A Two Handed Grip on the Sword of the Spirit

Hi friends and neighbors.   I've had a few folks ask me about the blog lately and I think I'm going to ty re-up it.  Back in the day when I had a wide readership I was writing kind of to proces and express my own thoughts and I was also always sticking my nose in major theological and ecclesiastical issues of the day.  I developed a wide readership but not many of those were members of my church.

As I try to re-up the blog I'm going to try to self-consciously focus on topics of utmost relevance to my church, the local one, not the universal one.  At the same time I hope that these kinds of topics will still be of interest to the wider church. I won't try to conduct church business here on the blog but will blog on biblical and theological topics relevant to things we are dealing with.  One thing I'd like to do - and this will help build continuity with what I used to blog - is offer some sermon related material.  Often, a preacher prepares more during his study during the week than he is able to share in the sermon and a good deal gets left on the cutting room floor. So, I'll share some of that.

For now I'll mention that I am doing a series on the law of God and I'm taking the old tack that sees the law and gospel as the two parts of the Word of God, both needing to be preached together.  The older and more conservative Lutherans are the most noted for this approach, but this is also a foundational matter in the Reformed tradition.

I mentioned today that, as disciples of Christ, we are apprentices of Christ who are called to learn to use the tools of the trade.  Our main tool of the trade is the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and I offered a word picture of thinking of the law and gospel as the two hands by which we grip the sword, the Word of God.  To properly handle the Word of God we must be able to distinguish the hand of the law which contains commands, prohibitions, and threats, from the gospel which contains words of promise, provision and redemption.

Since I'm just using this as a kick-off post to help get me back in the groove of blogging I'll stop there, except to emphasize that law and gospel must be properly distinguished and noted if we are to apply the Word of God to our lives. For now here's a couple of links which may be helpful. I'm working my way through these first two books:

C. F. W. Walther - The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel - a traditonal Lutheran treatise, maybe the magnum opus from the Lutheran tradition on the law and gospel. 

Edward Fisher - The Marrow of Modern Divinity - a reformed treatise, combating the errors of legalism and antinomianism.

Quotes on Law and Gospel - this is a compilation from Scott Clark at Westminster West of quotes from Calvin and others in the reformed tradition on the law-gospel distinction.   This is part of Scott Clark's ongoing defense of the law-gospel distinction in the reformed tradition, showing that this is not only a Lutheran distinctive.

Comments

[Chris Brauns]

This is a similar to my journey in blogging (though I've never been read that widely!) At first, I posted about things like the New Perspective on Paul.

But, now I basically decide if I think it will be beneficial to our flock.

As a result, many of my posts are simply pointing to something on the web that will be helpful to our congregation. Even if most bloggers already know about something, most people in our church don't follow bloggers.

[Rick Ritchie]

I'm a huge fan of Walther's book. But now I love it most for the theses themselves more than the execution of each section. Another great one in the Lutheran tradition is The Theology of the Lutheran Confessions by Schlink. He has two chapters on Law and Gospel, and they make a sustained argument. The first chapter seems to be Law and Gospel as they first come to us, and the second is Law and Gospel as they continue to work on us as Christians. (This keeps us from teaching Law/Gospel/Law. Rather it's Law/Gospel. Law/Gospel. Repeat....) The Apology of the Augsburg Confession is wonderful itself. Schlink made me fall in love with that confession. It's a living, breathing argument that reads like a conversation. Not, perhaps a typical conversation. But it does have the organic flow of a conversation. And finally, I recently discovered a book titled Only the Decalogue is Eternal, which has Luther's complete Antinomian Disputations available for the first time in English. Luther is awesome here. (And I must say his opponents are brilliant, too, even if a bit mixed up. It reminds me of reading about the Antinomian crisis with the Puritans. Each time you read one side, you are convinced they had it right. Until you then read the other side. Each side was more robust than its opponents ever admitted.)

[David Wayne]

Chris - thanks for stopping by. It's interesting - this online world is truly a world of it's own. I have made the mistake of getting so involved in the online world that I have forgotten that it is not the world that most of our folks inhabit. Though I do wish they would turn their attention to some of the Christian blogs we read. I know that a great many people are online or on the computer but most of them are on Facebook playing Farmville and Mafia Wars. I'd like to try to convince them that if they are going to spend time on the computer there is actually stuff out there that would edify them. But again, many just aren't online that much so it's a good reminder not to get too caught up in all of this blogging stuff.

Rick - you always come through - thanks for the recommendations. I was looking recently through some of your stuff on Old Solar and I saw where you were wrestling with Walther. I'm only at the beginning of the book so I know I haven't gotten into some of the more precise stuff later. I take it that in working out his thoughts he sometimes gets a bit confusing, eh? I am trying my best to convince all of my PCA buddies that the law and gospel paradigm and the theology of the cross is the common property of the Christian church, it's not just a Lutheran thing, as we old fundamentalists would say, this stuff is just good bible. I will say though that you Lutheran guys have done the best job of working out the implications of this and I have greatly profited from it. I think I have told you that I would now put "The Hammer of God" at the top of my list of most influential books. And I am building a small section of my library around the writings of Luther and his exegetes, so thanks for the continued recommendations.