Chapter 16, The Law and the Gospel, The Reformed Reader

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Gospel, Our Trust
“We have been approved by God to be entrusted
with the gospel. . . .“ (1 Thess. 2:4)

“According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which
was committed to my trust.” (1 Tim. 1:11)

THE TWO VERSES QUOTED ABOVE teach us that we are trustees of
the glorious gospel of God. It is an awesome responsibility to
be a trustee, a steward of that divinely inspired message, which
has to do with life and death, yes, heaven and hell. As long as
there is sin in the world, as long as men die, the divinely in-
spired message will be very relevant.
No one in this world needs help as much as those who lack
the gospel. They lack everything that would do them good. A
throne without the gospel is a devil’s dungeon. Wealth with-
out the gospel is fuel for hell. All building without the gospel
is building on sand.
Every true minister and every true Christian longs to see a re-
vival of true religion that will affect personal conduct, piety in
the home, and the social and moral standards in the community.
It is my deep conviction that such a revival will not be seen un-
less there is a recovery of the gospel of the grace of God. True
revival will not come by some new methods of church growth
or more religious machinery or more conventions or more sym-
posiums or conferences. It will only come by the powerful
preaching of the divinely inspired message we call the gospel,
that gospel which no human mind could conceive or invent.

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In I Thessalonians 2:1—12, that gospel, designated as our
trust, is twice called the gospel of God. It is the message that
saves souls and builds New Testament churches. It is what the
great apostle preached: “I declare to you the gospel which I

preached to you, which also you received and in which you
stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word
which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain” (1 Cor.
15:1—2).

What Is the Gospel?
John Brown offers the best definition of the gospel that I have
found.

The Saxon word Gospel, like the Greek word of which
it is a literal translation, signifies agreeable intelligence,
a joyful announcement, good news, glad tidings; and is,
in the New Testament, ordinarily employed as a de-
scriptive designation of the revelation of Divine mercy
to our lost world,—the divinely inspired account of the
only way in which guilty, depraved, and miserable men
may be delivered from sin and its consequences, obtain
the Divine approbation and favor, be raised to the true
dignity and excellence of their intellectual and moral na-
ture in the knowledge of God and conformity to His
mind and will, and be made happy in all the variety, and
to the full extent, of their capacities of enjoyment, and
during the whole eternity of their being, by the free
grace of God, and “through the redemption that is in
Christ Jesus.” (John Brown, The Resurrection of Life: An
Exposition of 1 Cor. XV [Edinburgh: William Oliphant
and Sons, 18511)

There is power in this gospel, “the power of God to salva-
tion” (Rom. 1:16) to make “everyone who believes” be what he
or she is meant to be. No tidings were ever so joyful as those

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announced in the gospel, and no benefits were so good as those
exhibited in it.
There is an appalling ignorance in the world as to just what
the gospel is and what it does when it is savingly received. This
ignorance also exists among church people. Let me illustrate
from a personal experience.
Years ago when I was president of a small construction
company, I had three women call on me one Monday morn-
ing. The receptionist tried to direct them to someone else in
the office; however, they insisted on seeing me. My secretary
prevailed upon me to see them. When I reached the front of-
fice, sure enough, there were three nice ladies. They said they
were from a local church. They wanted to sell me a cookbook
(not very useful in the construction business). They had heard
I was religious and was a sure touch for a contribution. I soon
learned that I was about to buy a cookbook and I thought I
might at least inquire what the church was going to do with
the proceeds. They were not quite sure what the money was
going to be used for, so I thought I would help them with an
answer. “It would be a good idea to use the money to spread
the gospel.” My suggestion was met with perfect unanim-
ity—they all thought it was a good idea to use the money to
spread the gospel. Then, to be sure, I asked them, “What is the
gospel?” Their answers underscore the prevailing ignorance
in the church. The first woman said, “The gospel is the Ten
Commandments”; the second one said, “It is a symbol of
Christ”; the third said, “It is the golden rule”—to which re-
sponses I was prompted to asked if they were all members of
the same church!
The word gospel is used at least ninety times in the New Tes-
tament. Mark calls it “the gospel of Jesus Christ” (Mark 1:1) and
“the gospel of the kingdom of God” (Mark 1:14). This gospel
must first be preached to all nations before the end (Mark 13:10).
It is also called “the gospel of peace” (Eph. 6:15), “the gospel of
the grace of God” (Acts 20:24), “the gospel of your salvation”
(Eph. 1:13), and “the everlasting gospel” (Rev. 14:6).
Generally the phrase “the gospel” is used variously to mean:
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169
• the teachings of Christ and His apostles.
• the history of Christ’s birth, death, resurrection, and as-
cension.
• the preaching of the Word of Christ, particularly, the

doctrines and offers of salvation through Him.

