Law and Gospel

It is not really just me evaluating the life of the church from the standpoint of discipleship. The shallowness of the life of the church demands our attention because the message of the weightlessness of God produces nothing but weightless Christians, regular churchgoers, uncommitted “disciples,” and heavenly church members whose feet are never on the ground. In The Courage to be Protestant: Truth-Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), David F. Wells says:

The gospel so preached has been separated from discipleship. The reason is quite simple. Marketers are looking for buyers. If disciples somehow also emerge, one has to say it is an anomaly. It is buyers that are wanted. In droves. Instead of evangelism being the doorway to the life of discipleship, now the gospel enterprise stands alone and the church is left outside the door, rejected and despised. The invisible church becomes everything, and the visible church, in its local configuration, loses its significance and its place in Christian life (p. 214).

The phrase “the gospel so preached has been separated from discipleship” captures my attention and I can’t disagree with his critique. The gospel can never be accepted apart from commitment, for the gospel is costly. The gospel is a free gift, but not cheap. It is free, but not cheap. The gospel without discipleship is cheap; discipleship without the gospel is law. The free gift of the gospel is the foundation of Christian discipleship. It is not by works, but by grace through faith. Discipleship is a lifelong, outward expression of the gospel as the inner foundation. We don’t just preach the gospel. We preach the gospel and the law. Apart from the law, we don’t understand the gospel, for it is in the context of law, we understand the meaning of grace and experience grace. The law tells us that we fall short of his glory. In and through Christ, we enter into his glory. The law points us to Christ who is the fulfillment of the law. In Christ, we are governed by Christ’s law under the guidance of the Spirit.

We preach the gospel with discipleship. We should have high demands of God’s people in all areas of life, for the gospel is free and yet demanding.