Chapter VI
CHAPTER VI: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL
It is useful and necessary to discern the Gospel from the Law.
§ 52. Having explained these matters in order, we go on to explain the difference between Law and Gospel, which can easily be concluded from what was written above. Yet, lest anyone think that it is useless and unnecessary to expend effort in explaining this distinction, let the words of blessed Luther (on Galatians 2, Latin edition, vol. 4, f. 39) be noted: “He who knows well how to discern the Law from the Gospel should give thanks to God and should know that he is a theologian. Surely in my trial I did not know it as I should have. You must distinguish the righteousness of the Gospel from that of the Law as carefully as you distinguish heaven from earth, light from darkness, day from night. And would that we could distinguish them even farther!”1 (Also, see Luther, [German] edition, vol. 5, f. 472,2 and in many other places elsewhere.)
There are several reasons why this distinction must be carefully established and strictly maintained. (1) The article of justification will not endure—and, in fact, its integrity cannot endure—if the distinction between these teachings is neglected. This is something the history of the church of earlier times proves more than well enough.
(2) Christ’s benefits are obscured not just a little unless the doctrine of the Gospel is kept separate from that of the Law with discrete boundaries.
(3) A confusing of Law and Gospel must bring with it the troubling of consciences. In fact, in great and serious terrors of conscience no genuine, solid comfort will survive if the free promises of the Gospel are diluted.
Therefore since these two constitute the principal points of the whole body of Christian doctrine, to which all the rest can be related in a certain manner and order, it is not unmerited that, among the virtues which the apostle requires in the faithful minister of the church, he gives first place to the art of “rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15). These words establish a metaphor which is taken from the office of the Levitical priests in the Old Testament, whose responsibility it was to separate and divide the meats of the sacrifices correctly. There are some who think that the metaphor is taken from the meat carver at banquets, because ministers of the church in the New Testament are like meat carvers of a spiritual feast (Isa. 25:6).