But the gospel, in its strict and proper meaning, signifies
good news, glad tidings, joyful announcement in the form of a
divinely inspired message. That message contains information
needing explanation and application, and it includes invita-
tion.
The gospel is a message communicated in words, but not in
words only. “For our gospel did not come to you in word only,
but also in power, in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance, as
you know what kind of men we were among you for your
sake” (1 Thess. 1:5).
For my purposes in this chapter, I will confine my thoughts
to the gospel message in its strict and proper meaning. This
message has four ingredients, all of which must be present in
order to have the biblical gospel. (The substance for these four
ingredients is taken from J. I. Packer, Evangelism and the S over-
eignty of God [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1961].)

Four Essential Ingredients
The First Ingredient: God
The gospel is a divinely inspired message about God. This in—
gredient is often overlooked or partly omitted. It is about God
the Creator and Judge of all the earth and our relationship to
Him, that is, the Creator-creature relationship. As Creator He
has absolute claim on us creatures. We must know what He re-
quires of His creatures. The Creator-creature relationship must
be established before the Redeemer-redeemed relationship will
make sense.
Jesus came to reconcile us to God. The gospel is a message
about God. It tells us who He is, what His character is, what Hi~

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standards are, and what He requires of us, His creatures. It tells
us that we owe our very existence to Him, that for good or ill
we are always in His hands and under His eye, and that He
made us to worship and serve Him, to show forth His praise
and to live for His glory. These truths are the foundation of the-
istic religion. Until they are grasped the rest of the gospel mes-
sage will seem neither cogent nor relevant. It is here, with the
assertion of man’s complete and constant dependence on his
Creator, that the Christian story begins.
We can learn again from Paul at this point. When preach-
ing to Jews, as at Pisidian Antioch, he did not need to men-
tion the fact that men were God’s creatures; he could take this
knowledge for granted, for his hearers had the Old Testament
faith behind them. He could begin at once to declare Christ to
them, as the fulfillment of Old Testament hopes. But when
preaching to Gentiles, who knew nothing of the Old Testa-
ment, Paul had to go further back, and start from the begin-
ning. And the beginning from which Paul started in such cases
was the doctrine of God’s creatorship and man’s creature-
hood. So, when the Athenians asked him to explain what his
talk of Jesus and the resurrection was all about, he spoke to
them first of God the Creator, and why He made man:
“God.. . made the world.. . . He gives to all life, breath, and
all things. And has made.. . every nation.., that they should
seek the Lord” (Acts 17:24-27). This was not, as some have
supposed, a piece of philosophical apologetic of a kind that
Paul afterwards renounced, but the first and basic lesson in
theistic faith.
The gospel starts by teaching us that we, as creatures, are ab-
solutely dependent on God, and that He, as Creator, has an ab-
solute claim on us. Only when we have learned this can we see
what sin is, and only when we see what sin is can we under-
stand the good news of salvation from sin. We must know what
it means to call God Creator before we can grasp what it means
to speak of Him as Redeemer. Nothing can be achieved by talk-
ing about sin and salvation where this preliminary lesson has
not in some measure been learned.
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The Second Ingredient: Sin
The gospel is a divinely inspired message about sin. When we
ask, What is Sin? immediately we are faced with the law—the

Ten Commandments. “Whoever commits sin also commits law-
lessness, and sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). By the law is the
knowledge of sin. The first message of the cross is Christ’s sat-
isfying divine justice; the very base of the cross has to do with
eternal justice.
This is why in days gone by parents taught their children the
Ten Commandments. In the catechism the children learned the
Ten Commandments, not because they thought they would be
saved by keeping the commandments, but because the com-
mandments would show them their need to be saved by the
matchless grace of Christ.
It is interesting to note in reading the life of John Paton, the
great Presbyterian missionary to the New Hebrides, that the
first thing he taught the pagans was not John 3:16, but rather
the Ten Commandments. The same thing was true of John El-
liot, the first missionary to the American Indians. His first ser-
mon to the Indians was the Ten Commandments. We might ask
Why? The answer is very clear: that they would be made con-
scious of their sin against their Creator and see their need of a
Savior. Sin is the transgression of the law. Jesus is a Savior from
sin, not just from the consequences of sin. We learn this from
the very first chapter in the New Testament: “She will bring
forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save
His people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). Notice, it does not say
save His people in their sins, butfrom their sins. This divinely
inspired message is about sin—not just life’s casualties.
In the Bible the very idea of sin is that it is an offense against
God, which disrupts a man’s relationship with God. Unless we
see our shortcomings in the light of the law and the holiness of
God, we do not see them as sin at all. For sin is not a social con-
cept; it is a theological concept. Though sin is committed by
man, and many sins are against society, sin cannot be defined
in terms of either man or society. We never know what sin re-
ally is until we have learned to think of it in terms of God, and

