Law and Gospel – if you break down the Bible into it’s basic teachings these are the two that stick out. The Law of God is his holy will for our lives. The Gospel is the good news that Jesus died for our sins. Easy enough you say! Well, yes but this point can be very confusing because God says alot on the pages of Scripture. Let’s break it down a little more.
The Law says do and do not. The Law condemns us of our sins. No one will be declared righteous by observing the Law because it’s too hard! God says that we need to be perfect, not just pretty good. Even one little stumble in God’s law means that you are guilty of breaking all of it. In other words if you took God’s daily test for keeping his Law and you scored a 99%, that’s not an A. You’ve just earned a one way ticket to an eternity in hell for just one transgression. The Law can be depressing. That’s the goal, frankly. God wants to drive us to despair of ourselves and look to him for hope and forgiveness.
The Gospel says done in Jesus. The Gospel forgives us of our sins. The only way we can be declared righteous is through faith in Jesus – that’s the Gospel. We are perfect in Jesus. Even though we stumble on a daily basis, we stand in grace because of the Gospel. No matter how poorly we score in life before our holy God, in Jesus we get a perfect 100%! We will never experience hell because Jesus suffered an eternity of hell on the cross in our place. That means there is no punishment left for us. Everything that comes into the Christian’s is truly for his or her good. There is nothing more uplifting that the good news of the Gospel.
Want to hear more? Watch this Sunday’s Bible class taken from our series: Back to the Basics – Law and Gospel.
Please click HERE to find the Bible class slides.