Seven Truths We Need to Clearly Understand

As we look over this statement of the gospel (Romans 3:19-26), we can see seven truths that we need to clearly understand. No one is declared righteous before God by observing the law (verses 19-21) There is a righteousness from God that is apart from law (verse 21) This righteousness from God is received through [...]

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What Is A Genuinely Evangelical Church Anyway?

A genuinely evangelical church will be an evangelistic church: a place where the gospel is delivered through Word, and sacrament and a people who witness it to the world.  It will be a place where  believers and unbelievers alike will be recipients of God’s Good News.  We come to receive God’s Word, both law and [...]

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What is the Goal of Popular Preaching Today?

Often in popular preaching today, it seems that the goal is to get through the interpretation of the passage in order to arrive at the contemporary application, which typically evidences the preacher’s own hobby-horses and recent diet of reading or movies.  Usually, application equals law - to-do lists – rather than using the passage to actually [...]

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Are You Feeling a Bit Like a Tumbleweed?

We have to be hearers of the gospel before we are doers of the law.  Otherwise, when the initial emotion and zeal wear off, we will be tumbleweeds blown in every direction – away from God’s garden of grace. – Horton, Michael; Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church; Baker Books; Grand Rapids, [...]

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Oh What a Relief It Can Be

What a relief it is when we are liberated from thinking that we are called to be the gospel!  Now we can simply receive it and draw upon it daily for the confidence to look up to God in faith and out to our neighbor in love.  Now the law can guide and direct us, [...]

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There is No Balance Between Law and Gospel

There is no balance here between law and gospel. The law tells us what we must do; the gospel tells us what God has done for us. These are two distinct words; each must be heard on its own terms, in full force of its judgment and absolution. In justifying sinners, God does not relax [...]

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Much of Today’s Preaching Gives a False Distinction

Where much of the preaching today (illustrated by Joyce Meyer’s comment “Just love God and People”) offers a false distinction between law and love, the biblical distinction is between law and gospel. Our love toward God and neighbor is the essence of the law; God’s love toward us in Jesus Christ is the essence of [...]

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The Proper Preaching of the Law

The proper preaching of the law will lead us to despair of ourselves, but only so that we may finally look outside ourselves and look to Christ. – Horton, Michael; Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church; Baker Books; Grand Rapids, MI; copyright 2008; p. 133

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Who Is this Story About Anyway?

When we confuse law and the gospel, but each does different things.  When we confuse law and gospel, we avoid both the trauma of God’s holiness and the liberating power of his grace.  We begin to speak about living the gospel, doing the gospel, even being the gospel, as if the Good News were a message [...]

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This, Is Perhaps the Worst Thing that Can Happen to the Church

The worst thing that can happen to the church is to confuse law and gospel. When we soften the law, we never give up on our attempts to offer our rags of “righteousness” to God. When we turn the gospel into demands, it is no longer the saving Word of redemption in Jesus Christ alone. [...]

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