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to measure it not by human standards but by the yardstick of
His total demand on our lives.
What we have to grasp, then, is that the bad conscience of
the natural man is not at all the same thing as conviction of sin.
It does not, therefore, follow that a man is convicted of sin
when he is distressed about his weaknesses and the wrong
things he has done. It is not conviction of sin just to feel miser-
able about yourself and your failures and your inadequacy to
meet life’s demands. Nor would it be saving faith if a man in
that condition called on the Lord Jesus Christ just to soothe him
and cheer him up and make him feel confident again. Nor
would we be preaching the gospel (though we might imagine
we were) if all we did was to present Christ in terms of a man’s
felt wants. (“Are you happy? Are you satisfied? Do you want
peace of mind? Do you feel that you have failed? Are you fed
up with yourself? Do you want a friend? Then come to Christ;
He will meet your every need.. .“ —as if the Lord Jesus Christ
were a fairy godmother or a super-psychiatrist.) No, we have
to go deeper than that. To preach sin means not to make capi-
tal out of people’s felt frailties (the brainwasher’s trick) but to
measure their lives by the holy law of God. To be convicted of
sin means not just to feel that one is an all-round flop but to re-
alize that one has offended God, and flouted His authority, and
defiled Him, and gone against Him, and put oneself in the
wrong with Him. To preach Christ means to set Him forth as
the One who through His cross sets men right with God again.
To put faith in Christ means relying on Him, and Him alone, to
restore us to God’s fellowship and favor.
It is indeed true that the real Christ, the Christ of the Bible,
who offers Himself to us as a Savior from sin and an Advocate
with God, does in fact give peace, and joy, and moral strength,
and the privilege of His own friendship to those who trust
Him. But the Christ who is depicted and desired merely to ease
life’s casualties and make us more comfortable is not the real
Christ. He is a misrepresented and misconceived Christ—in ef-
fect, an imaginary Christ. And if we teach people to look to an
imaginary Christ, we have no grounds for expecting that they
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will find real salvation. We must be on our guard, therefore,

against equating a natural bad conscience and sense of
wretchedness with spiritual conviction of sin, and so failing to
impress upon sinners the basic truth about their condition—
namely, that their sin has alienated them from God and ex-
posed them to His condemnation, hostility, and wrath, so that
their first need is for a restored relationship with Him.
It may be asked, What are the signs of true conviction of sin,
as distinct from the mere smart of a bad conscience, or the mere
disgust at life that any disillusioned person may feel? There
seem to be three signs.
1. Conviction of sin is essentially an awareness of a wrong re-
lationship with God: not just with one’s neighbor or one’s own
conscience and ideals for oneself, but with one’s Maker, the God
in whose hand one’s breath is and on whom one depends for
existence every moment. To define conviction of sin as a sense
of need, without qualification, would not be enough; it is not
just any sense of need, but a sense of a particular need—a need
for restoration of fellowship with God. It is the realization that,
as one stands at present, one is in a relationship with God that
spells only rejection, retribution, wrath, and pain, for the pres-
ent and the future; and a realization that this is an intolerable
relationship to remain in, and therefore a desire that, at what-
ever cost and on whatever terms, it might be changed. Con-
viction of sin may center upon the sense of one’s guilt before
God, or one’s uncleanness in His sight, or one’s rebellion
against Him, or one’s alienation and estrangement from Him.
But always it is a sense of the need to get right, not simply with
oneself or other people, but with God.
2. Conviction of sin always includes conviction of sins: a sense
of guilt for particular wrongs done in the sight of God, from
which one needs to turn and be rid of them, if he or she is ever
to be right with God. Thus Isaiah was convicted specifically of
sins of speech (Isa. 6:5), and Zacchaeus of sins of extortion
(Luke 19:8).
3. Conviction of sin always includes conviction of sinfulness:
a sense of one’s complete corruption and perversity in God’s

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sight, and one’s consequent need of what Ezekiel called a “new
heart” (Ezek. 36:26) and our Lord called “a new birth,” that is,
a moral recreation. Thus, the author of Psalm 51—traditionally
identified with David, under conviction of his sin with
Bathsheba—confesses not only particular transgressions (vv. 1-
4) but also the depravity of his nature (vv. 5-6), and seeks cleans-
ing from the guilt and defilement of both (vv. 7-10). Indeed, per-
haps the shortest way to tell whether a person is convicted of
sin is to take him through Psalm 51 and see whether his heart
resonates to the language of the psalmist.

