The Gospel Produces What the Law Commands
Recovering the Distinction Between Gift and Command (Part 4)
The strongest motivation behind the gospel strictly and largely speaking distinction is usually a pastoral concern rather than a deliberate desire to confuse law and gospel.
The fear is that, if the gospel is defined entirely as promise, declaration, and gift, the church will be left without a sufficient theological basis for obedience. The strict gospel may justify sinners, but the larger gospel appears necessary to sanctify them.
The Marrow rejects that assumption by presenting sanctification not as the result of inserting commands into the gospel, but as the necessary fruit of receiving the whole Christ offered in the gospel. The gospel does not sanctify because it has become law. It sanctifies because the Christ given in the gospel is both righteousness and life, both justification and sanctification, both the bearer of the curse and the giver of the Spirit. Fisher’s central concern is to steer between legalism and antinomianism without compromising the gospel.
The legalist attempts to produce holiness apart from a true reception of Christ, while the antinomian claims an interest in Christ without walking in him. The middle path is described as “Jesus Christ received truly and walked in accountably.” True reception of the gospel necessarily produces true walking because the faith that receives Christ receives him as a whole Savior.1
This is especially evident in Fisher’s treatment of evangelical repentance, when he distinguishes forms of outward change from the saving repentance that flows from faith. A profane person may become moral, a legalist may become dissatisfied with personal righteousness, and a troubled conscience may desire deliverance, yet none of these movements constitutes evangelical repentance.
True evangelical repentance arises when the sinner believes the love of God toward him in Christ.
It is then, Fisher argues, that the sinner loves God because God first loved him, humbles himself before the Lord, remembers and loathes his evil ways, and begins cleansing himself from the defilement of flesh and spirit. Repentance does not precede faith as a condition brought to Christ, but follows faith as its consequent.2
Boston makes this same point by defining evangelical repentance as sorrow for sin flowing from a sense of the love of God in Christ, and therefore as the fruit and effect of faith.3 This order does not make repentance optional, nor does it imply that impenitent faith is saving faith. It means that true repentance cannot be produced by the law considered in isolation from Christ, because no sinner can return to God except through the Mediator.
The law can expose sin and command the sinner to turn to God, but it cannot reveal God as reconciled, provide the righteousness necessary for approach, or communicate the Spirit by whom the sinner is renewed.
The gospel alone reveals the open way to the Father through Christ.
This allows us to say that repentance is related differently to law and gospel without collapsing it into either.
The law commands repentance because impenitence is sin.
The gospel promises repentance because Christ is exalted to give it.
Faith receives Christ, and through union with Christ, the sinner is brought into the life from which evangelical repentance flows.
The same pattern applies to holiness. The law commands love, but the gospel reveals the love of God in Christ that creates responsive love in the believer. The law commands obedience, but the gospel gives the Spirit who writes the law upon the heart. The law commands mortification, but the gospel unites the believer to the death and resurrection of Christ.
The gospel therefore produces what the law commands without becoming the command itself, and this distinction offers a better answer to antinomianism than the idea of a larger, command-bearing gospel.
Antinomianism does not arise because the gospel has been kept too free, but because Christ has been divided. When justification is detached from union with Christ, the result may be a profession of grace without the fruits of grace. Hence, the answer is not to insert the moral law into the definition of the gospel. The answer is to preach the whole Christ in the gospel and the whole law in its proper place.
The legalist must hear that the law cannot give the life it requires, and that no amount of surrender or obedience can establish a right to Christ. Christ is given freely to the ungodly.
The antinomian must hear that the Christ freely given is never barren, because those united to him receive both his righteousness and his Spirit. The faith that receives him necessarily works through love, not because love completes justification, but because living union with Christ cannot remain fruitless.
The believer must hear both words continually. The law reveals the shape of love, exposes remaining sin, and directs the life of gratitude, while the gospel repeatedly announces that acceptance with God rests entirely upon the obedience and blood of Christ.
The Marrow’s distinction in this way is superior to the strict/large construction because it allows the minister to speak without ambiguity. When the conscience is accused, the minister may proclaim a gospel unmixed with demands. When the believer becomes careless, the minister may preach the law without pretending that the rebuke itself is good news. When the believer despairs of progress, the minister may return him to Christ, in whom both righteousness and renewal are found.
Holiness must arise from the right source and be ordered according to the right theological structure. The gospel must not be brought down to our level by making our response part of its material content. It is the announcement of what God has done, gives, and promises in Christ.
The law must not be brought down by removing faith, repentance, and evangelical obedience from its authority. It commands the whole person because God possesses the whole person.
The gospel reveals and gives the whole Christ.
The law commands the whole life.
Their harmony depends upon their distinction, because only when the gospel remains a gift, and the law remains a command, can Christ be offered freely, received by faith alone, and followed in the obedience that necessarily grows from union with him.
Edward Fisher, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, with notes by Thomas Boston (Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus, 2009), 15.
Ibid., 178.
Ibid.