Poor John Agricola! He listened to the preaching of Martin Luther about the gospel and taken it so to heart that he tried to abolish the law from itself. Agricola had paid attention to what Luther had said about the article of justification; that about our status in the presence of God the law has nothing to say. The law must be silenced completely where the gospel speaks. Under justification the law is an enemy of us Christians and is a positive evil. Agricola decided to run with that presupposition and pushed it over the cliff, so that for him the law had no place whatever in the church, that is, he abolished the law from itself. As far as he was concerned, the law needed to be relegated to the law courts and the town hall. There it performed its office of keeping human society in order. Of course, that was not the intention of Luther, who was horrified to find out that Agricola attributed repentance and contrition to the gospel; a function of the law attributed to the gospel. Agricola had made the church's preaching a purely exclusive dichotomy: law or gospel, instead of a complimentary dichotomy: law and gospel.

For Luther the law still had its primary role as a preachment of wrath, that by pointing out sin, it might beat us into contrition. But such sorrow over sin is not yet the business of the gospel. It might well be but worldly sorrow (2Co 7:10) and thus the business of the law. The gospel has nothing of this sorrow and grief in it, but it is nothing but Christ and His promises lavished on the poor sinner yearning for the divine proclamation of mercy. The sinner comes with nothing but his dismal inadequacy and broken-heartedness. The Lord Jesus takes all that into Himself and has it borne away. All our filth and wickedness become His and Him (2Co 5:19). What is His becomes ours by faith, just as the bride receives all the property of the bridegroom. What a deal! My filth is taken by Him. His righteousness is given to me through faith.

"In the issue of justification-a discussion of justification is something vastly different from a discussion of the law-necessity demanded that Paul speak of the law as something very contemptible (Gal 4:2). When we are dealing with this argument, we cannot speak of it in sufficiently vile and odious terms either. For here the conscience should consider and know nothing except Christ alone. Therefore we should make every effort in the question of justification that we reject the law from view as far as possible and embrace nothing except the promise of Christ. This is easy enough to say. But in the midst of trial, when the conscience is contending with God, it is extremely difficult to be able to accomplish this. It is especially difficult when the law is terrifying and accusing you, showing you your sin, and threatening you with the wrath of God and with death, to act as though there had never been any law or sin but only Christ and sheer grace and redemption. It is difficult also, when you feel the terror of the law, to say nevertheless: 'Law, I shall not listen to you, because you have an evil voice. Besides, the time has now fully come. Therefore I am free. I shall no longer endure your domination.' Then one can see that the most difficult thing of all is to distinguish the law from grace; that is simply a divine and heavenly gift to be able in this situation to believe in hope against hope (Rm 4:18); and that this proposition of Paul's is eminently true, that we are justified by faith alone."