Law and Gospel

Joe Thorn:

The law is God’s revealed will for us all. We’re talking about his commands, which are summarized as loving God and neighbor, organized in the Decalogue [the Ten Commandments], and unpacked by the prophets, apostles, and Jesus. So when we read, for example, that God commands us to love, pray, or give—this is law. Now, many are ready to say, with Paul, that we are not saved by works of the law, but what is our relationship to the law? What purpose does it serve? The law essentially does three things:

1. The law tells us what’s right. God has not left us in the dark about his will and ways. He has graciously revealed himself and his will to us that we might know what is right and good. This is actually grace.

2. The law tells us what’s wrong. Unfortunately, we do not keep God’s commands. The law is held up against our own lives, and what is reflected back is a life of lawbreaking, rebellion, and selfishness. The law shows us what’s wrong—ourselves. Through the law we see our sin and guilt.

3. The law tells us what’s needed. The law then shows us that what we need before God is forgiveness, cleansing, and restoration. We need mercy if we are to find life. We need God to rescue us from our sin and his judgment. In this way the law prepares us for the gospel.

So the law then leads us to the gospel where by faith in Christ we find forgiveness for sinners, righteousness for the unrighteous, and victory for the defeated. Once we find our hope and identity in the gospel, we can look again to the law and confess with the psalmists and Paul that it is good. We are not condemned or under the curse of the law, so we can in freedom and gratitude walk in God’s ways imperfectly with great joy, because Christ has walked in God’s ways perfectly on our behalf.

In the end, we preach law and gospel because that’s what we find in the Bible, and you can’t really understand the beauty of the gospel apart from the reality of the law.

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