LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1986, Sheet 88

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86 BIBLE STUDY AND DEVOTIONAL ESSAYS

At the same time, each and every one of us are sum-
moned to properly distinguish the message of Law and the
message of Gospel. Initially, this would appear to be a
rather simple task—to divide up the Bible between com-
mands and promises. Yet, Walther was more modest about
success at the task than we. “Properly distinguishing the
Law and the Gospel,” he said, “is the highest and most
difficult art of Christians in general and of theologians in
particular.”

What, in fact, does distinguish the Law and the Gospel?
It is not that one is a human word and the other divine.
Both are the Word of God. It is not that the gospel is nec-
essary while the Law may be dispensed with in the end.
They are inseparably bound together with and connected
to each other. The distinction is not that the Law is the
Old Testament and the Gospel is the New. Both Law and
Gospel are in both Testaments. It is not even that the
Gospel is about Christ. Even the story of Jesus may become
Law if presented as an ethical ideal to be piously imitated.

Rather, the distinction lay not merely in what the Law
is and what the Gospel is but in what the Law does and
what the Gospel does. What our Lutheran tradition asks
about the preached Word is not simply “What is it?” but
“What does it do?” Whether a particular statement in
Scripture is Law or Gospel meets its ultimate test in the
use to which the Holy Spirit puts it in His dealings with
people.

As the Law performs its function of making clear the
actual state of affairs between fallen humankind and God,
it reveals how terribly bad off we are. When St. Paul writes,
“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what
I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ... Wretched man
that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
(Rom. 7:15-24 RSV), he is experiencing the revealing and
convicting power of the Law. Paul knew how the Law
worked. We know it too. The Law demands perfect fear
and love of God but it does not help us to become righteous.
Instead, it accuses, condemns, crushes, terrifies, and con-
ditions. It is indictment—indeed, it is prosecutor-judge-
executioner, all in one. It was not accidental that Luther’s
favorite phrase for the Law was “God’s hangman.” By the
Law word we sinners are destroyed. A word that does not
demand or accuse is not Law.

But if the Law drives us to our knees, the Gospel raises
us up again. The Gospel is the dramatic news that what
we could never do for ourselves that God has done for us.
Our fathers expressed it this way in the Formula of Con-
cord: “The content of the Gospel is this, that the Son of
God, Christ our Lord, himself assumed and bore the curse
of the law and expiated and paid for all our sins, that
through him alone we re-enter the good graces of God,
obtain forgiveness of sins through faith, are freed from
death and all the punishments of sin, and are saved eter-
nally” (FC SD V 20).

The Gospel gives, pardons, comforts, frees. It, and it
alone, makes us alive in Christ. A word that does not par-
don and comfort the sinner is not Gospel, and the only
word that can do that in the face of the Law is the word
of the crucified and risen Christ, who is Himself the end
of the Law. We know through the Law that we are con-
demned; but this is our consolation, through the Gospel

we are accepted and accepted unconditionally. Whether we
are thinking of sin, or flesh, or Satan, they are strong to
be sure, but Christ is stronger. As Luther says, “if we look
at the flesh, we are sinners; if we look at the Spirit, we
are righteous. Yet our righteousness is more abundant
than our sin, because the holiness and righteousness of
Christ vastly surpasses the sin of the entire world.” And
because God came to this world in Jesus Christ, it is the
Gospel that counts. God’s Yes is stronger than His No.

Brothers and sisters, how clearly and consistently does
the world need to hear this in our preaching, our teaching,
our sharing of the faith. It is no longer death that speaks
the last word, but resurrection and life. The Law does not
stand above the Gospel. It is always subordinate. The
Gospel is preeminent. In the words of Walther, “the ulti-
mate aim in our preaching of the Law must be to preach
the Gospel.” To be sure, this does not weaken the Law. It
confronts men and women in their futile scramble for the
false securities of this world. But in the midst of their
despair and death, the Gospel calls them to a new life. It
proclaims to them the forgiveness of sin, not as something
one must win or achieve, but as the free gift of God in
Jesus Christ. Indispensible though the Law is, such a
Gospel triumphs over Law. God’s deed in Christ removes
every need for self-justification before Him or anyone else.
It is God who makes us righteous, not we ourselves. This
fact has a liberating effect because it situates the promise
of our present and our future in God rather than ourselves,
thus giving us the basis for hope and confidence that the
Law could never provide.

If the point of making the distinction between Law and
Gospel, then, is to keep from losing the Gospel—to keep
the Good News good—the tragic consequence of confusing
the two is that the Law never seems to be the loser. When
it is thrown out of one window it comes back through an-
other—usually by a wrong definition of the Gospel.

There are countless ways in which Law and Gospel can
be confused in our time. However, I believe that at this
juncture in our life and work together there are three areas
to which we must especially attend so that the Gospel does
not become Law.

First, in the church’s theology. The central point of the
Christian message, the article “by which the church stands
or falls,” is justification. To be justified means to be counted
as being righteous. God, by raising His Son from the dead,
has reckoned the whole world to be righteous. The entire
world of sinners has been redeemed, forgiven, and recon-
ciled to God. The Gospel is that our being counted righteous
is God’s unconditional declaration of His love for us. This
does not mean that we are counted righteous because of
our believing; that would make our believing into another
good work for which we would presume to take credit. Our
faith in the promise of the Gospel is not something we do;
it is not a matter of having the proper attitude or opinion
about the promise. God does not accept us as a reward for
believing in Him. We believe in Him because He has ac-
cepted us. Faith follows from hearing the promise. To teach
that God forgives because we believe or that faith is in any
sense meritorious, confuses Law and Gospel. So does any
suggestion that since people are reconciled to God by their
repentance, God has not reconciled the world. Confusion

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