something.

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So anytime you hear a command, you can understand that that is a law. And I know that this can be hard for people to understand because when we think of law, it's hard because the

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Bible uses the word law in multiple ways, which we're going to get into more in our third episode. So stay tuned for that for a full explanation.

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But for this scenario, when the Bible speaks of the law, whether the

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Old Testament, the five books of the law, the Mosaic law, whatever, we do understand that it is representing a command, something not suggested, but something that is commanded, that one must do.

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And we've learned from Jesus, which we'll talk about here in a moment, that Jesus says, what does the law say to the lawyer?

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Not one of legal, but of the actual one who knows the Mosaic law. What does he say to the lawyer? And the lawyer says, love

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God, love neighbor. And he says, do this and live. And so the completion of the law is this.

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We understand that the law represents righteousness. For those who obey the law, they are demonstrating they are righteous.

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They can be considered righteous. The gospel is the opposite of the law in that there is no commands in the gospel.

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There is no do in the gospel. Sometimes we forget that gospel literally means news.

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That's what it means. It means a declaration of what has been done. So the other way we can say this is a promise fulfilled.

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That's what, so you have a command to be done, a promise fulfilled or do versus done.

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So the, and here's what is the promise that was fulfilled. The promise was that where Adam failed and now fell into sin, he failed to be righteous and fell into sin.

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The promise is Christ succeeded to be righteous and removed our sin by taking it on for us and there's nothing left to do.

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He sits at the right hand of the father as our great high priest and mediator. And those who by faith in Christ, trust that the good news is they can be considered righteous and without sin.

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So that's the gospel. And then there's, there's nothing to do this way. If you ever hear someone say there's the command of the gospel or the imperative of the gospel, there's something for you to do.

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There's a confusion there because the gospel is clearly this, a promised fulfilled.

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It is done. It is news. I'm going to go ahead and take my pass at this and just maybe reiterate some of the things that you said in my own words.

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And sometimes this is helpful for people, especially if this is a new concept. It's good to hear it from a couple of different voices articulated in slightly different ways.

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And so, yes, the law of God, like you said, is the revelation of God in the scripture in terms of what he requires for righteousness, the law we agree.

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In particular, the moral law is a reflection of God's holy character and it reflects and communicates to humanity what

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God requires in order to be righteous in his sight, that God would look at a person and pronounce him or her just.

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And the law is an exacting standard. It is perfection in terms of what it requires.

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God requires that we would love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and love our neighbor as ourselves. That is the summary of the law according to the

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Lord Jesus Christ. That is the first and second table of even the 10 commandments. The first four commandments having to do with our love to God.

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The second latter six commandments having to do with our love of neighbor. And we need to do these things perfectly. As Jesus communicated in the

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Sermon on the Mount, this is not mere external conformity. This is at the level of thought, at the level of motivation, desire, affection, everything.

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And have you done this is the question. This is a do this and live formula like you just referenced,

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Leviticus 18 .5. Whoever does these things will live by them eternally. The flip, the way to negatively say this is the do this and live schema of the law in a negative sense is don't do these things and go to hell.

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That's it. You do it or you don't do it. You're either blessed eternally or you're cursed eternally based on whether you've kept the law or no.

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Now the gospel, on the other hand, like you said, John, has no imperative, no command pertaining to what we need to accomplish whatsoever.

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The gospel is entirely and only about what Jesus Christ has accomplished in our place that is then given to us by grace received through faith.

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And so whenever we hear about what we're to do for righteousness, that's law in the scripture, whenever we read here about what's been done for us and is given to us by God via promise and grace and faith, that's gospel.

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And so that distinction is critical. And we're going to get into the ways perhaps how this is confused and collapse and all this kind of stuff.

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I assume at least in some measure to demonstrate just why this matters so much for us practically on the ground.

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But yeah, I think for now we've done a decent job of this. A couple of quick formulas though, this helps me in my brain.

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Do is law, done is gospel. The law demands everything and gives nothing.

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The gospel demands nothing and gives everything. That's right. Yeah. And I think it's helpful for us too.

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So what we can do now, Justin, we'll do some clarification on the law and then we'll do clarifications on the gospel. So sometimes when people say, well,

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John, there's nothing in the Bible where it says the law says do this and live. There's like, there's nowhere it says that.

