Law and Gospel

To understand the difference between the law and the gospel in Scripture, it is necessary for us to distinguish between commands and promises, between indicatives and imperatives. Regarding this distinction Martin Luther said, “This difference between the Law and the Gospel is the height of knowledge in Christendom. Every person and all persons who assume or glory in the name of Christian should know and be able to state this difference. ” There are some who teach that there is never any antithesis between law and gospel in the Bible. And while it is true that the law and the gospel do not oppose each other in God's purposes, the two have different uses. Paul shows that they are in conflict when one uses the law to do what only the gospel can do, seeking to be justified by the law. But the Scriptures speak of a righteousness apart from law keeping (Romans 3:21).




Recognizing the difference between law and gospel is important for several reasons. In order for the law to be a school master to bring us to Christ, it has to be understood in its full severity. Reading commands as if they are only advice keeps us from seeing our need for the One perfect law keeper, Jesus Christ. 1 Timothy 1:8 says that the law is good when it is used lawfully. When the law is taught as law, souls are convicted and made new.

On the other hand, to read gospel passages as if they're obligations for us to fulfill is to turn good news into bad news. To read the indicatives of Scripture, such as “...the just shall live by faith...,” as if they are instead imperatives, (let us live faithfully), is to mishandle the Word of God. Sometimes the gospel is presented as a set of new laws, laws which are easier to keep that the Old Testament regulations. But a softer set of rules cannot provide relief from our sin nature inherited from Adam.




I am privileged to sit under preaching where this distinction is carefully observed. The sweetness of the gospel is set before me often, and the imperatives of Scripture are proclaimed, yet the two are not blurred. Preaching should not just be a 45 minute list of “oughts.” God's Word is to be handled with respect to its original purpose. Theodore Beza has rightly said, “Ignorance of this distinction between Law and Gospel is one of the principal sources of the abuses which corrupted and still corrupt Christianity.”

A hymn by Isaac Watts

The law commands, and makes us know
What duties to our God we owe;
But 'tis the gospel must reveal
Where lies our strength to do his will.
The law discovers guilt and sin,
And shews how vile our hearts have been;
Only the gospel can express
Forgiving love and cleansing grace.
What curses doth the law denounce
Against the man that fails but once!
But in the gospel Christ appears
Pardoning the guilt of numerous years.
My soul, no more attempt to draw
Thy life and comfort from the law,
Fly to the hope the gospel gives;
The man that trusts the promise lives.

Giving Up Things

In the last days, some will depart from the faith to follow false teaching. Paul tells us it is so in I Timothy 4. And what will be the content of the deception intended to lead people astray? What are those teachings which he calls the doctrine of devils? They will speak lies. They will forbid marriage. And they will command people to abstain from certain foods. Not what immediately comes to mind when we think of the doctrine of devils, right?

The Christian religion is not one of asceticism. Sometimes we confuse difficult with God-honoring. But pleasure is not a bad thing in the Scriptures. This seems an important concept to remember during this season when many are participating in lent. In Rome, penitent Catholics are still climbing on their knees up the stairs called Scala Santa, especially popular during lent. In our country, chocolate and coffee are popularly given up for lent, and not because it's thought to be sin, but because to some, we just have to give up something...



If we seek to please God by our denial of personal pleasure, we misunderstand what it is that God is pleased with. Paul prays that the Christians in Colosse would be fully pleasing to the Lord, which he describes as being fruitful in good works and increasing in knowledge of God. If anyone thinks the Bible is against pleasure, consider how the goodness of wine is described in Psalm 104:15, that it makes the heart glad. Food is given to be received with thanksgiving (I Timothy 4:4). And then there's Song of Solomon.



Self-denial for the needs of others is a good thing (Philippians 2:3). But self-denial for it's own sake has no value against the indulgence of the flesh (Colossians 2:23). Colossians 2:20-23 calls the regulations to not touch, taste, and handle the commandments of men. These teachings are self-imposed; it is false humility.

There is a time for mourning. There is a purpose to fasting. And so we all know we should be thoughtful about the things we indulge in. But let us also be careful about the things we forbid.

Defining The Word "Mystery"

“This Is a Great Mystery...” Ephesians 5:32

What comes to mind when the word “mystery” is used? We might think of that which is unknowable, something that is beyond us, that which we do not have the ability to comprehend, or even that which is contradictory. We see this explanation in the writings of some theologians. But when we look at the Bible's use of the word “mystery,” we see something different: The word “mystery” in the Bible means a truth that is or was a secret, later to be revealed.

John Murray explains the Biblical usage of this word in Redemption Accomplished and Applied. He writes, “We are liable to use the word [mystery] to designate something that is completely unintelligible and of which we cannot have any understanding. That is not the sense of Scripture.” Murray goes on to say that a mystery is something which was hidden in the mind of God, but that it did not continue to be hidden: God has made it known.



