Law
and Gospel
1]
As the distinction between the Law and the Gospel is a special
brilliant light, which serves to the end that God's Word may
be rightly divided, and the Scriptures of the holy prophets
and apostles may be properly explained and understood, we
must guard it with especial care, in order that these two
doctrines may not be mingled with one another, or a law be
made out of the Gospel, whereby the merit of Christ is obscured
and troubled consciences are robbed of their comfort, which
they otherwise have in the holy Gospel when it is preached
genuinely and in its purity, and by which they can support
themselves in their most grievous trials against the terrors
of the Law.
2]
Now, here likewise there has occurred a dissent among some
theologians of the Augsburg Confession; for the one side asserted
that the Gospel is properly not only a preaching of grace,
but at the same time also a preaching of repentance, which
rebukes the greatest sin, namely, unbelief. But the other
side held and contended that the Gospel is not properly a
preaching of repentance or of reproof [preaching of repentance,
convicting sin], as that properly belongs to God's Law, which
reproves all sins, and therefore unbelief also; but that the
Gospel is properly a preaching of the grace and favor of God
for Christ's sake, through which the unbelief of the converted,
which previously inhered in them, and which the Law of God
reproved, is pardoned and forgiven.
3]
Now, when we consider this dissent aright, it has been caused
chiefly by this, that the term Gospel is not always employed
and understood in one and the same sense, but in two ways,
in the Holy Scriptures, as also by ancient and modern church
teachers. 4] For sometimes it is employed so that there
is understood by it the entire doctrine of Christ, our Lord,
which He proclaimed in His ministry upon earth, and commanded
to be proclaimed in the New Testament, and hence comprised
in it the explanation of the Law and the proclamation of the
favor and grace of God, His heavenly Father, as it is written,
Mark 1, 1: The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the
Son of God. And shortly afterwards the chief heads are stated:
Repentance and forgiveness of sins. Thus, when Christ after
His resurrection commanded the apostles to preach the Gospel
in all the world, Mark 16, 15, He compressed the sum of this
doctrine into a few words, when He said, Luke 24, 46. 47:
Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer,
and to rise from the dead the third day; and that repentance
and remission of sins should be preached in His name among
all nations. So Paul, too, calls his entire doctrine the Gospel,
Acts 20, 21; but he embraces the sum of this doctrine under
the two heads: Repentance toward God and faith toward our
Lord Jesus Christ. 5] And in this sense the generalis
definitio, that is, the description of the word Gospel, when
employed in a wide sense and without the proper distinction
between the Law and the Gospel is correct, when it is said
that the Gospel is a preaching of repentance and the remission
of sins. For John, Christ, and the apostles began their preaching
with repentance and explained and urged not only the gracious
promise of the forgiveness of sins, but also the Law of God.
6] Furthermore the term Gospel is employed in another,
namely, in its proper sense, by which it comprises not the
preaching of repentance, but only the preaching of the grace
of God, as follows directly afterwards, Mark 1, 15, where
Christ says: Repent, and believe the Gospel.
7]
Likewise the term repentance also is not employed in the Holy
Scriptures in one and the same sense. For in some passages
of Holy Scripture it is employed and taken for the entire
conversion of man, as Luke 13, 5: Except ye repent, ye shall
all likewise perish. And in 15, 7: Likewise joy shalt be in
heaven over one sinner that repenteth. 8] But in this
passage, Mark 1, 15, as also elsewhere, where repentance and
faith in Christ, Acts 20, 21, or repentance and remission
of sins, Luke 24, 46. 47, are mentioned as distinct, to repent
means nothing else than truly to acknowledge sins, to be heartily
sorry for them, and to desist from them. 9] This knowledge
comes from the Law, but is not sufficient for saving conversion
to God, if faith in Christ be not added, whose merits the
comforting preaching of the holy Gospel offers to all penitent
sinners who are terrified by the preaching of the Law. For
the Gospel proclaims the forgiveness of sins, not to coarse
and secure hearts, but to the bruised or penitent, Luke 4,
18. And lest repentance or the terrors of the Law turn into
despair, the preaching of the Gospel must be added, that it
may be a repentance unto salvation, 2 Cor. 7, 10.
10]
For since the mere preaching of the Law, without Christ, either
makes presumptuous men, who imagine that they can fulfil the
Law by outward works, or forces them utterly to despair, Christ
takes the Law into His hands, and explains it spiritually,
Matt. 5, 21ff ; Rom. 7, 14 and 1, 18, and thus reveals His
wrath from heaven upon all sinners, and shows how great it
is; whereby they are directed to the Law, and from it first
learn to know their sins aright—a knowledge which Moses
never could extort from them. For as the apostle testifies,
2 Cor. 3, 14f, even though Moses is read, yet the veil which
he put over his face is never lifted, so that they cannot
understand the Law spiritually, and how great things it requires
of us, and how severely it curses and condemns us because
we cannot observe or fulfil it. Nevertheless, when it shalt
turn to the Lord, the veil shalt be taken away, 2 Cor. 3,
16.
