We recently tackled the important but somewhat unfashionable doctrine of total depravity in The Briefing, and, in response, received a letter asking about the place of preaching the law with regards to revealing sin. Let me post the letter in full and then open up the discussion:
I found the articles by Martin Foord and Simon Manchester in December’s Briefing very helpful. It’s always good to be reminded of the seriousness of sin both in our own relationship with God and in speaking to others. However, shortly afterwards I read two other articles by Jim Packer (‘Puritan Evangelism’) and Ray Comfort (‘Hell’s best kept secret’) that made me wonder if there was something missing from what Martin and Simon said.
Martin ends his article with the helpful reminder that, “Becoming a Christian doesn’t mean that you bypass the horror a sinner experiences before a holy God. We find this horror in the pre-modern saints … [but it] is now so foreign to late modern conversions.”
Jim Packer and Ray Comfort forcefully argue that the biblical way to produce this experience is to use the law in evangelism to show the seriousness of sin and the futility of salvation by works. They highlight that it was the law that produced this horror in the pre-modern saints like Luther and Bunyan and that these saints always used the law in their own gospel preaching.
If this is so I wondered why the law wasn’t mentioned in either of the Briefing articles. I am also aware that I have never been taught to use the law in any training that I have been to on evangelism. Is the use of the law in evangelism an issue that has been considered and then rejected on biblical grounds or is this something that we forgotten and desperately need to recover?
In light of the questions raised here, let me make a few observations.
Firstly, I have not done the work to understand what the Puritans might have meant by “using the law” in their gospel preaching. But at one level, that is not the most important thing. The question is, what might it mean to use the law in gospel preaching, and what does the Bible actually do with this question?
Secondly, the apostolic preaching of the gospel in Acts (e.g. chapters 2, 3, 10, 13, 17) is interesting in this regard. Peter, Paul and the others refer the Jews to the Old Testament as a reminder of God’s patience and their disobedience, and a reminder that God has fulfilled his promises in Jesus. The pointy end of their preaching is that God will judge the world, and they need to repent for their rejection of him. It doesn’t seem to me that the apostles listed off a string of commandments, but rather they reminded the people that God had made them his, and that they had failed to listen to God.
When it comes to the Gentiles, the situation is even more interesting. Acts 17 is again about the fundamental truths about God: he is sovereign, he has set a day for the judgement of the world, you need to turn to him. But Paul doesn’t seek to establish this so much from the law, but from their experience (cf. Rom 1:32: Paul apparently thinks that there’s some general understanding of sinfulness present, even in those who act most shamelessly). So the question becomes how do you remind people of their position before God and of God’s nature and character as holy and righteous creator and judge?
Thirdly, somewhat randomly, the whole discussion makes me think of the reciting of the Ten Commandments in the Anglican Prayer Book service. (Not that I am advocating a return to using the prayer book; I think that it is culturally inappropriate in most places.) However, what it did do was to draw a connection between God and his demands of us on a week by week basis (or originally, in fact, on a day by day basis). This is important because I don’t think we speak in cultures where we are easily understood anymore. When we say, “God is love”, what do people hear us say? That he will let us do anything? That he is always on about seeing the good in people? That he cares for the little person? That he sent his Son to die because our sins leave us deserving of his judgement? We have the same problem when we talk about justice. Who’s justice? What sort of justice are we talking about? When God is on about justice, does that mean saying that being gay is totally acceptable and that gay marriage would be acceptable in his sight?
Part of our problem is that, as we have lost any sense of a universal authority, the nature of individual rights and wrongs has been seriously called into question. I’ve realized that this leads me into a problem: I want people to feel the seriousness of sin. But in order to do that in a way that communicates effectively, I keep pointing people to the social consequences of sin. While these are bad, they are always open to question. For example, does divorce always lead to emotionally damaged children, or is it the parent’s attitude to each other and what they communicate in the process? There are always ways to alleviate the socially damaging consequences of any sin, but in a world of consequentialist ethics, if there aren’t bad consequences, then the original thing wasn’t bad either. And pointing to the social consequences doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. Our biggest issue with sin is that we sin against the God who made us and who has every right to judge us. We reject the Lord of life.
Fourthly, let’s finish by thinking about what it might mean to ‘use the law’ in our evangelism. In one sense of the term, it could mean reminding people that God is the creator (Genesis is a part of the law). At another level, it could mean reminding people of God’s specific commandments. At another level, it could mean looking at how God related to Israel and made promises that he fulfilled by sending Jesus for us. Whether these things were exactly what the Puritans were on about is not particularly important (although we may well learn a good deal from their example because they may not have been as tied to our culture as we are!). But the most important thing is to understand what God meant us to do when he encouraged us to preach the gospel: he wanted us to tell people that they are sinful, deserving of his judgement, and in need of life and hope, and that God deals with all of these issues and many more by sending Jesus to die on a Roman cross and raising him as the Lord and Judge of all. Jesus’ death and resurrection is about dealing with sin and judgement, not about our existential angst. Those are the truths we need to keep communicating in any way we can.
