The Problem with a “Large Gospel”
Recovering the Difference Between Gift and Demand (Part 1)
There is a way of speaking about the gospel that, while it may be helpful, can become quite confusing as well.
According to this construction, found in John Calhoun’s Treatise of Law and Gospel, the gospel “strictly speaking” consists of the good news of Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and the free promise of salvation through him. While the gospel “largely speaking” includes the whole body of Christian revelation, together with the commands to repent, believe, and walk in obedience.1
The attraction of this distinction is understandable, because it seems to allow one to affirm that justification is entirely free and that the gospel ministry still calls all men to believe and to live a life of holiness.
The problem is that when the distinction is made, the broader sense of the word gospel begins to function as an actual definition for the gospel itself.
To be clear, the problem is not that the term gospel can never be used broadly. We may speak of gospel music, gospel ministry, gospel churches, or even the gospel age without suggesting that every command within those realities is itself good news. Rather, the problem arises when a broad name for an entire Christian system is treated as though it identifies the character of each word contained within that system.
The Marrow Men themselves acknowledged that gospel could be taken “largely” for the whole doctrine of Christ and the apostles contained in the New Testament.2 In that broad sense, they said, the gospel includes promises, precepts, threatenings, the Ten Commandments, and even the doctrine of the covenant of works. Yet, they immediately added the qualification that, when gospel is used in this way, it is “not contradistinct from the Law.”3
Immediately before that statement, they warn that treating faith and repentance as “gospel commandments” can lead in two directions.
First, they argue that Socinians, Arminians, Roman Catholics, and Baxterians turned the gospel into a “new, proper, preceptive law with sanctions,” thereby making it a milder covenant of works and introducing human works into the matter of justification.4
Second, they warn that calling faith and repentance gospel commandments can actually open the door to antinomianism, because one may then conclude that the gospel commands only faith and repentance and that the moral law is unnecessary.5
Their point is that commands must remain law so that the gospel does not become a new covenant of works, and so that the law is not reduced to something narrower.
If gospel “largely speaking” includes divine threatenings and every apostolic imperative, then the category is so broad that it no longer tells us what the gospel is. It may tell us where a doctrine is found, but it cannot tell us whether a particular word functions as a promise or a command.
The question is therefore not simply whether the New Testament contains commands, because no one disputes that it does. The question is whether those commands are gospel “largely speaking” or whether they remain law even when addressed to believers and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
The answer to this question, I believe, is actually found in the logic of The Marrow itself, which argues that all commands remain law.6 As articulated by Thomas Boston, their covenantal setting may change, the hearer’s relation to them may change, and their relation to condemnation may change, but their commanding character does not disappear.7
In short, a command requires something from the hearer, while a promise announces and gives something to the hearer. Hard stop.
The command “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ” directs the sinner toward Christ, but the Christ toward whom the sinner is directed is given in the gospel promise. The command does not itself become the gift simply because it points toward the gift.
This is why the distinction between gospel strictly and largely speaking is the wrong primary framework. Although it attempts to, the broader category does not actually preserve the distinction between law and gospel, because, by definition, it contains both.
It is incapable of telling us how God addresses the conscience in any particular text. A command may occur within a gospel sermon, a threat may appear in a New Testament epistle, and a promise may be proclaimed from the Pentateuch, yet the canonical location of the statement does not determine its theological function.
A more precise construction would say that the gospel ministry administers both law and gospel, which does not require us to call any command gospel.
From a pastoral perspective, when the burdened or ignorant conscience asks what the gospel is, the church must not answer that the gospel “strictly speaking” is Christ for sinners, while the gospel “largely speaking” includes the duties that sinners and saints must perform.
The broad use of gospel may have historical legitimacy, and it may occasionally serve as a convenient designation, but it should not govern our doctrine. Once the word is used so “broadly” that it includes aspects of the moral law, it has ceased to distinguish the gospel from anything else.
The better question is not, “What belongs to the gospel largely speaking?” but, “What does this particular word of God do?”
If it requires, commands, forbids, threatens, or exposes sin, it functions as law.
If it reveals, offers, promises, and gives Christ with his saving benefits, it functions as gospel.
John Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Law and the Gospel, ed. Don Kistler, intro. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2022), 141.
Edward Fisher, The Marrow of Modern Divinity: In Two Parts, with notes by Thomas Boston (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1850; modernized by William H. Gross, 2014), 348.
Ibid.
Ibid., 346.
Ibid.
Ibid., 348.
Ibid., 19.