11]
Therefore the Spirit of Christ must not only comfort, but
also through the office of the Law reprove the world of sin,
John 16, 8, and thus must do in the New Testament, as the
prophet says, Is. 28, 21, opus alienum, ut faciat opus proprium,
that is, He must do the work of another (reprove), in order
that He may [afterwards] do His own work, which is to comfort
and preach of grace. For to this end He was earned [from the
Father] and sent to us by Christ, and for this reason, too,
He is called the Comforter, as Dr. Luther has explained in
his exposition of the Gospel for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity,
in the following words:
12]
Anything that preaches concerning our sins and God's wrath,
let it be done how or when it will, that is all a preaching
of the Law. Again, the Gospel is such a preaching as shows
and gives nothing else than grace and forgiveness in Christ,
although it is true and right that the apostles and preachers
of the Gospel (as Christ Himself also did) confirm the preaching
of the Law, and begin it with those who do not yet acknowledge
their sins nor are terrified at [by the sense of] God's wrath;
as He says, John 16, 8: 13] "The Holy Ghost will reprove
the world of sin because they believe not on Me." Yea, what
more forcible, more terrible declaration and preaching of
God's wrath against sin is there than just the suffering and
death of Christ, His Son? But as long as all this preaches
God's wrath and terrifies men, it is not yet the preaching
of the Gospel nor Christ's own preaching, but that of Moses
and the Law against the impenitent. For the Gospel and Christ
were never ordained and given for the purpose of terrifying
and condemning, but of comforting and cheering those who are
terrified and timid. And again: Christ says, John 16, 8: "The
Holy Ghost will reprove the world of sin"; which cannot be
done except through the explanation of the Law. Jena, Tom.
2, fol. 455.
14]
So, too, the Smalcald Articles say: The New Testament retains
and urges the office of the Law, which reveals sins and God's
wrath; but to this office it immediately adds the promise
of grace through the Gospel.
15]
And the Apology says: To a true and salutary repentance the
preaching of the Law alone is not sufficient, but the Gospel
should be added thereto. Therefore the two doctrines belong
together, and should also be urged by the side of each other,
but in a definite order and with a proper distinction; and
the Antinomians or assailants of the Law are justly condemned,
who abolish the preaching of the Law from the Church, and
wish sins to be reproved, and repentance and sorrow to be
taught, not from the Law, but from the Gospel.
16]
But in order that every one may see that in the dissent of
which we are treating we conceal nothing, but present the
matter to the eyes of the Christian reader plainly and clearly:
17]
Therefore [we shall set forth our meaning:] we unanimously
believe, teach, and confess that the Law is properly a divine
doctrine, in which the righteous, immutable will of God is
revealed, what is to be the quality of man in his nature,
thoughts, words, and works, in order that he may be pleasing
and acceptable to God; and it threatens its transgressors
with God's wrath and temporal and eternal punishments. For
as Luther writes against the law-stormers [Antinomians]: Everything
that reproves sin is and belongs to the Law, whose peculiar
office it is to reprove sin and to lead to the knowledge of
sins, Rom. 3, 20; 7, 7; and as unbelief is the root and well-spring
of all reprehensible sins [all sins that must be censured
and reproved], the Law reproves unbelief also.
18]
However, this is true likewise that the Law with its doctrine
is illustrated and explained by the Gospel; and nevertheless
it remains the peculiar office of the Law to reprove sins
and teach concerning good works.
19]
Thus, the Law reproves unbelief, [namely,] when men do not
believe the Word of God. Now, since the Gospel, which alone
properly teaches and commands to believe in Christ, is God's
Word, the Holy Ghost, through the office of the Law, also
reproves unbelief, that men do not believe in Christ, although
it is properly the Gospel alone which teaches concerning saving
faith in Christ.
20]
However, now that man has not kept the Law of God, but transgressed
it, his corrupt nature, thoughts, words, and works fighting
against it, for which reason he is under God's wrath, death,
all temporal calamities, and the punishment of hell-fire,
the Gospel is properly a doctrine which teaches what man should
believe, that he may obtain forgiveness of sins with God,
namely, that the Son of God, our Lord Christ, has taken upon
Himself and borne the curse of the Law, has expiated and paid
for all our sins, through whom alone we again enter into favor
with God, obtain forgiveness of sins by faith, are delivered
from death and all the punishments of sins, and eternally
saved.
