I was struck recently by a summation of the law-gospel paradigm that appeared in Sam Bush’s recent post for Mockingbird, “Do I Have Something in My Teeth?” which I strongly commend to you. As with most of Sam’s writings, he takes what seems like a setup for an episode of Seinfeld — in this case, the sudden realization that he has body odor — and turns it into a reflection on how the law shows us who we really are, while the gospel gives us relief. Much like our perceived decency, our self-conception of self-righteousness is punctured by the smallest of words. Being told you have bad breath prompts an obsession over the latest teeth-cleaning hacks. Likewise, hearing the words “You lack one thing” leads to a disheartening realization that you might not be as pious as you thought (cf. Mark 10:21–22).
Nevertheless, near the end of Sam’s piece, he cites a paragraph from John Foxe, an English clergyman from the sixteenth century, famous for his Book of Martyrs — a.k.a. Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church — which recounts the triumph and tragedy of English Protestants in the face of grave persecution. The paragraph in question, however, is anaphoric, setting what the law does against what the gospel does. “The law shows us our sin; the gospel shows us the remedy for it,” and so forth. These kinds of block quotes always seem to compel me to read and re-read them, and this one was particularly striking:
There is nothing more comfortable for troubled consciences than to be instructed in the difference between the law and the gospel. The law shows us our sin; the gospel shows us the remedy for it. The law shows our condemnation; the gospel shows our redemption. The law is a word of ire; the gospel is a word of grace. The law is a word of despair; the gospel is a word of comfort. The law is a word of unrest; the gospel is a word of peace. The law says pay your debt; the gospel says Christ has paid it. The law says you are a sinner; despair, you shall be damned. The gospel says your sins are forgiven; be comforted, you shall be saved. The law says, Where is your righteousness? The gospel says Christ is your righteousness.
I hadn’t come across these lines before, nor was I familiar enough with Foxe to know if he was really responsible for them. My engagement with Foxe begins and ends with his book about all those believers who were burned at the stake. Yet, this distinction between God’s law and God’s gospel felt too crisp not to share. However, finding an original source for this to satiate my compulsion for proper citation proved more difficult. As I would soon learn, though, these lines didn’t actually come from John Foxe, but from Patrick Hamilton, a Scottish Protestant reformer from the 1500s who is featured in Foxe’s work. His collection of theses, known as “Patrick’s Places,” was translated into English by John Frith and tucked into Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. There is a particularly poignant section in Hamilton’s theses, though, in which he endeavors to unravel “The Nature and Office of the Law and of the Gospel”:
The law showeth us our sin.
The gospel showeth us remedy for it.
The law showeth us our condemnation.
The gospel showeth us our redemption.
The law is the word of ire.
The gospel is the word of grace.
The law is the word of despair.
The gospel is the word of comfort.
The law is the word of unrest.
The gospel is the word of peace.
The law saith, ‘Pay thy debt.’
The gospel saith, ‘Christ hath paid it.’
The law saith, ‘Thou art a sinner; despair, and thou shalt be damned.’
The gospel saith, ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee, be of good comfort, thou shalt be saved!’
The law saith, ‘Make amends for thy sins.’
The gospel saith, ‘Christ hath made it for thee.’
The law saith, ‘The Father of heaven is angry with thee.’
The gospel saith, ‘Christ hath pacified him with his blood.’
The law saith, ‘Where is thy righteousness, goodness, and satisfaction?’
The gospel saith, ‘Christ is thy righteousness, thy goodness, thy satisfaction.’
The law saith, ‘Thou art bound and obliged to me, to the devil, and to hell.’
The gospel saith, ‘Christ hath delivered thee from them all.’1
Hamilton was eventually found guilty of promulgating the “opinions of Luther” and such “wicked heresies” as justification by faith apart from works, among other “detestable” words.2 Hamilton was the son of a nobleman, educated in Paris and later in Marburg, where he drank deeply from the writings of Luther and Melanchthon and others. His Scottish homecoming was soured by an invitation from the Archbishop to a “conference” at St. Andrews in 1528 that turned out to be a trial. A cross-examination led to thirteen charges, a swift verdict, and a date with the stake outside St. Salvator’s Chapel, where Hamilton was burned alive for around six hours, praying even as the flames raged, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” He was just twenty-four years old.
Despite the brutal efforts of the bishops to snuff out Hamilton’s influence from Scotland, writ large, his death had the opposite effect. As the old saying goes, “The reek of Patrick Hamilton infected all on whom it did blow.”3 According to one account, Alexander Alesius, who was sent to demonstrate to Hamilton the egregious error of his newfound evangelical commitments, ended up joining the Protestant movement in the aftermath of Hamilton’s martyrdom.4 “His doctrine lived after him,” biographer Peter Lorimer once wrote, “and wrought with a leaven-like virtue in the nation’s heart, till it leavened the whole lump.”5 Though his body was reduced to ash, the distinction he learned from Luther, the very one that cost him his life, was soon scattered across the whole of Scotland. And in many ways, the Scottish Reformation doesn’t happen without him.
Hamilton’s death was largely the result of his assimilation of the law-gospel distinction and the earnestness with which he sought to fertilize Scottish soil with those words. That he died for that distinction denotes the value of it. Discerning the effect of God’s law and God’s gospel isn’t a matter of theological minutiae. It’s the difference between life and death. As good and holy and righteous as the law is (Rom. 7:12), it leaves the sinner undone, saddled with a debt of sin we can’t pay and a résumé of righteousness we can never measure up to. It reveals the disease without actually healing anything, whereas the gospel remedies every deficiency, heals every sorrow, and resurrects what was dead. Instead of lowering the price, the gospel announces that all of it has been paid in full by Christ, who is for us our wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30).
Where our hearts default to theologies of glory, where the locus of our hopes emerges from our fidelity and piety, we remain desperate to hear the law and the gospel declared in their fullest and clearest degrees, showing us all the ways we fall short and how Christ has bled and died for all our sins and shortcomings. While the law says despair, the gospel tells us to be of good cheer. And a church that forgets which word is which will always end up preaching sermons that leave a sour taste in your mouth instead of the evergreen news of resurrection. A church that remembers, however, lets the law have its say, but gives the gospel the final word: Christ has done it, once for all.
Grace and peace to you.
“Patrick’s Places,” translated by John Frith, in John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, Vol. 4, edited by Josiah Pratt (London: Religious Tract Society, 1877), 566.
Foxe, 561.
Alexander F. Mitchell, The Scottish Reformation: Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics, edited by D. Hay Fleming (Edinburgh: Blackwood & Sons, 1900), 34.
Henry Eyster Jacobs and John A. W. Haas, “Hamilton, Patrick,” The Lutheran Cyclopedia (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 212.
Peter Lorimer, Patrick Hamilton, the First Preacher and Martyr of the Scottish Reformation: An Historical Biography (Edinburgh: Thomas Constable & Co., 1857), 120.