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The Law and the Gospel

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 1, 1873

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 42, No. 3.

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The Law and the Gospel.

A CERTAIN author says:—
“I would, if possible, anatomize the natural heart. It is in vain to offer the gospel, unless the law has been applied with clearness and cogency. At the present day, certainly, there is far less danger of erring in the direction of religious severity than in the direction of religious indulgence. If I have not preached redemption in these sermons so fully as I have analyzed sin, it is because it is my deliberate conviction that just now the first and hardest work to be done by the preacher, for the natural man, is to produce in him some sensibility upon the subject of sin.”
The law as well as the gospel has an important work in the conversion of every sinner. It goes before the gospel, to do what the gospel cannot do, viz., to teach the knowledge of sin. Rom. 3 : 20. Then the gospel comes after, to do what the law cannot do, that is, to forgive the repentant sinner. Rom. 3 : 24–26. See this fully illustrated in the case of Paul. Rom. 7 : 9–25; 8 : 1–7.
“The law reveals and makes us know What duties to our God we owe: But ’tis the gospel must reveal Where lies our strength to do his will. J. N. A.