LEGAL INDIGESTION AND GOSPEL DESSERT

You meet with some saints exiting a worship service and ask them, “Well, how did you like the sermon?” To which they might reply, “It was a great sermon; we were so convicted.” That seems like a very standard - and pious - response. Few would challenge it.

So I ask a question: was the fact that the people of God were convicted by the sermon an indication they heard a good one? It seems to me that in today’s Christian world a sermon is considered ‘good’ if it touches the emotions, and that includes the emotion of conviction of sin. The more the preacher ‘undresses’ the congregation and gets them feeling bad about themselves, the better the sermon. This is rooted in the fact that most Christians today measure their progression in the Christian life when they feel certain emotions rising up in their inner man. A good sermon is one that stirs the emotions, whether that feeling be joy, amazement or guilt.

So let’s hone in on those sermons that inspire the emotion of guilt. We will call these sermons of conviction or legal preaching. And so we ask, is this the kind of sermon we should be preaching?

Now to answer the question we need to abandon the influence of our culture and look to the word of God. What is guilt? Guilt is that inner sense that one has fallen short of a given standard and by it is overwhelmed with a sense of inadequacy or shame. There is such a thing as false guilt where one is convicted by a false standard. This phenomenon we can deal with in another post. As a rule, when we face a law, any law, the feeling of guilt is possible. Such it is with motorists who see a cop car and believe the cop is after them even when they are obeying the law. Law brings rise to feelings of guilt, whether we have transgressed it or not. But is this feeling of guilt a good thing? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that guilt is a warning bell that keeps us from breaking laws that might endanger our wellbeing. But this reminds us that guilt is only beneficial if it drives us to move in a safer direction. Left by itself guilt never brings pleasure, but only displeasure. I take the reader into a courtroom. A criminal stands before a judge who reads off a list of his crimes. After reading each charge the judge stares disapprovingly at the humbled man. With each charge the man sinks lower and lower into the floor. He feels rotten, worthless, rejected, and shamed. All he wants to do is exit the courtroom by the side door. On his way to the jail one asks him, “How do you feel?” The man responds enigmatically, “I feel great. I felt wonderfully convicted in that courtroom and wouldn’t exchange that feeling for anything.”

Of course we know that this would not be his response. A man who has just been accused and found guilty will feel defeated and regretful. One thing is for sure; he will not feel good.

So we ask a second question: will the feelings of defeat and regret give the man the needed resources to improve his behavior? Much study has been given on this topic, but the general findings are that they may have a short term goal of behavioral improvement, but in the long run guilt inspires no profound changes in a man. Emotions, it seems, are lousy reformers; they dissipate from our experience as quickly as the morning dew.

Each Sunday across America, something similar to this courtroom scene is played out in churches. The pastor, believing that his congregation has missed the mark (which they have), rehearses the law in their ears, and implicitly or explicitly hints as to how they have fallen short of God’s expectations. This produces guilt, or its Christian equivalent, conviction. For many Christians this conviction is considered a good thing. They have been conditioned to think that the Sunday Worship Service is a time to be chastised and made to feel guilty for all the ways they have fallen short during the week. After all, there must be some price to pay for the many good things have happened to them during the week, If they get beat up on Sunday then they have a right to enjoy their lives during the week. This is the Protestant version of penance. Yes, sad to say, many Christians live as practicing Romanists. If they feel bad for their sins and suffer a little then everything will be alright with God. We call this salvation by conviction or self-flagellation, a form of salvation by works. Martin Luther knew all about this. He escaped it and so should we.

The paradigm I just described is totally antithetical to what the Bible teaches. As with all man-centered systems, it completely ignores the remedy that God has given to His church to reconcile guilty sinners to God, which is the cross of Jesus Christ (1 Cor 2:2).

But let us dig a little deeper and try to discover the root cause of why all this happens to many churches, even churches that are heirs of the Reformation. I believe it is a failure to distinguish between the law and gospel. Law and gospel are two kinds of statements that comprise the biblical text. When properly distinguished they conspire together to guide a sinner into the realm of salvation. On the other hand, when they are mixed together the resultant hybrid message produces confusion in the hearers and leaves them in a state of subliminal angst. They begin to believe they are saved by some mixture of grace and works. But what is meant exactly by the terms law and gospel?

First then, what do we mean by law? As used here, the law is not merely the ten commandments, but any biblical command or exhortation that tells believers what they must do. Biblical laws or commands arise directly from the nature of God. The law in this sense is God’s will and therefore it is incumbent on all men to obey it. Unlike laws made by men, the divine will demands absolute conformity. Not one jot or tittle of the law will ever be made more user friendly nor will it ever change (see Matthew 5:18). One failure to do God’s will, one breakage of His law, is reckoned as complete rebellion against His authority (see James 2:10). This is made clear early on when Adam and Eve become full fledged sinners because of one infraction. One transgression is tantamount to eternal guilt.

