On Friday evenings in 1884 and 1885 the aged man lectured to fresh faced seminary students at the Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, where he had been president for nearly a half century. C. F. W. Walther was teaching future preachers about the distinction between the law and the gospel in Scripture. The students took shorthand notes that became a book published after Walther had departed this life to see his Savior face to face. The book, titled The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel (or Law and Gospel for short), which has gone through several different editions and countless printings in the last one hundred years, can still be found on bookstore shelves and at internet booksellers. Why did a book with such obscure beginnings have such staying power?

 

Walther's lectures on the distinction between law and gospel are so attractive because in a practical way, he explained why the Bible often appears to have contradictory statements about faith and good works. On the one hand, the Bible can say about the divine law, "Do this and you will live" ( Lk 10:28), and yet on the other hand, the Bible can apparently contradict this statement, "We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ" ( Gal 2:16). In one place the Bible tells us that if we do what the law requires we will be right in God's sight, and in another the Bible tells us that no one can ever be right in God's sight by doing what is right, but only through trusting the divine promise in Christ. For many people, not knowing what to do with that apparent and very basic contradiction destroys their ability to read, understand, and finally believe the biblical gospel. This apparent contradiction is ultimately more troubling than all the conflicts with science that could ever arise out of the Bible's teaching, because it is an internal contradiction. What are we Christians to make of this apparent contradiction over which students of the Word of God have puzzled since fallen Adam and Eve tried to understand God's threats and promises in Genesis 3?

 

One of the keys to the Bible's distinction between law and gospel has to do with the purpose of each. The law has the purpose of disclosing our sin and causing us to despair of our own righteousness. "So, you're going to get right with God by your own efforts? You're going to 'do it.' How did that work out for you then?" The law and obedience can never fully justify in God's sight, because we humans will never keep the law perfectly, nor obey God in heart, soul, and mind. Our recognition of our sin and depravity in repentance is truly what the law is for. It has done its job. Ultimately, it can never save.

 

When I was a child, my father built a family room in the basement of our home. He chose to panel the walls with natural half inch pine paneling, making it a warm and homey room for the family to gather. While he worked on the paneling he cracked a piece, and being a man who did not throw anything away, my father kept that piece about three inches wide and about a foot and a half long. When met with my boyhood defiance, all my father had to say was, "Do I need my stick?" referring to that piece of pine paneling. And while the paneling made a warm room for our family, that one cracked piece occasionally warmed only my backside. The use of the paneling was different in either case. Likewise, sometimes God's Word threatens our wickedness and sin and sometimes God's Word rescues us from our wickedness by conferring the divine promise of forgiveness on repentant sinners. The difference between law and gospel is partly the purposes for which God speaks each Word of God. One is to condemn sin. The other is to save sinners. Both are necessary.