One of my favorite readers attended a non-denominational church service while camping last weekend. Instead of PowerPoint and praise bands, they simply read the Bible while the minister preached. I (and this person) thought that was rather cool. I was then told that the minister was going through the various parts of the Bible, saying how we should do this, why we should do that, etc.

I said, “Wow, that’s a lot of Law there, did he get to any Gospel?”
The reply: Oh, we went through several sections of the Old and New Testament.

I had asked the wrong question. I should have asked, “Wow, that’s a lot of what we have to do, did he get to tell what God had done?” :)

I’ve seen some in Sunday School class mistake the Old and New Testament for Law and Gospel. True, the OT contains the Levitical ceremonial law, but there is Law in the New Testament and Gospel in the Old Testament.

Some may put the first point of the Gospel even earlier than I do, but I would stick the Gospel pin in Genesis 3:14-15:

The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

So, prior to the eviction of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, we get Gospel, the message of what God is doing for us. Our salvation is planned that far back in time.

It’s not as fun to start from the back of the book and find the first instance of Law working backwards, but one doesn’t have to wait long, Revelation 22:18-19, where we are told not to add or take away from “the words of the prophecy of this book.”

Gospel can be found in all sorts of place in the Old Testament, from the direct prophecies of Christ’s coming to the stark symbolism of the Passover to Levitical sacrificial practices. Going against the grain and finding the Gospel in the Old Testament really makes one wonder what those Pharisees were thinking when Jesus came along.

We should not be shocked that there is Gospel in the Old Testament. Jesus said there was (John 5:39).

Law is not as fun for me to find in the New Testament; perhaps because it is Law! :) We find the Law even in the middle of those, well, Gospels: the calls to repentance by John the Baptist and Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, giving to the needy, praying without desiring attention from others, the Golden Rule, and that’s just the first seven chapters of Matthew.

Nor can we say Law and Gospel are exclusive even in the same verse. Pastor David Juhl had an interesting discussion on 1 John 5:3-4, which could be both. Pastor Juhl publishes on LiveJournal, so search is nearly impossible. :)

The Gospel does not start at Matthew 1; that’s why we maintain both Testaments. We read Scripture with a Law/Gospel/Both lens, and that keeps us out of a lot of trouble. Correctly identifying Law and Gospel is important, so that we correctly identify what we are to do and what Christ has fulfilled for us.