The law is that which shows us that we are utterly guilty before God. It is a measuring piece not a remedy. It analyzes the profit and loss statement but it can’t fix the books; it makes commands but falls short of producing obedience. The law is God’s way of telling mankind that he cannot fix himself. The law therefore brings no good news, only bad. That is not to say the law can’t change outward behavior. It can and does. One of the uses of the law that theologians have noted is its ability to constrain bad behavior. In child rearing, or business, or government, laws are quite handy in forcing men to do things they would not normally do.. What the law cannot do, however, is change the heart. And since God looks at the heart it cannot in any sense be used to please God. No amount of law can change man’s guilty status. It can make a bad man outwardly good, but it can’t make a bad man a good man.

In the Bible we have hundreds of commands or laws. For example men are commanded to love one another as Christ loves. In another place men are commanded to deny themselves and take up their cross. They are commanded to keep their hands to the plow and not look back. They are to pluck out right eyes if the eye offends. They are to pray always, to give thanks in all things, and walk as Jesus walked. In Matthew 5:48, we have the mother of all commands which is ‘to be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.’

But why are there commands in the Bible? To answer this properly is to solve one of the great mysteries of the faith. The commands are in the Bible for two reasons. First, they act as a guardrail that gives saved people an overall picture of where they should be headed in their Christian walk. The commands reveal the perfect will of God and every believer will desire to conform to that will. The commands give a general framework for the Christian life. External law underscores the law put into the heart of every New Covenant believer. But this is far and away the minor use of the commands in the Bible. The reason for this is simple, the guardrail cannot save a soul but can only show the soul that it needs another method to achieve holiness of life. In this sense commands can be frustrating to believers, especially when they try to use the guardrail to progress in holiness. The more important use of the commands is to convict sinners and to show them that they cannot attain to obedience to God. In other words, the main use of the law is to drive sinners to despair. The conviction is therefore not bad. If people leave their church service convicted, that is a good thing if that conviction is seen as the law working to drive them out of their own righteousness. When legal preaching does this it is operating in a useful and necessary way.

But driving people to heavy conviction is never to be the final word. And this is where so many sermons fall short. Using the law to convict a man that he has no answers to his guilt before God is good. But the conviction should only be the initial step in a larger process. Once the sinner is convicted it is time to give the solution to their guilt which is the gospel.

What then is the gospel? Simply put, the gospel is the message of what God has done for guilty sinners. Generally speaking the gospel comes to us in the Bible in the form of promises and are always statements of fact without condition. Paul describes the gospel in historical terms as the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor 15:1-4). The gospel is an announcement of what God has done for human kind without any sliver of human contribution. Paul will describe the gospel in other ways. For example in Romans 5:8 he writes, “But God demonstrates His love for us that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” In Colossians 2:15, he describes the gospel as Christ’s death wiping ‘out the handwriting of requirements that was against us which was contrary to us and he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.’ Peter says it in this way, “Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree that we having died to sins, might live for righteousness — by whose stripes we are healed.” Gospel passages come to the reader in the indicative mood (statement of fact) and they state all that God has done for a sinful humanity in Christ. Being in the indicative means the gospel is news. The writers are reporting what God has done. The gospel simply says, “This is what God did for you, now believe it.”

Believing that the Bible consists of law and gospel provides for the reader a paradigm whereby he can interpret the Bible. There are basically two things that God says to humanity. One is moral, logical and expected, the other is gracious, unbelievable and outrageous. That God gives laws or commands ought to surprise no one. God is a moral being who views reality in terms of right and wrong. Things that are right conform to His nature. As the Creator He demands that His creation obey Him. No exceptions. Anything that falls outside of God’s will is wrong. The Bible calls it sin. What makes this an important issue for all creatures is the fact that God is not only the Lawgiver but the Judge. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that God will judge mankind at the end of the age. All those who are found to be unrighteous will be punished while those who are found to be righteous will gain life eternal. This tribunal should strike fear into the heart of every sinner. Why? Because God, the Judge, demands perfect obedience to His law. One infraction is tantamount to complete and total disobedience to the will of God and thus must merit the penalty for guilt, eternal death (see James 2:10).

Because the Bible teaches that all men are born with a sinful nature through Adam (1 Cor 15:22) and because God must judge all sin, then the inescapable conclusion is that all men are born under a sentence of death because they have violated God’s holy law from birth. Not only that but the Bible teaches that man has no resources within himself to ameliorate that inherited guilt. He is powerless to do anything good because the sin nature prevents it. This renders man entirely without hope. And because these things are true, it is incumbent upon the church to preach this hopeless message to everyone. This we call the bad news. God demands a perfect obedience that no man can render. Man must be told this. And for the preacher to avoid this is to neglect his duty.