The Third Ingredient: Christ
The gospel is a divinely inspired message about Christ, not any
Christ, or one conceived by imagination or contrived by your
own mind. There are many, many Christs on the religious mar-
ket, but there is only one true biblical Christ. He is the one who
came by a virgin’s womb, suffered and died vicariously on a
Roman cross, rose victoriously from a borrowed grave—and
now has been exalted to a throne and wears the victor’s crown.
He is the Almighty’s authorized Prophet, Priest, and King of
His church. We must ask: Who is He? What did He do? Why
did He do it? And where is He now?
Two points need to be made about how we declare this part
of the message.
1. We must not present the person of Christ apart from His saving
work. It is sometimes said that it is the presentation of Christ’s
person, ra.ther than of doctrines about Him, that draws sinners
to His feet. It is true that it is the living Christ who saves, and
that a theory of the atonement, however orthodox, is no sub-
stitute. This remark usually implies, however, that doctrinal in-
struction is dispensable in evangelistic preaching, and that all
the evangelist need do is paint a vivid word-picture of the Man
of Galilee who went about doing good, and then assure his
hearers that this Jesus is still alive to help them in their trou-
bles. But such a message could hardly be called the gospel. It
would, in reality, be a mere conundrum, serving only to mys-
tify. Who was this Jesus? we should ask, and What is His posi
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tion now? Such preaching would raise these questions while
concealing the answers, and thus it would completely baffle the
thoughtful listener.
The truth is that you cannot make sense of the historic fig-

ure of Jesus until you know about the incarnation—that this
Jesus was in fact God the Son made man to save sinners ac-
cording to His Father’s eternal purpose. Nor can you make
sense of His life until you know about the atonement—that He
lived as man so that He might die as man for men, and that His
passion, His judicial murder, was really His saving act of bear-
ing away the sins of the world. Nor can you tell on what terms
to approach Him now until you know about His resurrection,
ascension, and heavenly session—that Jesus has been raised, en-
throned, and made King, and now lives to save to the uttermost
all who acknowledge His lordship.
These doctrines, to mention no others, are essential to the
gospel. Without them, there is no gospel, only a puzzle story
about a man named Jesus. To regard the teaching of doctrines
about Christ as opposed to the presenting of His person is,
therefore, to put asunder two things that God has joined. It is
really very perverse. Indeed, for the whole purpose of teach-
ing these doctrines is to throw light on the person of the Lord
Jesus Christ and to make clear to our hearers just who it is that
we want them to meet. In ordinary social life, when we want
people to know whom we are introducing, we tell them some-
thing about him and what he has done. And so it is here. The
apostles themselves preached these doctrines in order to preach
Christ, as the New Testament shows. In fact, without these doc-
trines, you have no gospel to preach at all.
2. Likewise, we must not present the saving work of Christ apart
from His person. Preachers and personal workers have some-
times been known to make this mistake. In their concern to
focus attention on the atoning death of Christ as the sole suffi-
cient ground on which sinners may be accepted with God, they
have expounded the summons to saving faith in these terms:
“Believe that Christ died for your sins.” The effect of this ex-
position is to represent the saving work of Christ in the past—

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dissociated from His person in the present—as the whole ob-
ject of our trust. But it is not biblical to isolate the work from
the Worker. Nowhere in the New Testament is the call to believe
expressed in such terms.
What the New Testament calls for is faith in Christ Himself,
trust in the living Savior, who died for our sins. Thus, strictly
speaking, the object of saving faith is not the atonement but the
Lord Jesus Christ who made atonement. We must not, in pre-
senting the gospel, isolate the cross and its benefits from the
Christ whose cross it was. For the persons to whom the bene-
fits of Christ’s death belong are just those who trust His person
and believe not simply on His saving death but on Him, the lov-
ing Savior. Paul said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you
will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31). Our Lord
said, “Come to Me... and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).
This being so, one thing becomes immediately clear. The
question about the extent of the atonement, much agitated in
some quarters, has no bearing on the content of the evangelis-
tic message at this particular point. I am not asking here
whether Christ died in order to save every single human being,
past, present, and future. Nor am I inviting you now to make
up your mind on this question if you have not done so already.
Obviously, if a preacher did not believe that Christ died for
everyone, his gospel preaching would not say that Christ did.
You do not find such a statement in the sermons of George
Whitefield or Charles Spurgeon, for instance.
But even if an evangelist believes that Jesus died for all peo-
ple, he need never say so when preaching the gospel. For
preaching the gospel, as we have just seen, means inviting
every sinner to come to Jesus Christ, the living Savior, not de-
scribing the extent of the atonement. The truth is that Christ,
by virtue of His atoning death, is able to forgive and save all
those who put their trust in Him. What has to be said about the
cross when preaching the gospel is simply that Christ’s death
is the ground on which Christ’s forgiveness is given. And this
is all that has to be said. The question of the designed extent of
the atonement does not come into the story at this point.
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The New Testament never calls on any man to repent on the
ground that Christ died specifically and particularly for him.
The basis on which the New Testament invites sinners to put
faith in Christ is simply that they need Him, and that Lie offers
Himself to them, and that those who receive Him are promised all the
benefits that His death secured for His people. What is universal and