I look forward to hearing some of your reflections on this question.
I find it interesting to see how Jesus used the law and the gospel in his evangelism of the Samaritan woman. In this instance he began with the gospel (“If you knew the gift of God…”) and proceeded to the law (“Go call your husband…”).
With Nicodemus, the Pharisee, he reverses the order using the law first to show him his inability (“You must be born from above…”) and then moves to the gospel (“The Son of Man must be lifted up…”).
The reformers (read, for example, Melanchthon’s Apology) believed that all preaching should include both law and gospel together. But by this they did not necessarily mean an exposition of the Ten Commandments. In Acts 17, Paul is using law when he brings to bear the implications of God as Creator for whom we were created (obligation), and also when he speaks of the (ultimate) penalty of the law in Christ’s return to judge all men. Of course he also proclaims the gospel when he speaks of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
I believe, then, that preachers need to preach both law and gospel in every sermon. But the law needs to be broadly conceived as that which shows us that God is light in whom is no darkness (1 John 1:5) and before whom we are in great need. The gospel is about Christ’s objective work on our behalf. From this gospel flow many benefits, chief among them being heaven itself, where Christ is. In fact, in a law/gospel framework, we should not preach hell, the ultimate penalty, without also preaching heaven the ultimate blessing. Therefore, we will, by the Father’s gracious will and Spirit, inculcate both the fear and comfort of God in the hearts of our hearers (Acts 9:31).
Hi Bill,
Thanks heaps for your comment. It was really helpful to be reminded about Jesus’ approach to various people. But it has also raised an interesting issue for me. I have been raised in what is largely a reformed theological setting, but on in which biblical theology has played a greater part than systematics.
As a result, while I agree completely with the points that you make, I would never have described them using the ‘law/gospel’ divide. This is largely, I think, because I see in the gospel itself the two sides of the coin that you mention. For example, Paul can summarize his gospel (Rom 1:1-4, 2Tim 2:8) in terms of Christ’s resurrection and Lordship. Or in Rom 10:9 what we confess is that Christ is Lord and we believe that God raised him from the dead.
When you also take Acts 17:31, that God has appointed Jesus as the judge by his resurrection from the dead, I think that you get a picture that in the death and resurrection of Jesus God announces both judgement and mercy (if I can put it like that).
So, I guess that those parts of Jesus’ preaching and the apostolic preaching that you describe as ‘law’ I would describe as part of the gospel. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts and reflections.
In Christ,
Grimmo.
I wonder if in the past some churches just spoke of sin in terms of transgression and did not speak enough of sin in terms of our attitude towards that. Now we do talk about sin in terms of our attitude towards God but maybe the pendulum has swung too far so that we never talk of sin in terms of transgression or specify particular sins that people will need to repent of.
I think it’s really important to talk about rebellion against God as being the heart of sin, but a problem I’ve noticed is that people just don’t admit that they are rebels, and so maybe the way to convince them of this is to point them to God’s instructions/laws so that when they come face to face with what God actually says they realise that they are actually rebels.
I note that 2 Ways to Live does refer to the fact that “we disobey his instructions for living in his world” but it does not specify what those instructions are. As people become less and less biblically literate maybe we need to tell them what the instructions are so that they can see that they have in fact broken them and rebelled against God.
Maybe it’s the debates about whether or not the law still applies that have stopped people pointing to specific commandments in evangelism? If this is the case then we probably need to think more about what Paul means when he says that the law is laid down for unbelievers rather than believers. (1 Timothy 1:9)
I think if you read “Way of the Master” by Ray Comfort you would really like it.
Perhaps some of us associate the use of the Ten Commandments with a negative caricature of the angry and judgmental hell-fire preacher. However, when used in the right (loving) way the Commandments actually put the gospel message in context. If we only tell people the good news about Jesus, they will not necessarily see their need for salvation. If we simply tell people they are sinners, or that they have sinned, it may come across as judgmental since they do not know how they are sinners. When presented with the Ten Commandments, however, sin becomes personal, God’s anger and judgement of it reasonable, and the gracious offer of salvation something to be grasped. Most people will claim to be good but do admit that they have lied, stolen, blasphemed, hated, and lusted (add further commandments as required). When the truth of their admission is stated to them that they will stand before God and be judged as lying, thieving, blaspheming, murderers and adulterers at heart, most people are genuinely concerned at their sinful state and very receptive to the good news of Jesus Christ.
In the last two-and-a-half years I have personally witnessed to some 400-500 people using the Ten Commandments as part of my gospel presentation and have found that over 95% are genuinely appreciative of what they have heard.
We live in a culture where few people have an understanding of the Scriptures or a proper understanding of the gospel. Most truly believe they are (reasonably) good people. I believe the use of the Ten Commandments to some degree is vital to most evangelistic encounters.