for it depends on this distinction.” – Hermann Sasse, Here We Stand: Nature and Character of the Lutheran Faith, trans. by Theodore G. Tappert, (New York: Harper & Bros., 1938). p. 114.

C. F. W. Walther (known in his own day as the American Luther) says:

“The true knowledge of the distinction between the Law and the Gospel is not only a glorious light, affording the correct understanding of the entire Holy Scriptures, but without this knowledge Scripture is and remains a sealed book.” – C.F.W. Walther, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel.

The Bible will be an impenetrable mystery as long as we are confused about this.

THE LAW refers to everything God commands of us in Scripture. “Do this and you shall live.” These commands are found throughout the entire Bible, Old and New Testament alike. The Law is holy, righteous and good. There is nothing wrong with the Law at all. It has its source in God Himself. The problem is us and our total inability as sinners to keep it.

The bad news gets even worse – to break even one part of the Law makes us guilty of breaking it all as a whole.

“For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.” (James 2:10).

THE GOSPEL refers to Jesus Christ – His Person and His work. The word “gospel” means “glad tidings” or “good news.” It is good news concerning something entirely outside of us or our actions. The news is an announcement concerning all that Christ has done for sinners through His sinless, perfect life, fulfilling all the demands of the Law; as well as His substitutionary death and resurrection. Christ died for our sins and lived for our righteousness. The Gospel is good news about what God has done for us in Christ.

“When God gives orders and tells us what will happen if we fail to obey those orders perfectly, that is in the category of what the Reformers, following the biblical text, called law. When God promises freely, providing for us because of Christ’s righteousness the status he demands of us, this is in the category of gospel. It is good news from start to finish. The Bible includes both, and the Reformers were agreed that the Scriptures taught clearly that the law, whether Old or New Testament commands, was not eliminated for the believer. Nevertheless, they insisted that nothing in this category of law could be a means of justification or acceptance before a holy God … The law comes, not to reform the sinner nor to show him or her the “narrow way” to life, but to crush the sinner’s hopes of escaping God’s wrath through personal effort or even cooperation. All of our righteousness must come from someone else-someone who has fulfilled the law’s demands. Only after we have been stripped of our “filthy rags” of righteousness (Isa. 64:6)- our fig leaves through which we try in vain to hide our guilt and shame-can we be clothed with Christ’s righteousness. First comes the law to proclaim judgment and death, then the gospel to proclaim justification and life.” – Modern Reformation: Good News: The Gospel for Christians (May/June 2003)

Law then is everything in the Scriptures that commands and gospel is everything in the Scriptures that promises God’s favor in Christ. If we confuse these, we’ll weaken the law, lowering the bar to something that we can (or think we can) actually do, and we’ll make the gospel anything but good news.

The Law is holy. It is also unbending, unyielding, and brutal in its harsh demands.

Romans 3:19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

The Law never can justify us. It only condemns us. There is no good news in the Law. None at all. The Law reveals our sin and God’s justice in giving us all the punishment we deserve for breaking His commands.
The Gospel, on the other hand, does not defy the Law. It is not opposed to it, in that sense. Yet it is markedly distinct from it.

The Gospel is about the work of the Savior and can be summed up in two words: TOTAL SUBSTITUTION!

Matt 5:17 – “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

Christ lived the life we should have lived (He fulfilled the Law) and died the death we deserved in our place.

At the cross, God provided an exchange – a transfer. The punishment due to us came upon Christ; and the good due to Christ was given to us. (Isa 53:4-6; 2 Cor 5:21).

God commands us by means of his law, but delivers us by his gospel. In the Gospel, God saves us from God.

The gospel is never an exhortation for us to do something, but an announcement of something that God has done for us. We are called to obey the gospel—that is, to embrace it, but the gospel itself is the good news about what God has done for us in Christ.

Theodore Beza said that “confusion of law and gospel is one of the principal sources of the corruptions in the church.” Ursinus, primary author of the Heidelberg Catechism, said the same. So did the great Elizabethan Puritan William Perkins, as well as John Owen, Charles Spurgeon, and Charles Hodge. On and on we could go.

“It’s easy to see when law and gospel are being confused when Rome says, ‘Do penance and you will be saved,’ or Charles Finney says, ‘Perfect obedience to the law is the necessary condition of present justification.’ It’s more difficult to recognize that the gentle, affirming, smiling stream of exhortations and life coaching in our day is also a form of law (not necessarily biblical) that is often presented as if it were the gospel.” – Michael Horton

Finney was right to say perfect obedience is a necessity. Where he was wrong is to teach that man could do this – that the Law of God is doable.

THE WORST NEWS EVER TOLD – BAD NEWS FOR MODERN MAN

The most well known sermon in history is undoubtedly the Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Yet the most well known sermon is undoubtedly the most misunderstood.

If you go to 95% of so called “Evangelical” Churches today, the Pastor, if he preaches on this passage will talk about “the way to a happy life” or “the life blessed by God.”

What these kind of sermons fail to address is the fact that in this sermon, Jesus preaches total LAW. There is no Gospel in it at all, and all this was by design. Jesus wanted to bring His hearers to the place where they throw up their hands in TOTAL DESPAIR and cry out for a Savior (which of course is Christ Himself).

Rather than simply leaving us to condemnation because we have failed to keep the Law outwardly, Jesus goes further and says that God’s intention in His commandments was for us to have inward conformity too. Murder is one thing but God wants not even inward hatred in our hearts. Outward adultery is one thing, but God wants not even the hint of lust.

Everything Jesus said was true, but everything he said brought us under the condemnation of the Law.

“The Law is for the proud and the Gospel for the brokenhearted.” – Martin Luther

If we haven’t got the point of this, it is summed up in Matthew 5:48 “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Some teachers, not understanding the Law and Gospel distinction, seek to make this Scripture DOABLE. It is not. Such teaching places a burden on people they cannot endure.

Though God has every right to command perfection from His creatures, since the Fall, man is unable to do it. This word “perfect” here does not mean “mature” (as some suggest) or else the word would make no sense in context. Jesus is not saying “be mature as God is mature.” That is just silly.

No, it says “perfect” because it means perfect. God demands perfection. Just as God Himself is perfect, you be perfect! This one verse alone is enough to condemn each and every one of us – which leads us to the law and Gospel distinction:

God demands 100% faultless perfect obedience, and if you can’t do that, you better find Someone who can do it for you.

Romans 3: 19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
27 Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28 For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

The hymn Rock of Ages captures this theme well in these two verses:

Not the labor of my hands
Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress;
Helpless, look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Savior, or I die.