all-inclusive in the New Testament is the invitation to faith and
the promise of salvation to all who believe.
Our task in carrying out our trust is to reproduce as faithfully
as possible the New Testament emphasis. To go beyond the
New Testament, or to destroy its viewpoint or shift its stress is
always wrong. The New Testament knows only of a living
Christ, and all apostolic preaching of the gospel holds up the
living Christ to sinners. But the living Christ is Christ who died,
and He is never preached apart from His death and its recon-
ciling power. It is the living Christ, by virtue of His reconciling
death, who is the burden of the apostolic message. The task of
carrying out our trust is to preach Christ ... in His character as
the Crucified. The gospel is not, “believe that Christ died for
everybody’s sins, and therefore for yours,” any more than it is
“believe that Christ died only for certain people’s sins, and so
perhaps not for yours.” The gospel is, “believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, who died for sins, and offers Himself to be your
Savior.” This is the message we are to take to the world. We
have no business to ask them to put faith in any view of the ex-
tent of the atonement. Our job is to point them to the living
Christ and summon them to trust in Him.
It was because they both grasped this that John Wesley and
George Whitefield could regard each other as brothers in evan-
gelism, though they differed on the extent of the atonement.
Their views on this subject did not enter into their gospel
preaching. Both were content to preach the gospel just as it
stands in Scripture. They proclaimed the living Christ to sin-
ners and invited the lost to come to Him, through whose death
there is life.
The divinely inspired message must always contain His per-
son and the doctrines about Him. We have all met those who

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are so doctrinally sound that they are sound asleep. They are
as doctrinally straight as a gun barrel and just as empty. To
avoid this, the divinely inspired message must be His person
and His work.

The Fourth Ingredient: Faith and Repentance
The gospel is a divinely inspired summons to faith and repen-
tance.
A summons is a call by authority to appear at a named place.
It is a call to a duty. We summon an ambulance; we summon a
fire truck; we summon the police. We do not call 911 and say,
“Would you like to come to this terrible accident?” We do not
call the fire department saying, “Would you please consider
coming to this terrible fire?” No, when we call the police, fire-
men, or ambulance, it is an appeal to their duty, not an option.
In our civil law, a summons is a citation to appear in court.
It is a written notification signed by the proper authority and
served on the person to appear in court at a certain, specified
place, day, and time.
Likewise, in the Scriptures a summons is not optional. The
call to faith and repentance is a call to duty~ a call issued with
the voice of authority. It is given in the imperative mood.
When the people of Capernaum asked our Lord, “What shall
we do, that we may work the works of God?” He answered,
“This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He
sent” (John 6:28-29). John put it like this: “And this is His com-
mandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus
Christ. . .“ (1 John 3:23). In both of these passages we have a
summons, a command to believe—a summons to faith.
The apostle Paul also issued a summons to the Athenians:
“God... commands all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30).
Thus we see that the fourth ingredient of the gospel is a sum-
mons to faith and repentance.
Although repentance is missing from much evangelistic
preaching today, Jesus unmistakably preached repentance:
“Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preach-
ing the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, ‘The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe
in the gospel”’ (Mark 1:14—15). The apostles also preached re-
pentance: “So they went out and preached that people should re-
pent” (Mark 6:12). Jesus taught His followers that remission of
sins was inseparably linked to repentance: “. . . repentance and
remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations,
beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47). Peter preached repentance:

“Then Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and let every one of you be
baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and
you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”’ (Acts 2:38); “Repent
therefore and be converted” (Acts 3:19). Paul, reviewing a three-
year ministry with the Ephesian elders, reminded them that re-
pentance was an ingredient in the gospel he preached: “I kept
back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you, and
taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying to Jews,
and also to Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our
Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:20-21).

Faith and Repentance Inseparable
In response to these and many other passages, the question is
often raised, Why, when the Bible speaks of forgiveness of sin
and eternal life, does it sometimes just say “believe,” some-
times, “repent,” and still other times, both?
The answer to this question is found in the definition of re-
pentance found in the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

Q. 87. What is repentance unto ljfe?
A. Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a
sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension
of the mercy of God in Christ, doth, with grief and ha-
tred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose
of, and endeavor after, new obedience.