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And I said, well, actually Christ is the one who helps us with that. Now there's nothing in the old Testament that would give the indication that the law was given like the

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Mosaic law or the ceremonial law was given as a means to earn salvation. We would agree. The law was never given as a means to earn salvation.

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The gospel was preached to Adam and he believed right. The promise of the Messiah, the seed of Eve, the gospels, as we were told,

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Galatians three, eight, the gospel was preached to Abraham and Abraham was justified. He believed. So the gospel has always been the good news that one can be justified by the promises of God.

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And that promise was always the Messiah, right? No, amen. So, but it's very clear that, and this is where, again,

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I'm going to go ahead and put in a little bit of covenant theology here, because I think it's going to help on understanding the law. You see, we are, according to Romans and first Corinthians, we are in Adam.

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And what that means is, is that when Adam failed to obey God's law, don't eat of the fruit of the tree, every human being that came from him at that moment was born under that curse.

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We were cursed under that. So in Adam all died. Now, what's interesting is that who is described as the second

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Adam? That would be Jesus. That would be Christ. And the thing that's important here is

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Jesus needed to earn righteousness for us because we could not earn righteousness.

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We could not do it ourselves. And the question is, how do we determine whether Jesus is righteous or not?

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How do we know this? And the conclusion we know this is by the law. Did he keep the law?

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Did he keep the law? The prophets literally said that the king who sat on the throne of David would perfectly keep the law.

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Well, we know what that law is. It's the Mosaic law. And so when Jesus comes and perfectly keeps the law,

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Paul says, for us, that became righteousness. It became our life.

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No, that's right. I mean, first Kings nine makes it very clear that as the king goes, so goes the kingdom in terms of Israel.

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The king would represent the people. Like if the king was obedient, the people would be blessed. If the king broke the law, the people would be cut off,

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God says. And then in Jeremiah 23 and 33 and other places, it's very clear that the righteous branch that God will raise up for David is going to not only execute justice and righteousness in the land, but the name by which he will be called is the

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Lord is our righteousness. So clearly he would come and fulfill all of God's requirements in the law.

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And then those that are, excuse me, his fulfillment would be then imputed, given to all of those who are united to him by faith.

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This is why Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 17, do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets, but I have come to fulfill them and he'll use the language of fulfilling all righteousness.

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And the scriptures uses the language of by my servants, righteousness says the Lord will the many be accounted righteous.

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That's Isaiah. And then also Romans five, where Paul makes it very clear that by the obedience and righteousness of the one man,

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Christ Jesus, the many are accounted righteous. That's right. So obedience to the law, according to the

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Old and New Testament, according to this understanding of the covenant of works, which we'll get into later if you get into our series, the law was designed to one, tell us about the nature of God.

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Like how did we learn about the nature of God and how we violated his nature at the law, but it also was a way to demonstrate righteousness.

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So this is what I love about it. When the lawyer comes to him in Luke 10 and says to him, you know, what must I do to be holy and acceptable in the kingdom?

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Because that's what it means to enter into the kingdom. One must be righteous. And so what does Jesus say? Well, what's written in the law and how do you read it?

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And of course the man says, love God with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus quote, Luke 10, 28, it says to him, you have answered correctly, do this and you will live.

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So Jesus understood the conclusion of obeying the law was eternal life.

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And the conclusion of that lawyer should have been, well, no one can do that. Which is why the man is seeking to justify himself according to the law, which is why

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Jesus even tells the parable of the good Samaritan. So Jesus quotes in Luke 10, 28 to that scribe, that lawyer who asks

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Jesus, what do I need to do in order to inherit eternal life, in order to inherit the kingdom of God, Jesus again, dead giveaway, right?

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Well, what is in the law? How do you read it? So we're talking about law here. And the man answers, you know, love

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God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus says, you've answered correctly, do this and you will live.

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Jesus is quoting Leviticus 18, five right there that reads this way.

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You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules. If a person does them, he shall live by them.

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I am the Lord is what God said. So Jesus quotes that. And then of course, this lawyer in Luke 10, seeking to justify himself, according to what the law says, well, who's my neighbor, right?

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So I want to make sure I'm doing this right. And then Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan, which the main point of that parable is, ain't none of y 'all done this, nobody has done this, right?

