Encore Post: When you read the Bible as a story, the main plot, salvation history, is all about Jesus (See Rule #2). Yet the Bible is not only a story, it is God’s message to his children. In it he explains in great detail how he made the world, how it works and what he wants us to do, what happens when we do not do it and how he intends to restore it to its original condition. It gets kind of complicated. That is why God sums it up in two, main teachings. Luther and Lutheran theologians call these teachings The Law and The Gospel.
These teachings help us to organize all that the God teaches us in his word. The Law is about God’s will for our lives and how he wants us to live it, what happens when we disobey his commandments, what the likelihood is of us doing his will on our own, what the punishment is for rebelling against him and everything associated with the governing authorities he has appointed to keep at least some order in this life. (The Three Uses of the Law)
The Gospel is the good news that God, in his mercy, sent his Son, Jesus, to be born in the womb of the Virgin Mary, suffer, die, rise from the grave on the third day and ascend into heaven for our sakes. It tells us how the death of Christ has destroyed death, earned for us the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation and all of this is given to us by grace alone, received by faith alone for Christ’s sake alone. It contains all the precious things which God promises us because of what Jesus did for us. (See It’s His Story)
The rule teaches us to keep these two teachings straight. When we say the law saves us, we encourage sinners to try to save themselves, we deny them the comfort of the gospel. When we say that forgiveness comes with conditions, we place barriers between Jesus, his Means of Grace and the grace that is his free gift. So, we do what Luther described as the most difficult art — we allow the law to be the law — requiring perfect obedience, condemning us for our inevitable violation of it and pointing us to the gospel. We allow the gospel to be all the precious promises of God’s free grace and encourage his people to rely on it.
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