Applying faith to everyday experiences… The nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court has put political machinations in high gear. Democrats and Republicans are posturing and predicting, trench warfare political style.
A key understanding of the Bible is the distinction between Law and Gospel. Law and Gospel are opposites; you can’t harmonize them, but both come from God’s fatherly care to help us through life into an intimate communion with Him. Law is a finger pointing and accusing. All the analysis and anger we see on the news, political and otherwise, manifests the Law stirring up the worst in us. Demands, threats, accusations… it never changes. The Gospel is different. It points to God in Jesus. Here is Good News for you, unlike anything you experience in the day-to-day world.
Martin Luther explained it this way. “The difference, then, between Law and Gospel is this: The Law makes demands of things that we are to do; it insists on works that we are to perform in the service of God and our fellow human beings. In the Gospel, however, we are summoned to a distribution of rich alms that we are to receive and take: the loving-kindness of God and eternal salvation…. The one promises; the other commands. The Gospel gives and bids us to take; the Law demands and says, ‘This you are to do.’” (in Walther, Law and Gospel,” 23-24).
So all we see in the media and experience in the hard-knocks of our own daily lives, is Law showing human frailty and stirring up sin. Application: Interpret the hardness of life as a motivator toward the goodness of God known through faith, toward the Gospel. The news interpreted theologically!
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