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And secondarily, we can say, yeah, we should sacrificially love our neighbor, but that's not the main reason Jesus tells it.

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He's trying to crush that lawyer and everybody else in his hearing who thinks that they can keep the law for righteousness, you actually, you can't do that, which is, if I can really quickly,

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I want to pick up Paul's argument in Galatians chapter three, because he's going to quote not only Leviticus 18, he's going to quote

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Deuteronomy 27. This is an important kind of connection,

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I think, for people to see. So in Galatians chapter three, beginning in verse 10, Paul makes it very clear that all who rely on works of the law are under a curse.

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Well, why is that? He says, for it's written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them.

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So again, it's an all or nothing standard. James two, 10 and 11, right? Anybody, you know, if you've broken one bit of God's law, if you've broken any piece of God's law, you've broken the whole thing because the one who said, you know, do not commit adultery also said don't commit murder, et cetera.

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Right. So it's all or nothing standard. So Paul says, you know, you're cursed if you've not done everything in the law and you've lived accordingly.

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And he says, now it's evident that no one's justified before God by the law. Right. He says, for the righteous shall live by faith.

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And then he says, but the law is not of faith. Rather, the one who does them shall live by them. He quotes Leviticus 18, five.

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The law and the gospel are different things. They're complimentary. And we're going to talk about that in a second, but they're not the same.

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They are distinct from one another. They're different in terms of how they operate. And then he goes on to say how

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Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. And he's going to write over in chapter four, that Jesus at the right time was born of woman, born under the law in order to redeem those who are under the law.

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That through him, we might receive adoption as sons of the

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Lord. So critical stuff. So going back to that, I think sometimes there's confusion in this.

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There's a question often asked of me that the, then what did it look like to live under the law in the

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Old Testament? Right. And sometimes people are confused thinking, well, what we're saying is

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Israel was being told obey the law and live, but that's not what they were being told. We know that Abraham and Moses both received the gospel and they preached the gospel, which is faith in one who would be the representative.

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Faith in the promised offspring. That's right. Who would save them. So the law was always designed to do two things.

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And again, we're going to get into this in the third episode, but I want to mention it now, the law was always designed to help clarify what is righteousness, what does it look like?

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This is why there's the sacrificial system within the law, because the law temporarily needed something to cover us because we did not have this righteousness inherently in us, right?

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It needed to be declared over us. So to be clear, sometimes people say, well, you guys are projecting something on the text that isn't there.

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And this is why I love always using the New Testament interpretation of the old and Jesus's interpretation of himself and of the

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Old Testament, Jesus says, well, the conclusion of the law is it is to prove one is righteous.

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So if you want to earn righteousness, it is not relative obedience. It's not 75 % obedience.

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It is 100 % and there's only one person. This is why the disciples, after the rich young ruler walks away, they say, well,

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Jesus, if that man cannot earn salvation, who can be saved? And then

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Jesus flat out clarifies the law with man, it is impossible.

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No human being is able to earn for themselves righteousness by the law because it's not majority.

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It's complete. It's perfection. It's personal, perfect, perpetual obedience.

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That's right. Right. Living in the law. Right. And yeah, the point of the law, and I don't want to steal our thunder for the very next episode, we're going to be recording uses of the law, but yeah, to be really clear, there is law and there is gospel in the

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Old Testament. There is law and there is gospel in the New Testament. And so again, whenever we see commands, imperatives, here are things we're to do.

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Here's what God requires. That's law. Whenever we see promise of what God is giving and what God has done for us, that's gospel, and so the point of the law in its first and primary use was to show

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God's people their sin and drive them to that promised Savior. And that's done through not only the moral law of God that absolutely obliterates everyone with its standard.

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It also is accomplished through the ceremonial law in that that points us in so many ways to what Jesus would come and do, and so the answer to that question, well, was

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God telling people in the Old Covenant to effectively earn righteousness by the law?

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No, he was not. And we need to understand how the law and the gospel function in all of Scripture, because sometimes

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I think, just really quick, John, I think some people, when you hear law and gospel distinction, they wrongly conclude that what we mean is that the

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Old Testament is law and the New Testament is gospel, and that's not true. Again, both are contained in both

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Testaments. Jon Moffitt Yeah, I mean, Galatians 3 .8 is the greatest helpful of that, right? Paul literally says, Abraham heard the gospel.