This is how the word mystery is used in Colossians 1:26. The mystery of the Gentiles is said to have been hidden, but now has been revealed. Romans 16:25 speaks of a mystery which was hidden in times past, but has now been revealed. Mystery is not opposed to comprehension, it stands in contrast to that which is made known. God has disclosed Himself in words, and man is to receive them.

There is difference between saying that a given truth is not known, and saying that it cannot be known. There is a temptation to think, if I don't understand a concept, then it is not understandable. But that is an unwarranted leap. To some, it may may seem that it is a display of humility or piety to declare that the truth of God is unknowable. That God reveals to man knowledge about Himself that is comprehensible is rejected by Herman Bavinck. He expresses this opinion when he says, “...the idea that the believer would be able to understand and comprehend intellectually the revealed mysteries is...unscriptural. On the contrary, the truth which God has revealed concerning himself in nature and in Scripture far surpasses human conception and comprehension.”




Yet Jesus tells His disciples, to them it has been given, to know mysteries (Luke 8:10).

And what good news that is, that God's Word is given that we can comprehend it. We should hold on to those truths which God has made known. Because knowing Him is eternal life.


"And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” John 17:3

Preparing Children for Worship

With forethought and anticipation, we can prepare ourselves for corporate worship Sunday morning. And as parents, we can help prepare our children for the worship of God. This is a great privilege.

Having conversations with our children on the way to church which anticipate which hymns we'll sing and what we might learn does much to turn our mindset from our distractions.

I am thankful to attend a church that not only allows children to join in the corporate Sunday morning worship, but welcomes them. There are churches which actually stop people at the door who want to bring a young child in to that corporate gathering which Scripture commands us to not neglect (Hebrews 10:25).

More Than Just Sitting Quietly

Having our children in the service with the adults, we have had to teach them to sit quietly. But sitting quietly is not the end goal. We want them to be able to participate, and to know that what we do as a corporate body is not just for them when they are older, it is for them fully now, especially if they believe the same Word of truth.



Knowing the songs we sing and and the creed we recite helps them be a participant in the corporate worship. I just started teaching my two and a half year old the Nicene Creed, which our church recites together as a body every Sunday. I didn't choose to teach her the Nicene Creed because it is the single most valuable thing she can have memorized at her age, but because I think enabling her to participate Sunday morning is important.

Besides participation with the corporate body, one added benefit of teaching hymns and creeds at home to your children is, the truths they are learning leads to discussions such as, What is meant by the phrase His Word can't be broken, in Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken? Or what does it mean to say that Christ is the second Adam from above, in Hark the Herald Angels Sing? Elect from every nation, we learn in The Church's One Foundation.

Even little ones can be engaged during the sermon by keeping track of words and concepts they recognize. When my older children were three and four years old, we used a peg board with words written on it. They move the peg around and place it next to the familiar word they have heard.



Later we moved to tally marks.



At five and six years old, they started drawing a visual narration from the sermon.





After church, I would have them tell me what the sermon was about, and I would write their narration down.



All of these things could be a distraction for some children instead of a help. The important thing is that our children know that we come to church to worship Him. And children are included.

Tortured For Christ

Read Tortured For Christ, and you will know how you can help the underground church, the church which believes the same gospel you do, but lives in countries where it is against the law to talk of such things. I know, it's overwhelming, because there are so many needs and so many people. Go here to see which countries have laws against believing Christianity to be true or teaching Christianity to others:

http://www.persecution.com/public/restrictednations.aspx?clickfrom=bWFpbl9tZW51

"The underground church is like a surgeon who travels by train. The train collided with another train, and hundreds of people lay on the ground, mangled, injured, dying. The surgeon walked among the dying, crying out: 'If only I had my tools! If only I had my tools!' With these surgical instruments he could have saved many lives. He had the willingness, but he did not have the tools. This is where the underground church stands. It is so willing to give all. It is so willing to give its martyrs! It is so willing to risk years in prisons! But all of its willingness is of no value if it does not have the tools with which to work. The plea of the faithful, courageous, underground church to you who are free is: 'Give us the tools- the Gospels, the Bibles, the literature, the help- and we will do the rest.'"

Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured For Christ

When Richard Wurmbrand received Bibles in Romania from American and British Christians, he met two men who had walked from a nearby village to shovel snow all winter to buy a Bible. Wurmbrand gave them a Bible and refused their money, and they took it back to their village and dividing the Bible into thirty sections. Those thirty people received their piece of the Bible with joy!

Voice of the Martyrs send Bibles into restricted nations through the donations of people who love Christians they have never met. Voice of the Martyrs also financially supports the families left behind when a Christian is arrested or killed. Oftentimes, it is made a crime to help the family of a Christian martyr. When Wurmbrand and his wife were arrested, a woman risked her life by taking their son into her house. She was sentenced to eight years in prison. All of her teeth were kicked out. Her bones were broken. She was crippled for life, never able to work again.