Notice that repentance is not only turning from sin to Christ,
but also the apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ—that
is, faith. This teaches us that faith and repentance are Siamese
twins—inseparably joined together in God’s salvation. Where
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there is true faith, there will always be evangelical repentance;
and where there is evangelical repentance, there will always be
saving faith.
There is spurious faith and a legal repentance that do not am
prehend the mercy of God in Christ. A clear example of this is
found by comparing Peter and Judas. The Bible says Judas re-
pented and then went out and hanged himself. Judas did not em-
brace the mercy of God in Christ. His kiss of betrayal was not a
greater sin than Peter’s curse of denial, but Peter did riot hang
himself. After his denial, Peter remembered the words of Jesus
and wept bitterly. He clearly embraced the mercy of God in Christ.
The answer to our question Why does the Bible sometimes
just say “believe,” other times just “repent,” and sometimes
both? is that they are inseparably joined together in the appli-
cation of God’s salvation. Thus, in every case, the Bible is call-
ing for the same response.
True repentance is always consistent with true faith. Spuri-
ous repentance dwells on the consequences of sin rather than
on sin itself. I have known some sinners so disturbed with the
fears of hell and thoughts of death and eternal judgment that,
to use the words of one old preacher, “They have been shaking
over the mouth of hell by their collar, and have almost felt the
torments of the pit before they went there.” Such fears may
come with true repentance, but they are not the essential part
of repentance. As John Bunyan in his Holy War has well said,
“Diabolus often beats the great hell-drum in the ears of Man-
soul, to prevent their hearing the trumpet of the gospel which
proclaims mercy and pardon.”
Any repentance that keeps a sinner from believing in Christ
is a repentance that needs to be repented of. Any repentance
that makes a sinner think Christ will not save him goes beyond
the truth of the Bible. Yes, it goes against the truth. Any repen-
tance that leads to despair and remorse but does not embrace
mercy is a repentance of the Devil and not of God.
A person may feel he has done wrong but go on sinning all
the same, feeling that there is no hope and that he may as well
continue seeking the pleasures of sin since he cannot, so he
The Gospel, Our Trust 181
I
thinks, have the pleasures of grace and forgiveness. That is
spurious repentance. It is the fire of the Devil, which hardens
the heart in sin, and not the Lord’s fire of mercy, which melts
the heart in repentance. In Peter’s repentance. he wept bitterly,

yet embraced the mercy of God in Christ. One old Puritan, on
his sick bed, expressed it this way: “Lord, sink me low as hell
in repentance; but lift me high as heaven in faith.”
To put it yet another way, true repentance is to sorrow bit-
terly for sin you know should damn you, but to rejoice greatly
in Christ as if the sin were nothing at all. Repentance strips a
person of self-righteousness, and faith clothes him with Christ.
Repentance purges the soul of dead works, and faith fills the
soul with living works. Repentance pulls down, and faith
builds up. Repentance orders a time to weep, and faith gives a
time to dance. Together these two make up the work of grace
within, whereby men’s souls are saved.
The repentance we ought to preach is one connected with
faith. Thus, we may preach repentance and faith together with-
out any difficulty whatsoever. Like twins, they are born at the
same time. To say which is first is beyond my knowledge. They
come to the soul together, and we must preach them together.
Spurgeon said, “So then, dear friends, those people who
have faith which allows them to think lightly of past sin, have
the faith of devils and not the faith of God’s elect.”
Our need to repent and believe continues until our dying day.
Rowland Hill, when he was near death, said he had one regret,
and that was that a dear friend who lived with him for sixty
years would have to leave him at the gate of heaven. “That dear
friend,” said he, “is repentance; repentance has been with me
all my life, and I think I shall drop a tear as I go through the
gates to think that I can repent no more.
First Thessalonians 1:9 sets forth three things that happen ir
every true conversion to some degree: “They [believers ir
Macedonia and Achaia] themselves declare concerning us whal
manner of entry we had to you, and how you turned to God
from idols to serve the living and true God.” Paul says that thE
Thessalonians (1) turned to God (faith) and (2) turned frorr

182 The Gospel, Our Trust The Gospel, Our Trust 183
idols (from sin—repentance) (3) to serve the living and true
God (evidence of repentance).
At the center of these three responses, and inseparable from
faith and good works, is repentance. Repentance and faith are
sacred duties and twin graces wrought in our souls by the re-
generating Spirit of God, whereby, being deeply convicted of
our guilt, danger, helplessness, and of the way of salvation by
Christ, we turn to God with unfeigned contrition, confession,
and supplication for mercy; at the same time heartily receiving
the Lord Jesus Christ as our Prophet, Priest, and King, and re-
lying on Him alone as the only and all-sufficient Savior.

Law and Gospel Inseparable
We have seen that the gospel is a divinely inspired message
about God, about sin, and about Christ, and a summons to
faith and repentance.
If repentance and faith are inseparable, then the law and the
gospel are likewise inseparable. What I mean is that anyone
who is an enemy of the law is also an enemy of the gospel. And
no one can be an enemy to the gospel without being, at the same
time, an enemy to the law. Every enemy to the gospel is, in the
same degree, an enemy to the perfection, spirituality, and honor
of the law.
The law and the gospel are in such harmony with each other
as to have no divided interests. Therefore, someone who is des-
titute of unfeigned love for the doctrines and promises of the
gospel, however strict his profession of religion may be, is really
an antinomian, an enemy to the honor of the holy law He is also
an adversary to the honor of the law if by rejecting the spotless
righteousness of Jesus Christ tendered to him in the gospel, he re-
fuses to present the only righteousness, by which the law can be
magnified and made honorable. He is an enemy, likewise, to the
authority and honor of the law as a rule of duty. For by his disbe-
lief of the promises of the blessed gospel, he refuses to receive that
grace from the fullness of Christ, without which he cannot honor
the law by so much as a single act of acceptable obedience.
I
�
If a person has experienced a saving knowledge of the
gospel, he or she will undoubtedly evidence it by obedience of
heart and life to the law in the hand of Christ as a rule of duty
People can never perform holy obedience to the law so long as
they remain ignorant of the gospel. But when they begin spir-