21]
For everything that comforts, that offers the favor and grace
of God to transgressors of the Law, is, and is properly called,
the Gospel, a good and joyful message that God will not punish
sins, but forgive them for Christ's sake.
22]
Therefore every penitent sinner ought to believe, that is,
place his confidence in the Lord Christ alone, that He was
delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification,
Rom. 4, 25, that He was made sin for us who knew no sin, that
we might be made the righteousness of God in Him, 2 Cor. 5,
21, who of God is made unto us Wisdom, and Righteousness,
and Sanctification, and Redemption, 1 Cor. 1, 30, whose obedience
is counted to us for righteousness before God's strict tribunal,
so that the Law, as above set forth, is a ministration that
kills through the letter and preaches condemnation, 2 Cor.
3, 7, but the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to
every one that believeth, Rom. 1, 16, that preaches righteousness
and gives the Spirit, 1 Cor. 1, 18; Gal. 3, 2. As Dr. Luther
has urged this distinction with especial diligence in nearly
all his writings, and has properly shown that the knowledge
of God derived from the Gospel is far different from that
which is taught and learned from the Law, because even the
heathen to a certain extent had a knowledge of God from the
natural law, although they neither knew Him aright nor glorified
Him aright, Rom. 1, 20f.
23]
From the beginning of the world these two proclamations [kinds
of doctrines] have been ever and ever inculcated alongside
of each other in the Church of God, with a proper distinction.
For the descendants of the venerated patriarchs, as also the
patriarchs themselves, not only called to mind constantly
how in the beginning man had been created righteous and holy
by God, and through the fraud of the Serpent had transgressed
God's command, had become a sinner, and had corrupted and
precipitated himself with all his posterity into death and
eternal condemnation, but also encouraged and comforted themselves
again by the preaching concerning the Seed of the Woman, who
would bruise the Serpent's head, Gen. 3, 15; likewise, concerning
the Seed of Abraham, in whom all the nations of the earth
shall be blessed, Gen. 22, 18; likewise, concerning David's
Son, who should restore again the kingdom of Israel and be
a light to the heathen, Ps. 110, 1; Is. 49, 6; Luke 2, 32,
who was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our
iniquities, by whose stripes we are healed, Is. 53, 5.
24]
These two doctrines, we believe and confess, should ever and
ever be diligently inculcated in the Church of God even to
the end of the world, although with the proper distinction
of which we have heard, in order that, through the preaching
of the Law and its threats in the ministry of the New Testament
the hearts of impenitent men may be terrified, and brought
to a knowledge of their sins and to repentance; but not in
such a way that they lose heart and despair in this process,
but that (since the Law is a schoolmaster unto Christ that
we might be justified by faith, Gal. 3, 24, and thus points
and leads us not from Christ, but to Christ, who is the end
of the Law, Rom. 10, 4) 25] they be comforted and strengthened
again by the preaching of the holy Gospel concerning Christ,
our Lord, namely, that to those who believe the Gospel, God
forgives all their sins through Christ, adopts them as children
for His sake, and out of pure grace, without any merit on
their part, justifies and saves them, however, not in such
a way that they may abuse the grace of God, 26] and
sin hoping for grace, as Paul, 2 Cor. 3, 7ff , thoroughly
and forcibly shows the distinction between the Law and the
Gospel.
27]
Now, in order that both doctrines, that of the Law and that
of the Gospel, be not mingled and confounded with one another,
and what belongs to the one may not be ascribed to the other,
whereby the merit and benefits of Christ are easily obscured
and the Gospel is again turned into a doctrine of the Law,
as has occurred in the Papacy, and thus Christians are deprived
of the true comfort which they have in the Gospel against
the terrors of the Law, and the door is again opened in the
Church of God to the Papacy, therefore the true and proper
distinction between the Law and the Gospel must with all diligence
be inculcated and preserved, and whatever gives occasion for
confusion inter legem et evangelium (between the Law and the
Gospel), that is, whereby the two doctrines, Law and Gospel,
may be confounded and mingled into one doctrine, should be
diligently prevented. It is, therefore, dangerous and wrong
to convert the Gospel, properly so called, as distinguished
from the Law, into a preaching of repentance or reproof [a
preaching of repentance, reproving sin]. For otherwise, if
understood in a general sense of the entire doctrine, also
the Apology says several times that the Gospel is a preaching
of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Meanwhile, however,
the Apology also shows that the Gospel is properly the promise
of the forgiveness of sins and of justification through Christ,
but that the Law is a doctrine which reproves sins and condemns.