"The underground church works under very difficult conditions. Atheism is the state religion in all the Communist countries. They give relative freedom for the elderly to believe, but children and youth must not believe. Everything in these countries and other kinds of captive nations- radio, television, cinema, theater, press, and publishing houses- has the aim of stamping out belief in Jesus Christ. The underground church has very little means of opposing the huge forces of the totalitarian state. The underground ministers in Russia had no theological training. There are Chinese pastors today who have never read the entire Bible."

Tortured For Christ was written in 1967. Today, it is estimated that 171,000 Christians are martyrs every year. The examples of what Christians have been willing to suffer for their faith, then and now, is so far beyond what what most of us will ever experience. Yet our prosperity can be meaningful in so many ways if we so choose. Our prosperity can travel throughout the world for His sake.

The Threefold Division of Faith

We know that we are justified through faith alone. Or do we? If we don't know what the word faith means, do we know what it means to be justified by it? We ought to want to know the Scriptures more, because it is the mind of God revealed. We ought to want to know the Scriptures more, just because we want to know Him more. But oftentimes, we do need a push from the practical, a concrete reason for why I should learn this. This is a question some might have when reading about the threefold division of faith. I will conveniently save the reason for the end.

The historic formulation of faith includes three components: Knowledge, assent, and trust. Knowledge is defined as the apprehension of a doctrine. Assent is believing the doctrine to be true. Trust, according to John Murray in Redemption Accomplished and Applied, is commitment to Christ and reliance upon Him. Although this threefold division of faith is taught by the reformers such as Martin Luther, Melanchthon, John Calvin, and by more modern theologians such as John Murray and James Boice, holding to sola scriptura means it is necessary to ask, what do the Scriptures say? Is faith defined in the Bible as being knowledge, assent and trust? It may seem presumptuous to depart from such a commonly held position. It goes without saying that we owe these men a debt of gratitude for the recovery of the gospel in the case of the reformers, and that the church has gained much wisdom from the teaching of these men. But to believe a doctrine simply because it is the commonly held view among theologians would be a form of personality worship.

It is common to hear Christians say, as John Calvin did, that we are not saved by mere assent. Something more is needed, and that something more is trust.



Certainly, the Bible does teach that God's people do trust Him and ought to trust Him. To agree to this is not the same thing as agreeing to the threefold view of faith. There are many things that God's people do and ought to do. The people of God love another (I John 2:10). Yet brotherly love is not a part of the definition of the word faith. We must still ask, how does the Bible define the word faith?

The Greek word in the New Testament which is translated as believe in English, when it appears in the noun form, is translated as faith or belief. What is the verb form of the word faith? It is believe. Faith and belief are synonymous terms in Scripture.

We all believe propositions, so we all have faith. Today, the word faith is sometimes used to mean believing something irrational, sometimes even believing something because it is irrational. This is not the Biblical use of the word faith. This is not a Christian idea. To have faith is to believe something to be true. So saving faith is believing that the message of the gospel is true. Atheists have faith too, they just assent to different doctrines.

What does the threefold division of faith say about salvation? It has lead some to say that belief in the gospel is not enough. The conclusion of this distinction is that is it possible to comprehend the gospel, and to believe all the propositions of the gospel, and yet to not be saved; it teaches that one can fall short of redemption due to a lack of trust. This is what Tedd Tripp, author of Shepherding a Child's Heart, says in a recent issue of Tabletalk magazine (October, 2010). He writes, “...mere knowledge and even assent to the truth, while essential, are not sufficient for our children to have saving faith...According to the Reformers, these two are not enough.”



This undercuts the the teaching of Scripture regarding belief. John 3:16 assures us that all who believe have everlasting life. I Timothy 1:16 says that we believe unto eternal life. Galatians 3:22 tells us that Christ's promise is for all those who believe. 2 Thessalonians 2:13 says that God chose us for salvation, and that salvation is through belief. Romans 3:22 teaches that the righteousness of God is to all who believe. The Bible teaches again and again, that all those who believe the gospel are numbered among the redeemed (this does not mean that all those who say they believe the gospel actually do). In light of this, are we really willing to say that a person can believe the gospel and not be saved?

Still, there are some who say, just believing it not enough. It is to easy.



It should be emphasized, as Murray does, that it is not our faith that saves, but it is God who saves through faith. It is the object of our faith that matters.

Hearing this, one may then wonder, how is our believing different from the demons, seeing that James tells us the demons believe, and tremble (James 2:19)? It is the content of their belief which is different. The demons believe there is one God. God's people believe in substitutionary atonement, and many other things.

