I'm convinced that a misunderstanding of the law and the gospel is at the root of most of the confusion about justice today.

Historic reform theology viewed the relationship between the law and the gospel as a hermeneutical issue.

Listen to what Theodore Beza, Calvin's successor in Geneva, said about the law and the gospel.

He said, we divide this word into two principal parts or kinds.

The one is called law, the other gospel.

For all the rest can be gathered under one or the other of these two headings.

Ignorance of this distinction between law and gospel is one of the principal sources of the abuses which corrupted

and still corrupt Christianity. The great reform theologian, Herman Bavink, who's I think probably

the greatest reformed theologian of the post-reformation period said this,

but the word of God, both as law and gospel,

is the revelation of the will of God,

the promulgation of the covenant of works,

and the covenant of grace.

He continues,

God uses his word to make his will known

in the area of morality and spirituality,

and it must be differentiated as law and gospel.

Sadly today, many people seem to think that the distinction and the relationship

between the law and the gospel is primarily a Lutheran distinction.

That somehow that Lutherans alone made this distinction and drew attention to this relationship.

But Louis Burkhoff, a reform theologian, correctly said this.

The churches of the Reformation from the very beginning distinguished between the law and the

...