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Jon Moffitt Right, exactly, and Jesus speaks so much law in his earthly ministry, not only to the lawyer in Luke 10, but you referenced the rich young man who comes to Jesus and says, you know, effectively that I've kept the commandments, and then

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Jesus' tactic there is to ask that young man to prove his love to God and neighbor by selling everything that he has and giving it to the poor.

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Yes, it is a great sermon on the law ever preached. Yeah, so there's a lot of law in the New Testament. I think where people get all kinds of tripped up is even in the ministry of Christ, people look at the words of Jesus, and they are perplexed by this reality.

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In some places, Jesus says, keep the law, and in other places,

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Jesus says, believe in me. Jon Moffitt John 3. Paul Moffitt And other, you know,

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John 6. I mean, a lot of other places. Jon Moffitt Yeah, just as examples. Paul Moffitt Yeah, and people will say, well, man, this is confusing because it's clearly like it's through Christ by faith over here, but then over here, we're being told that we need to keep the law in order to inherit the kingdom of God.

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So, which is it? You have two alternatives, effectively, John. You can either pit those two things against each other, righteousness under the law, faith in Christ, pit them against each other and confuse everyone, or you can understand biblically that one provides the other.

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Jon Moffitt Right. You know, then via the mechanism of faith, the righteousness of Christ who kept the law perfectly is given to us, you know, so that that faith in Jesus provides righteousness under the law in God's economy of salvation.

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Well, I think we're getting somewhere. The titling of the four gospels is also misleading because to say that this is the four gospels, you're assuming everything in there is gospel, but it's not.

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It's the four accounts of Jesus's life. Then in the original, it's just Kata, you know, according to Matthew, according to Mark.

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It doesn't say the gospel. No, it doesn't. It should just say the letter of John, the letter of, yeah.

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Or according to Mark, according to Matthew, here's the life and ministry of Christ. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, a primer on rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

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slash primer. So let's switch over to the gospel, which this is just as important to understand because if you have not a distinction here, you become

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Roman Catholic or even a false religion, right? So the gospel is very clear. And what's wonderful about the epistles is that they help clarify and expound on what

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Christ in the ministry was that He gave us. But the most helpful thing about the gospel is this.

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Paul says in Ephesians 2 that the good news is this. You were dead in your trespasses and sins, right?

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That's how you were born. You were born in Adam under the curse, dead. And then it says He made you alive.

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And how did He do that? He gifted you grace and faith, right? Grace is to receive something you don't deserve.

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And what is it that you received that you didn't reserve, right? Which was forgiveness, righteousness.

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And how did that come to life in you? Faith. All of that as a gift to you. That's the good news of the gospel is that you have nothing to boast of.

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When you stand before the Father and He looks at you and He points to you and says, justified, righteous.

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When He does that, you're going to raise your hands in celebration and say, thank you for your gift.

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You have no involvement in it. That's the good news. The gospel is

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Romans 4, 4 and 5, right? Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

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That's right. And to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly,

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His faith is counted as righteousness. And then we get 1

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Corinthians 1 .30, we get that because of God, we are now in Christ who has become to us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

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And so it's all of the Lord. And then Paul's conclusion is, therefore, let the one who boasts boast in the

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Lord, referencing Jeremiah 9. And because this is God's work, it's a gift completely.

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We're not doing anything to contribute to our salvation at all. We simply receive what

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Christ has accomplished by the mechanism of faith. It's passive.

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We are passive in it. That's right. Second Peter, one would be another way that Peter uses the gospel.

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He says his divine power has granted, that's gifted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence.

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So that's another great example that there's nothing for you to do in the gospel, He brings you to life,

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He forgives your sins, He gives you righteousness, and you now walk in His ways.

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Like He who began a good work in you will complete it. That's gospel, right? There's no do in the gospel.

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If there is do, if there's just a fraction of a percent that you are required to do something in the gospel, that's now law and gospel.

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Whereas, you know, I'm not sure who credits this as it's Michael Horton, whoever, but gospel. And it's important that if you have a fraction of percentage, you have reasons to boast.

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So we have multiple sections, Romans, Ephesians, Peter, that make it very clear.

