I probably heard the gospel many times during my childhood, but it didn’t register until I was a junior in college. When it finally grabbed my attention one fall night outside Gorin’s ice cream shop in the Five Points South neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama, I saw my need to be rescued from my sin. I was with a friend who was a Christian when all of the puzzle pieces fit together. She prayed for me and with me after I acknowledged the fact that my efforts to perform and get my act together would never meet God’s expectations of holiness. After we prayed I felt a weight lift from my body. Seriously. I did. It must’ve been twenty years of self-inflicted and societal pressure to be something I could never be floating away into the dark night.
A few months later I ended up at a church that preached the gospel every Sunday. My eyes and ears were open, and I heard the Good News every time I walked through the doors of that building. I also heard it at Bible studies and small group gatherings. I heard it while hanging out with my new friends from the singles group. I drank from the firehose of this gospel-centered theology, taking huge gulps of what felt like freedom. I needed God’s grace. I needed the truth that is described so concisely in Law and Gospel: A Theology for Sinners (and Saints): “The Gospel announces that we are justified by grace through faith: not by what we do, or even who we are, but by what Christ has done and who he is. Our guilt has been atoned for, the Law fulfilled.”
Every morning I woke up in my closet of a dorm room and asked myself and God, “Is this really true? Are all of my sins covered? Am I a new creation in Christ? Does God offer me grace because of the person and work of Jesus?” The answer to all of these questions was yes. The answer to these questions twenty-two years later is yes—the answer to these questions will always be yes.
So why do I still operate as if I’m trying to earn my way into everyone’s good graces? Why do I feel guilt when I think about how I’ve missed every single daily Lenten preaching and luncheon at my church over the past several weeks? Why did I send a groveling email to David Zahl last night apologizing for not submitting this post yesterday as I planned to do? Why do I feel like I have failed as a wife, mom, friend, neighbor, and writer? The answer to these questions is a little more complicated than a simple yes or no. I’m a sinner. I’m also looking at how I’m failing to fulfill the measly little “l” laws that I’ve put in place to substitute for God’s ultimate Law: “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” But I can’t even fulfill my own half-ass substitution laws.
I see my need for forgiveness, but I’m not looking at Jesus. In Law and Gospel, William McDavid, Ethan Richardson, and David Zahl write, “Perhaps it is enough to say that the Law reveals that we need to be forgiven; the Gospel announces we have been forgiven. Full stop.” I need that full stop. This is why God provides a church that preaches and shows me the Gospel, why God places people in my life who remind me of the Gospel, and why God gives me His Word and books like Law and Gospel. God puts me in the way of the truths of the Gospel because I’m forgetful, and I’m still a sinner in need of a Rescuer. My sinfulness won’t disappear or float away this side of eternity. But neither will God’s free gift of grace.
If I take a few minutes to contemplate the last few days, I can see fruit of the Gospel in my life braided with my sin and with my efforts to live up to little “l” laws. McDavid, Richardson, and Zahl write in Law and Gospel, “Language about ‘fruits’ is dangerous, though, because as sinners we are tempted to examine our own lives for signs of these fruits. Of course, once we’re evaluating ourselves, we’re squarely back to the territory of Law.” Still, it is good to know I’m not the exact same person I was twenty-two years ago in front of that ice cream shop. There are glimpses of gratitude, love, spontaneity, humor (with help from my husband, our children and my friend Kelly), and freedom. There is also a soul that is weighed down by sin, then released by God’s free gift of grace, then weighed down again. It’s like I have a moon with its own phases of weight and release. But after I glance at my sin or the fruit of the Gospel, God helps me rest my gaze on Himself—the giver of all good things and the redeemer of all bad things.
Law and Gospel sums it all up here:
The measure of God’s mercy is Christ. The signs of transformation as a result of the Gospel are mostly illegible, and the true saint would have little desire to read them if they were. The measure of the believer’s state of virtue or holiness, therefore, is also Christ. We so often approach our faith as if it were a call to traverse the distance between man and God, ensconced even in our language of growing ‘closer’ to God. “To open up again the abyss closed in Jesus Christ,” Karl Barth wrote, “cannot be our task.” There is not distance, only the God who is, in Meister Eckhart’s words, “nearer to me than I am to myself.”
There are times that I desperately want to close what I perceive as a gap between God and me.
But it’s not there. Jesus is.
COMMENTS
16 responses to “The Law, the Gospel, and Law and Gospel: A Theology for Sinners (and Saints)”
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Amen.
And a second amen.
The “naysayers” get to me but I understand this and I’m not letting go. As scripture says “Christ is my holiness”. I just need help continuing to believe it. It’s too awesome to let go.
I need help believing it, too! God has us, though.
I add a third Amen. Thanks!
Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins,(1) and accepteth us as righteous in his sight,(2) only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us,(3) and received by faith alone.(4)
(1) Rom. 3:24-25; 4:6-8.
(2) II Cor. 5:19, 21.