itually to discern the truth, suitableness, and glory of the doc-
trine of redeeming grace, they will then begin to perform spir-
itual and sincere obedience to the law of Christ as a rule. “He
died for all [who were given Him by the Father] that those who
live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who
died for them and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:15). When someone spir-
itually discerns and sincerely loves the grace of the gospel, he
at the same time sees and loves the holiness of the law. The con-
sequence will be that he will sincerely and cheerfully desire to
obey the law. He will yield this obedience not only because the
authority of God obliges him and the love of Christ constrains
him, but also because he discerns the beauty of the holiness of
the law itself and loves it.
A true believer is, in proportion as he is sanctified, rich in
faith and in good works. Although the exercise of graces and
the performance of duties gain nothing for the believer at the
hand of God, yet they themselves are unspeakably great gain
to him. He counts it a privilege and a pleasure to have duties
to perform, and to have a disposition given him to perform
them to the glory of his God and Savior. For, as there can be no
happiness without holiness, so too the believer is comfortable
and happy in proportion as he is holy The more he believes and
applies the gospel, trusting cordially in the Lord Jesus for his
salvation, and the more his faith works by love, so much the
more communion with Christ and enjoyment of God are his in-
finite portion. The legalist expects happinessfor his duties, but
the true believer enjoys happiness in them.

What Always Accompanies Saving Faith?
The answer to that question is found in the most succinct def-
inition of a Christian in all the Bible: “Therefore, if anyone is in
I.

184 The Gospel, Our Trust The Gospel, Our Trust 185
Christ he is a new creation; old things have passed away; be-
hold, all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). This little verse
speaks of three characteristics of the person who has saving
faith.

In Christ: The Essence of True Religion
The expression “in Christ” is used 240 times in the New Testa-
ment. Indeed, it is the essence of true religion. If I could ask only
one question to help a person determine his relationship to his
Maker, it would be this: Are you in Christ? Everything God has
for you is in Christ! “Of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who be-
came for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanc-
tification and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30).

• In Christ is our justification.
• In Christ is our sanctification.
• In Christ is our adoption.
• In Christ is our wisdom.
• In Christ is our righteousness.

“In Christ” signifies a personal relationship. It expresses the
most exalted relationship that can exist—an inseparable rela-
tionship, an indestructible relationship, an unspeakable rela-
tionship that cannot be defined in word only.

New Creation: The Effects of True Religion
The second important truth found in 2 Corinthians 5:17 con-
cerns the effects of regeneration: “new creation.” Regeneration
is the powerful, supernatural work of the triune God. God the
Father planned our redemption; God the Son prayed for it (John
17) and purchased it; Cod the Spirit effectually applies it in re-
generation.
We can explain what the Spirit does, but how He does it let
no man pretend to know “The wind blows where it wishes, and
you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from
and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit”
(John 3:8). So it is with regeneration.
All Things New: The Evidence of True Religion
The third importunt truth found in 2 Corinthians 5:17 is the ev-
idence of regeneration: “Old things have passed away; behold,

all things have become new.~~
How does one know if he or she is regenerate? Regeneration
is known by its effects. Regeneration always includes (1) the en-
lightening of the mind, (2) the convicting of the conscience,
and (3) the renewing of the will. It is by the work of the Spirit
that (1) the natural blindness is removed, (2) the natural enmity
is subdued, and (3) the natural man becomes a new creature in
all his views, feelings, desires, affections, aims, habits, and
hopes.
This new creature enters into a new conflict in his soul. It is
the conflict that Paul refers to in Romans 7, between the law in
his members and the law of his mind. An unconverted person
may be conscious of a conflict between sin and the conscience.
But the new creature in Christ has a different conflict, that is, a
conflict between sin and the will. The difference between the
two (sin and conscience versus sin and the will) consists entirely
in the position of the will. In the unconverted, the will is on the
side of sin, and both are opposed to conscience. In the new
creature, the will is on the side of conscience, and both are op-
posed to sin.
Finally, do the law and the gospel agree with and subserve
the honor of each other? Most certainly. Then, let believers al-
ways take heed that they do not set them in opposition to one
another. Beware, 0 believer, of ever setting the law in hostile
opposition to the gospel, or the gospel in opposition to the law.
John Newton summarized it very well.

