Is It Law or Gospel?

Matthew 22:34-40: But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducess, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all you mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

I recently heard a sermon in a church that historically has belonged to the Reformed Tradition. In summary, the pastor's point was that we need to love more. There was no presentation of how Christ had fulfilled the Law of Love. The preacher simply nagged the congregation to recognize that they simply didn’t love God or their neighbor enough.

In another congregation that claimed to belong to the Reformed Tradition, the objective was to be a Matthew 22 church. The effort was to be a church that loved God and neighbor.

The only problem with the two above situations is that Matthew 22 is Law. This fact is recognized by both the lawyer and Jesus Christ. If it is the Law, it is not the Gospel. The Law is a revelation of God’s moral will. But it is not a revelation of God’s redemptive will. Even before Christ died on the Cross, human beings knew that we should be better people.

If we try to follow the Ten Commandments, it may improve our outward behavior toward God and our neighbor. But the result will be a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law. Self-righteousness does not justify. Instead, the Law brings death. No one needs to go to church on Sunday morning to hear a nice self-help program about how to be a nicer person by keeping the Law.

We need to go to church on Sunday, not to be part of a social club, but in order to hear the Good News in response to the Bad News. The bad news is that we are born spiritually dead in sin, and therefore can not keep the Law and cannot save ourselves from the wrath of God. We also need to hear repeatedly that we are justified only by God’s saving work in His Son, Jesus Christ, and by His Holy Spirit.

When the Gospel is proclaimed, and faith comes to us by hearing that Gospel, the reborn will understand God’s Law as the concrete expression of God’s moral will by which we relate to Him and one another. Alive in Christ and no longer afraid of the wrath of God, the Law becomes a guide. We trust in Christ, who alone fulfilled the Law, and are guided by His Spirit. As a result, we are no longer fearful of judgment for our failures to keep the Law.

Unless we are Reforming our Thinking, we may not recognize the very important distinction between the Law and the Gospel.