The Law
TRANSLATED BY RYAN M. HURD The following is a translation of Franciscus Junius’s De libertate christiana, “Christian Liberty.” Franciscus Junius (1545–1602) was professor of theology at Heidelberg from 1584 to 1592, when he moved to Leiden and was professor of theology there until his death in 1602. Public disputations were common academic practice during this […]
It’s been eight years since I wrote Christless Christianity, and things don’t seem to have much improved out there. Evangelicals on the right fawn over Donald Trump as the “defender of the faith” (apparently meaning the Christian faith). After a couple generations of being gripped by the fear of man more than the fear of […]
And by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. (1 Cor. 15:2) Christians throw the word gospel around a lot. Based on my experiences, however, as a high school teacher, campus minister, parish pastor, and college professor, and in my work […]
For the past two millennia, the church has wrestled with the questions of how she should best grow in her faith and what exactly it is she’s called to do in the world. People from ascetic hermits to monastic orders to parachurch organizations have attempted to answer these most basic questions concerning the Christian life. […]
Since the end of the nineteenth century in American churches, the pendulum has swung back and forth between saving souls (View A) and transforming culture (View B). As different as these approaches appear to be, both succumb to precisely the same error: the confusion of law and gospel. View A is worried about confusing evangelism […]
"Friends of the Law: Luther's Use of the Law for the Christian Life" by Edward A. Engelbrecht
This useful and well-researched volume addresses an issue familiar to most readers of Modern Reformation: the threefold use of the law of God. Although Edward Engelbrecht's primary concern is with Martin Luther and the Lutheran tradition, his consideration of how theologians in the early and medieval churches handled this issue, as well as a brief […]
During a time of intense controversy and division within Reformed ranks, the English Puritan Richard Sibbes said that "factions breed factions." We are called to the peace and purity of the church, but when is the concern for peace a crutch for compromise, and when does our appeal to the church's purity become a cloak […]
Like Moses (Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18), Jesus taught that the whole law was summarized by the command to love God and neighbor (Matt. 22:37). He came not to abolish but to fulfill the law (Matt. 5:17’20). Nevertheless, Jesus was famously accused by the religious leaders as an "antinomian" for refusing to accord the same weight […]
We are so good at being legalists. One minute we’re the “older brother” in our Lord’s parable, resentful of the father’s lavish grace showered on the prodigal son; the next minute we cast ourselves as the younger brother’only, unlike him, lording the father’s indulgence over our brother’s head. To reverse the roles in another parable, […]
I had an extraordinary experience in my junior year of college when I was a student at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. Already enthralled by the world-affirming aspects of Reformation theology, I was amazed at the cultural impact of the Reformation. While the rise of “universal human rights” theory cannot be […]
"Distinction without separation" will be the formula in this article. The law and the gospel, the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, the church as Christ's institution entrusted with his ministry and the church as the people brought into being by this ministry: these are to be distinguished and simultaneously affirmed. God's moral vision for […]
David Platt's book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream has taken the American evangelical scene by storm. According to Mission Frontiers, 370,000 copies have sold since May 2010, and it is in its eighteenth printing. His aim is to call the church back from its idolatrous pursuit of the "American dream" and […]
This is an exciting issue of Modern Reformation as it is dedicated to two of our favorite themes: seeing Christ in all of Scripture, and reading the Bible with an understanding of law and gospel. These are critical for recovering Scripture in our preaching, corporate, family, and individual Bible study. Law and gospel is not […]
The distinction between the law and the gospel is a completely foreign concept to many Christians and one that eluded me for many years. Before I heard Christianity presented in these terms, the standard framework by which I understood Christianity was couched in relational language. The foundation of religion was expressed something like: "I want […]
There is no "rightly dividing the Word of truth" if we confuse law and gospel. Both are essential–neither can be ignored and both are distinct. Commands and promises not only teach different things, they do different things. I agree with Theodore Beza, Calvin's successor in Geneva, who said that "ignorance of this distinction between Law […]