Clearly to understand the distinction, connection, and
harmony between the Law and the Gospel, and their
mutual subserviency to illustrate and establish each

186 The Gospel, Our Trust The Gospel, Our Trust 187
other, is a singular privilege, and a happy means of pre-
serving the soul from being entangled by errors on the
right hand or on the left. (John Newton, Works [London:
Banner of Truth], 1:350)

Examination and Invitation
Do you desire to know whether you are “experimentally” (ex-
perientially) acquainted with the grace of the gospel? Pray that
the Lord may examine and test you, and then ask yourself some
questions: Do I know spiritually, and believe fervently, the doc-
trines of this glorious gospel? Do I spiritually discern the ex-
cellence and suitableness of the plan of redemption exhibited
in the gospel; and do I heartily approve, so far as I know them,
all the parts of that wonderful scheme? Do I eagerly comply
with the invitations and accept the offers of the gospel? Do I fre-
quently endeavor to embrace and trust the promises of it, and
do I place the confidence of my heart in the Lord Jesus for all
the salvation promised in the gospel?
Do I love the gospel, so as to delight in reading and hearing
and meditating on it? Do I love and admire the gospel because
it is the doctrine, the only doctrine, that is “according to godli-
ness,” or because it is the only mirror in which believers so con-
template the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ as to be
“changed into the same image from glory to glory, by the Spirit
of the Lord”? And do I find that, under the transforming and
consoling influence of the gospel, I in some measure delight in
the law of God according to the inward man, and run in the way
of all His commandments?
If you can answer these questions in the affirmative, you may
confidently conclude that you have attained, in some happy
measure, that supernatural and first-hand knowledge of the glo-
rious gospel which is the beginning of eternal life in the soul, and
is inseparably connected with evangelical holiness in all manner
of your conduct. You accept your duty, in the faith of the promise,
to grow daily in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Sav-
ior Jesus Christ and never be moved away from the hope of the
I
gospel. But, if you cannot answer in the affirmative so much as
one of these questions, you ought to conclude that you are yet a
stranger to the grace of the gospel. And, instead of yielding to
despair, you should, without delay, come as a sinner to the Lord
Jesus, who is given for a light to the Gentiles.

Epilogue
Little needs to be said in conclusion, except to stress the obvi-
ous and sacred importance that God, in the Scripture, attaches
to His holy law. This must be taken to heart by the believer and
the preacher alike. The believer must increasingly delight in it
“according to the inward man” (Rom. 7:22), demonstrating the
truth of the Lord’s saying, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My
word” (John 14:23). The preacher, likewise, must seek the help
of the Holy Spirit so that in his preaching, he honors the law,
and as he expounds the law, he sends men to the gospel. It
brings no praise to God when either of these glorious manifes-
tations of His ways is neglected.
As a memory aid to their hearers, the preachers of the sev-
enteenth and eighteenth centuries occasionally produced ver-
sifications of their sermons. These could scarcely be called po-
etry, but their rhythm and rhyme greatly assisted in the
retention of the truth. The Scotsman Ralph Erskine produced a
rhyme of this sort in which he indicated the Puritan views on
the place of the law in the believer’s life. Here is part of that son-
net of 386 verses, which he entitled “The Believer’s Principles
Concerning the Law and the Gospel”:
The law’s a tutor much in vogue,
To gospel-grace a pedagogue;
The gospel to the law no less
Than its fidl end for righteousness.

When once the fiery law of God
Has chas ‘d me to the gospel-road;
Then back unto the holy law
Most kindly gospel-grace will draw.
Li

188 The Gospel, Our Trust The Gospel, Our Trust 189
When by the law to grace i’m schooled;
Grace by the law will have me ruled;
Hence, if I don’t the law obey,
I cannot keep the gospel-way.

When I the gospel-news believe,
Obedience to the law I give;
And that both in its fed’ral dress,
And as a rule of holiness.

What in the gospel-mint is coined,
The same is In the law enjoined:
Whatever gospel-tidings teach,
The law’s authority doth reach.

Here join the law and gospel hands,
What this me teaches that commands:
What virtuous forms the gospel please
The same the law doth authorise.

And thus the law-commandment seals
Whatever gospel-grace reveals:
The gospel also for my good
Seals all the law-demands with blood.

The law most perfect still remains,
And every duty full contains:
The gospel its perfection speaks,
And therefore gives whate’er it seeks.

Law-threats and precepts both, I see,
With gospel-promises agree;
They to the gospel are a fence,
And it to them a maintenance.

The law will justify all those
Who with the gospel-ransom close;
The gospel too approves for aye
All those that do the law obey.

A rigid master was the law,
Demanding brick, denying straw;
But when with gospel-tongue it sings,
It bids me fly, and gives me wings.

In this paradox lies the perfect wisdom of God. The appro-
priate prayer of the true believer may well be that of the
psalmist, “Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law;
indeed I shall observe it with my whole heart” (Ps. 119:34).

THE GOSPEL IS, INDEED, OUR TRUST—bountiful blessings inher-
ited though God’s grace. As trustee of this estate, we are ob-
ligated to ensure its preservation for future generations. That
responsibility demands that we preserve the relationship be-
tween the law and the gospel, showing in our lives how they
mutually serve and establish one another.

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