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The good news of the gospel is when you realize you're alive and you realize you've been granted righteousness and forgiveness, you can stand there and go, well,

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I had nothing to do with this. And that's good. That means you can't do anything to disrupt it either.

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I mean, this is John 6 where he says, no one will take them out of my hands. Or John 10, right? I will lose none.

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That's all good news. No commands, no obligations, no law.

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All power is resting in Christ. This is the language of Isaiah 55, the language of Revelation 21.

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I mean, come and buy wine and milk and bread without money and without price. Come and drink of the water of life without payment.

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I mean, it's free. It's given to us by God, by grace.

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And it's like in our confession, even on justification, I mean, the active obedience of Christ under the law, the passive obedience of Christ in his suffering, his entire life, and in his death is imputed to us as our whole and only righteousness.

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So we're literally given everything that we need in order to stand before the Lord in the gospel.

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And we don't do it. We don't achieve it. We receive it, right? And last, I know we're running out of time here in this two -part episode that we're doing.

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You alluded to this just a minute ago, the collapsing of the law in the gospel. I think two things tend to happen as I've observed it.

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We either tend to do one of the following. We smuggle the law into the gospel where we turn the gospel into this kind of conditional thing.

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It turns into a kind of covenant of works that's conditioned upon something in us. Maybe that's our obedience.

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Maybe that's our sincerity. Maybe that's our affections or the transformation of our lives. It's conditioned upon something in me.

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And so now the gospel is a confusing thing because it's Jesus and me.

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It's Jesus and my subjective response to it or something. And that's not helpful because then, like you said, we've collapsed law and gospel and turned it into this other thing.

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Or another tendency that's prevalent is actually an attempt with the best of intentions to turn the law into a kind of gospel where we effectively tell people, do well enough.

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I mean, maybe we say, yes, trust Christ, but then we say, do well enough in these things in conforming your life unto the law and you will be saved.

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So again, we have collapsed the two categories. And when we keep them appropriately distinct, we can see how the law and the gospel are perfectly complementary.

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They're not contradictory at all. I mean, this is what Paul argues in Galatians, that if you actually could be saved by a law, then we would have a problem.

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But the fact that the law was never given for salvation, and even that statement, do this and live, is meant to crush sinners and drive them to the

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Savior. We don't have any contradiction here whatsoever if we understand law and gospel rightly.

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And so this is so critical, man, for our understanding and for our peace before the Lord. Well, I have one last statement and then

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I'll let you take us out. One of the things that can be confusing here, and we've done episodes on Lordship Salvation, we've done some episodes on Is Following Jesus the

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Gospel? We'll put those in our notes. Please listen to those. This is really an introduction to those episodes.

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So go hear them. But I will tell you this is that the promise of good works is in the gospel.

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It's a wonderful promise. Ezekiel says, I will cause you to walk in my ways. Ephesians says that the good works were predetermined before the world began.

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They are not obligations of receiving the gospel. They are the fruits of the gospel.

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It's the outflow of it. And so we can never put repentance, obedience, confession before, because then that's a law.

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The gospel is this, God does everything from beginning to end. We are simply the recipients of it.

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And we praise God as we see him do these good works in us. And Christ in the gospel for us is actually the means that God uses to impart faith, right?

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And then to produce these fruits, these outflows of regeneration. Because faith comes by hearing and hearing by what?

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The word of Christ, right? And so, yeah, we could talk about this all afternoon, but we are not going to do that.

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We've got other things to get to. John and I are about to go record something called Semper Reformanda.

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It's a second podcast that we record each week for our members, people who have partnered with Theocast financially, and also just to support the ministry in every way to see it grown and to see this message spread as far and wide as possible.

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There's all kinds of things that come along with being an SR member in addition to getting access to this additional podcast each week.

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You can become a part of the Semper Reformanda community. We've got an app where we all interact. It's kind of like Facebook better.

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We get to post things and ask people, you know, ask each other questions and encourage one another in the faith. And yeah, all of that is available to you.

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And so if you want more information about SR, as we shorthand call it, you can find that information over on our website,

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Theocast .org. So John, we're about to bounce out of here, man, and record about 15 minutes of additional content for our members.

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And for those of you who are joining us over there, we'll talk soon. For those who are not yet SR members, we'll talk with you in the regular platform again next week.