So if the law cannot fix the problem then why even mention it from a pulpit? Because it is in the nature of man not move toward a solution until he knows he has a problem. The law announces the perfect standard of God that no man can keep; it reveals man’s desperation. Men must hear this. Under the law man is guilty. So again, let us be clear, preaching the law in this sense is wholly right and good.

The danger comes when the law is preached as the ladder by which men may improve themselves and become more conformed to God’s image. This is what I call legal preaching. The failure of legal preaching is that it uses the law in an illicit way which ends up doing more damage than good. Tools are handy when used rightly, but a wrong tool used in a wrong context can cause severe damage. When the law is preached to improve men it undermines both the law and the gospel at the same time. It undermines the law because it uses the law in a way it was not intended to be used and this diminishes the very glory of the law. It also undermines the gospel in that it presents an alternate solution to the sin problem that does not rest in the completed work of Christ. Using the law to improve the lives of men destroys the very truth it is most concerned about, righteousness.

Despite this, every Sunday preacher after preacher after preacher will give a hard legal message to the people of God and leave them in a state of confusion and guilt. They accuse their congregants of breaking the law and then leave them to wallow in that guilty state. The sad fact is that many Christians are conditioned to think they have heard a good sermon when they feel a deep conviction of heart and are left feeling guilty. This feeling they confuse with salvation itself. How often have we heard a person feel good about being convicted from a sermon as if the conviction itself was a meritorious act. But conviction can no more save a sinner than lung pain can heal a person that has tuberculosis. The conviction cries loudly that there is a problem, and that is all it does. The problem, we must again remind the reader, can only be solved by the death of Jesus Christ. Therefore, conviction is good but it always begs for more. A convicted person needs a declaration of innocence or else the conviction will kill him.

How then is the law to be preached? It is to be proclaimed in all of its majesty and inflexibility. It was intended to ruin sinners. Preachers must allow it ruin them, whether they be saved or unsaved. But the message must never stop there. The message of the law is an incomplete one that can only be completed by the gospel in order to give it its intended glory. When the law is preached and the self-confidence of man is destroyed, then it is time for the gospel to wash its healing waters over the hurting heart. The law condemns man to hell, the gospel declares men to be innocent because of the work of Christ. So the gospel comes and gives to broken sinners a free gift of salvation and it should be preached every time the law is preached.

Law and gospel come together beautifully in the writings of Paul. In the fifth chapter of 1 Thessalonians, Paul begins by encouraging the believers there that they are ‘sons of the light’ who have not been ‘appointed to wrath but to obtain salvation.’ Having given the church these verses of positional assurance, he lays on the church a long list of commands reminding them of God’s standard and what their lives should look like. The believers are to esteem leaders, warn the unruly, comfort the fainthearted, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, not quench the spirit or despise prophecies…. and so on. It is quite a list. Is Paul saying telling the Thessalonians that they are not saved if they do not live up this long list of laws? This cannot be, for we have already proven that only perfect obedience is acceptable to God, therefore Paul cannot be giving the church these laws thinking it will make her holy. In point of fact, all these laws are beyond the saints ability to keep. But Paul doesn’t leave them there in this state of guilt. Rather, Paul allows the Thessalonians to feel despair only to conclude the chapter with a great verse of gospel. In effect Paul will say that God has already fulfilled the law for the saint and He will sanctify believers perfectly. He concludes the chapter with verses 23 & 24,

“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely and may your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful who also will do it.”

Do you see what Paul has done? He has followed up the law with a wonderful verse of hope. The law commands the church to obey God’s commands. And this should truly be the goal. But guess what? God knows the saints cannot live up to the standard and so He promises to do all the work of sanctification in the lives of believers which will end in preserving them blameless at the coming of the Lord. In giving this great promise, Paul has not in any way dismissed the law. Rather, he has honored the law because Jesus Christ had to die in under its curse in order to save His people (Gal 3:13). In giving this promise does Paul give the church cause to live sloppy lives? Not at all. The promise arms the saints to live lives of thankfulness for so great a salvation.

Let Paul be an example of good biblical preaching. Preach the law in all its weightiness and demand the Christian to obey. But always follow it up with the good news of a Savior who honored the law by suffering under its penalty so that those who could never keep it could be clothed in His perfect work and so fulfill the law. By preaching this pattern Christians can leave their church each Sunday knowing the holiness of God in the law but also the great and wonderful love of God in the gospel. And the last bite of food is always the one we remember the most. That’s why God invented dessert.