So why does it matter how many components there are to faith? In light of the importance the Scriptures place on faith, that it is the sole instrument of our justification, few things are more important than clearly defining what faith is, in our own mind, and to others. And who knows, we may be asked by a friend or a neighbor, or even our own children, What must I do to be saved? Our answer needs to be clear: Simply believe on Him who is able to save.

Languages and the Bible

God has spoken to us through His Word, and His Word is perspicuous. The Westminster Confession describes perspicuity in this way: “...those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” Perspicuity doesn't mean that we will understand every verse in the Scriptures. But the Bible is revelation: It is God is making His truth known. So clarity is good. We of all people should seek to be clear. God uses words to communicate with us. And Christ is called the Word in John 1:1. How then should we think of language, and of languages?



Confusion is Bad

At the tower of Babel, God confused the people's language. Their inability to communicate equaled an inability to accomplish what they had purposed in their heart to do. To our modern ears, the word diversity is only positive. But the creation of the diversity of languages was God's judgment on those building the city who said, “Let us make a name for ourselves.” Anyone who has tried to get out of a French airport without a working knowledge of the French language knows how sweet the ability to communicate really is.

In I Corinthians 14, Paul also tells us that the purpose of language is to communicate truth, and language without meaning is not serving its purpose. There is much dispute over what the Biblical gift of tongues looked like in the New Testament church. But Paul's conclusion in v. 15 to his argument throughout I Corinthians 14 is clear: Pray with the Spirit, and also pray with the understanding. If one speaks, and if their words are not able to be understood, Paul says they are like an instrument that doesn't make a distinction in sound (v. 7-9). If one speaks, and the hearer doesn't know the language, they are foreigners to each other (and the implication is clearly, that is bad). If one speaks in a foreign tongue without an interpretation, the understanding is unfruitful. It shouldn't surprise us then that the God who has spoken through prophets, the God who uses verbal revelation, the God who gifts pastors and teachers also tells us that we ought to use our words to edify the understanding. Our God is not the author of confusion (v.33).



In what way are tongues a sign to unbelievers, as it says in I Corinthians 14:22? God used foreign tongues as a sign of judgment on His people. God pronounced this judgment in Isaiah 28 to those “...who would not hear...,” saying that “...with stammering lips and another tongue He will speak to His people (v. 11).” And this was done “That they might go and fall backward, and be broken and snared and caught.” This is a reference to foreign captivity to come, under which Judah was judged for forsaking the Lord (Isaiah 1:4), and was immersed in a foreign tongue. We should not desire to have words without significance spoken, or tongues spoken without interpretation. Because understanding is good.

It is in this way that the gift of tongues given at Pentecost is an undoing of a curse. Jews, Arabs, those from Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Libya, all heard the works of God spoken of in their own language and were amazed. God is removing confusion and ignorance.



Bible Translation

This undergirds the value and the need for Bible translation. Those of us who support Bible translators from our comfortable homes have the easy part. Barbara Thomas, the author of Through the Outhouse Floor, together with her husband, spent five years studying French and linguistics in Brussels in preparation for Bible translation in Zaire (now D. R. Congo). Her book greatly conveys the clash of cultures and the dangers faced by missionaries involved in Bible translation, and what many are willing to endure in order to put the truth of God into the hands of people they didn't even know.



Once in Zaire, her family lived with the Komo people, a people who were without any written language. She writes that a four year old child in the U.S. has had more exposure to written words than a 40 to 50 year old Komo woman. The nine year old girls in their literacy class had never before held a pencil. The Komo people had Bibles in Swahili, but the Swahili they knew was different from the high Swahili in their Bibles. Thomas writes, “...instead of using the more incomprehensible Bible, people corrected or encouraged us by using their hymnals. Yet even then, they could only guess at the meaning of some of the words.”

Richard Wurmbrand, the founder of Voice the Martyrs, was imprisoned and tortured for fourteen years in Romania for his work preaching to the Russian and Romanian people and distributing Bibles and Christian literature. After his release, he was overjoyed to receive Bibles and Christian materials from American and British Christians who risked their lives to give him and others the Word of God. Wurmbrand writes, “The value of the Bibles smuggled in by these means cannot be understood by an American or an English Christian who 'swims' in Bibles.”



"It is the chart and compass..." O Word of God Incarnate

We can take part in this mission. There are missionaries in need of prayer, financial support, and resources. Learning a foreign language might be one way in which God will use us for His purposes. Teaching our children a foreign language might open up opportunities for them to spread the gospel. Voice of the Martyrs still sends Bibles into countries where people are requesting Bibles, yet obtaining a Bible is dangerous or against the law. When a speaker from Voice of the Martyrs recently spoke at my church, he showed a video clip of a room of people waiting where Bibles were being delivered. When the boxes were opened, they jumped around and cried with happiness. And there are more people waiting. There is much work to be done. And much to pray for.