(3) Rom. 5:17-19.
(4) Gal. 2:16; Phil. 3:9.
I’ve seen that before. 🙂
I’m thankful for my many years in churches that are guided by the WCF and the shorter catechism.
“There is no effort without error.” But we are not errors.
We aren’t! I love this response to “There is no effort without error.”
I hope you can help me with this a little as it kind of relates to the article. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with “word of faith” but that’s my background and my father and his wife are into it as well and he introduced me to it. I learned a lot and it still helps even now but my faith is in a different place and that’s not ok with my father. He can see I have an attitude when it comes to him giving me advice although I didn’t intend it this way and I need healing restoration for hearing loss and he wants me to speak the scriptures related to healing everyday. I believe this works for some people but I don’t think it’s for everybody. I’ve spoke scriptures thousands of times and got nothing and my heart was as far as a Pharisee’s from God because when I did so my mind was in other places for those 20 or 30 minutes or whatever when I would meditate or speak them just running like a motor. After hearing Joseph Prince I really began to understand the gospel and he himself has said so many things contrary to word of faith but it’s as if my dad is not aware of those things even though he’s heard him and others preach the gospel and even forgetting how I told him Joseph Prince was speaking the scriptures and using “formulas” from the word of faith and getting nothing from heaven until he read a portion of scripture and just saw simply that Jesus loved him through the cross. And only then did his daughter get healed. The truth is I don’t care about any kind of blessing as much as I care about the love of God. I’m just not interested getting those blessings through the law and even if I had them now it wouldn’t get me as excited as knowing Jesus loves me and that I can just sit at His feet like Mary or rest in his bosom like john. I just wanna know how do I respond because I know sometimes the Holy Spirit knows my dad and many other Christians won’t believe the gospel is really about just Jesus. Thanks for any reply.
I’d love to offer some thoughts on this in the next day or so. It might not address the situation entirely, but might help a bit because my hope would be for you to believe that Jesus is intimately involved in this situation and near to you.
I’m looking forward to it. No apologies necessary (like to David Zahl) if it takes you a couple more days :).
Ha! 🙂 We’re preparing to move so things are crazy. I’ve been thinking about this though. Hope to reply with more soon!
So here’s what I’m thinking. Our only hope is in the fact that we are in Christ. He is our righteousness and our salvation. There’s nothing we can do to undo what He has done for us and there’s nothing we can do to do more than what He has done for us. When I suffer and experience the effects of the fall in various ways, I want to escape my difficulty. I want to figure out a way to close the gap between what I want my life to be like and what my life is actually like. This never works, because I’m not God. I don’t have a good answer for why we suffer. The Bible talks about it, but none of those reasons actually make the suffering go away. I know God is with me in my suffering, though. I know He is continuing to form me into who He wants me to be, and part of that process is using the awful things in my life as well as the lovely things in my life. I do think praying and speaking the truths of Scriptures over our lives and the lives of others is a good thing, and when He prompts us to do so, there is something mysterious and good in that because God’s word is living and active. We need to remember that it’s only because of Christ in us that we have any desire or prompting to turn to Scripture and prayer. Also, God may not use those truths or prayers in our lives in ways that we prefer. I hate that you are dealing with hearing loss. That’s really sad and something we should grieve. I’m sure your father wants the best for you. But God doesn’t promise to give us what we want from this life. He gives us Himself, though, and I pray we all trust that He’s enough.
Thanks for replying. You’re right. He’s God. One thing they said was it’s a good fight, “the fight of faith”. What they didn’t realize was I agree but in a different way because the gospel is better than anything I’ve ever heard. And anyone arguing from a standpoint of law so to speak would be hard pressed to change my mind. I’ve definitely felt the word being living and active in my spirit. It was actually a time where I had gotten so much revelation because I did what a prominent pastor had done at one time. He read the gospels 3 times within 30 days and I just decided I would do it too. I didn’t even know what would happen. But after having that experience I tried it again and I didn’t get any more revelation the second time around. As I’ve heard Joseph Prince mention God isn’t necessarily keen on formulas. Anyway it’s a good thing we can’t undo it and in the meantime I’ll guess I’ll talk to my dad about things I’ve heard from preachers he likes since he at least respects them a lot.
“Language about ‘fruits’ is dangerous, though, because as sinners we are tempted to examine our own lives for signs of these fruits. Of course, once we’re evaluating ourselves, we’re squarely back to the territory of Law.”
Didn’t the Holy Spirit write about fruits (Gal. 5:22-23)? Why the fear of being “tempted to examine our own lives”? Didn’t the Spirit write “examine yourselves” (2 Cor. 13:5)? Didn’t He also write that we should “examine our own work” (Gal. 6:4)?
I think that the problem these writes have is with the Law. In their view, the Law is past. Over and done with. Even in Christ! Yet the Spirit through the Gospel is “rewiring” us so that we live in conformity with God’s Law, which is God’s unchanging will.
What’s so bad with God’s will?
Sad.