"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, Thesis 4 in "Law and Gospel"
I remember it very vividly. The young man was leading the student Bible study, and he was looking at one of the stories where Jesus warns against money. He started off talking about how money was a bad thing, and that God's people should be poor and not have money, as money would inevitably lead people away from God. I remember the challenge of not embarrasing the young man for a wrongful understanding of what Jesus was really saying, while at the same time wanting to show that there were other things at work with what Jesus was getting at there.
On another occasion, I remember talking with another young man about what Jesus and His crucifixion meant. This young man was driven by guilt to try to do right in everything that he did. After all, he reasoned, Jesus paid such a high price for me, and that now meant, in his mind, that he had to do everything right, not so much to repay Jesus, but out of fear that his failure to live right would mean he would be cast away from God. In other words, the sacrifice of Jesus actually inspired guilt in him, instead of the comfort of knowing that God had paid his price for him in Jesus.
It seems that our human nature, when we engage God's Word, so often is to misunderstand it. We read something that is intended to be good news, and we take it as a club to bludgeon ourselves or others with it. Or, we read something that is a strict reminder of just how righteous and holy God is, and when we look at ourselves, we think we aren't doing too badly, and so it really doesn't seem to apply to us. (For example, how many of us really, really think that we are the chief of sinners, as Paul would write? We see so many other examples that seem worse than us, and so a word of law actually comforts us, which is the very point of this thesis.)
This is why the previous thesis, the one about rightly applying the Law and the Gospel, is so vital, and why this thesis draws directly from it. If you make the Law into a comfort, the intent behind it is sealed from you. If you take the good news and make it something you or others have to do as a requirement, the intent of the good news is sealed from you. Now, I will say, not a single one of us will nail this every time, which is again why we cling to firmly to God's forgiveness in Jesus. Yet, as we grow in God's Word, hopefully we start to realize that correctly applying the Law and the Gospel is a much tougher task than what we may have thought, and we see how it is the key to understanding so much of what God has said.
As a final point on this, this is where the role of the Church overall comes in. On our own, we will quite often misunderstand what God is saying. But when God's people come together and talk through what God says, God's Spirit quite often guides us to a deeper, and perhaps even better, underestanding of what God is trying to communicate. My misunderstanding may be corrected as I hear how someone else reads the same passsage, and my knowledge and understanding may help someone else who is misunderstanding. This in particular is why gathering in study and in worship is so vital for God's people, for there, the iron sharpens iron, one of God's people sharpening another.
I remember it very vividly. The young man was leading the student Bible study, and he was looking at one of the stories where Jesus warns against money. He started off talking about how money was a bad thing, and that God's people should be poor and not have money, as money would inevitably lead people away from God. I remember the challenge of not embarrasing the young man for a wrongful understanding of what Jesus was really saying, while at the same time wanting to show that there were other things at work with what Jesus was getting at there.
On another occasion, I remember talking with another young man about what Jesus and His crucifixion meant. This young man was driven by guilt to try to do right in everything that he did. After all, he reasoned, Jesus paid such a high price for me, and that now meant, in his mind, that he had to do everything right, not so much to repay Jesus, but out of fear that his failure to live right would mean he would be cast away from God. In other words, the sacrifice of Jesus actually inspired guilt in him, instead of the comfort of knowing that God had paid his price for him in Jesus.
It seems that our human nature, when we engage God's Word, so often is to misunderstand it. We read something that is intended to be good news, and we take it as a club to bludgeon ourselves or others with it. Or, we read something that is a strict reminder of just how righteous and holy God is, and when we look at ourselves, we think we aren't doing too badly, and so it really doesn't seem to apply to us. (For example, how many of us really, really think that we are the chief of sinners, as Paul would write? We see so many other examples that seem worse than us, and so a word of law actually comforts us, which is the very point of this thesis.)
This is why the previous thesis, the one about rightly applying the Law and the Gospel, is so vital, and why this thesis draws directly from it. If you make the Law into a comfort, the intent behind it is sealed from you. If you take the good news and make it something you or others have to do as a requirement, the intent of the good news is sealed from you. Now, I will say, not a single one of us will nail this every time, which is again why we cling to firmly to God's forgiveness in Jesus. Yet, as we grow in God's Word, hopefully we start to realize that correctly applying the Law and the Gospel is a much tougher task than what we may have thought, and we see how it is the key to understanding so much of what God has said.
As a final point on this, this is where the role of the Church overall comes in. On our own, we will quite often misunderstand what God is saying. But when God's people come together and talk through what God says, God's Spirit quite often guides us to a deeper, and perhaps even better, underestanding of what God is trying to communicate. My misunderstanding may be corrected as I hear how someone else reads the same passsage, and my knowledge and understanding may help someone else who is misunderstanding. This in particular is why gathering in study and in worship is so vital for God's people, for there, the iron sharpens iron, one of God's people sharpening another.
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