The Law and the Gospel, Faith, and the fatal Error of a False Alternative
The Marrow Controversy is commonly presented as a struggle between evangelical Calvinists defending the freeness of the offer of the gospel and legalistic churchmen who placed qualifications between sinners and Christ. And while there is plausibility enough in this description to explain why the controversy has endured (even to the present day); it is inadequate, as a final theological judgment, inasmuch as it tends to accept the categories in which the controversy itself was conducted and therefore overlooks the more fundamental question: why did either party find itself compelled to speak in this manner at all?
The dispute became concentrated upon such questions as these: What “warrant” does a sinner have to believe in Christ? Must he first forsake his sins before coming to Christ? May the preacher tell every sinner that Christ is dead for him, or is in some sense “his”? Is repentance antecedent to faith, consequent upon faith, or somehow contained within it? Is assurance of a personal interest in Christ included in the essence of saving faith?
These are not trivial questions. Yet the entire controversy became distorted because a more elementary Reformation distinction was not allowed to govern the debate with sufficient clarity: the proper relation of the law and the gospel in the conversion of a sinner.
Had Scripture, Luther, Calvin, and the Reformed confessions been followed and adhered to with sufficient precision, neither of the two principal constructions would have been necessary, or allowed to take such precedence.
The minister does not tell an unbroken sinner that Christ has died for him, because the minister does not know that to be true.
Neither does the minister require the sinner to produce repentance, reformation, sincerity, or holy fruits in order to acquire permission to believe at all, because such things follow after faith, and are not the cause of belief.
Instead, the minister preaches the law in its full spiritual and covenantal severity. He declares that God requires perfect, personal, and perpetual righteousness; that every sinner has failed utterly; that the curse of God rests upon all who continue not in everything written in the law; that mankind is wholly depraved in thought, word and deed, and that all he does is sin, that no creature can recover the sinner from his lost estate; and that every mouth must therefore be stopped before God.
Then and only then does he preach Christ.
The sinner whom the Spirit has brought through the Word to believe the requirements of the law does not require an ingenious theory of universal “warrant” in order to understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is made to understand why he needs Christ. He thirsts because the law has discovered his drought; he hungers because he possesses no righteousness of his own; he is made poor in spirit because his imagined wealth has been exposed as miserable poverty; he seeks a physician because he has been made to see that he is desperately sick.
Yet none of these things constitutes merit. His poverty does not purchase Christ. His hunger does not become righteousness. His sorrow does not satisfy justice. His humiliation does not earn permission to believe. They are indeed precisely the destruction of all such claims.
The principal error of the Marrow Controversy, therefore, was the false alternative within which both parties allowed themselves to be confined. One side feared that requiring anything before faith would make grace conditional, and therefore sought an indiscriminate “warrant” by which every hearer might appropriate Christ. The other feared that such language would encourage presumption and antinomianism, and therefore spoke as though some measure of forsaking sin or evangelical obedience must stand antecedently to coming to Christ.
The older Reformation doctrine destroys both positions.
The law does not prepare the sinner for Christ by making him better.
It prepares him by discovering that he is totally depraved.
The gospel does not then tell him that Christ must already have died for him personally.
It reveals the only Saviour in whom such sinners brought low are freely given righteousness, pardon, life, and reconciliation with God.
The sinner brings nothing.
Christ supplies everything.
And therefore one sentence of our Lord contains in substance the answer which both parties failed to formulate:
“And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?
But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
—Matthew 9:11–13
He does not say, I came to call the repentant to salvation. Neither does He say, I came to assure sinners indiscriminately that they possess a universal warrant to regard Me as already theirs. Rather, He says, “I am not come to call the righteous”—thereby overthrowing the Marrow construction insofar as it attempts to place Christ before men without first reckoning with that knowledge of sin and misery by which the self-righteous are cast down from themselves. And He adds, “but sinners to repentance”—thereby overthrowing the opposite error, for Christ does not call those who have already made themselves repentant, reformed, and suitably qualified, but calls sinners themselves unto repentance.
He came, therefore, to call sinners to repentance. In that one sentence both errors are answered.
The order is not accidental. The New Testament follows the Old, as the gospel answers the law. Moses leads Israel out of bondage and through the wilderness; Joshua brings them into the promised inheritance. So also the law discovers bondage, guilt, and death, while the gospel reveals the righteousness and life found only in Christ. The law has a necessary place in the divine operation of salvation; yet if its proper convicting work is displaced and introduced only after the gospel, the whole order is confused. Grace can no longer be clearly understood as grace, because the sinner has never first been shown the righteousness which God requires, the condemnation which sin deserves, and the utter impossibility of supplying that righteousness from himself.
Samuel Bolton expressed the proper order well: “The law sends us to the Gospel, that we may be justified; and the Gospel sends us to the law again, to inquire what is our duty as those who are justified.” Here the three principal uses of the moral law may be distinguished. First, the pedagogical or convicting use: the law reveals sin, condemns the sinner, stops every mouth, and drives him out of confidence in himself unto Christ. Secondly, the civil use: the law restrains outward wickedness and preserves order among men, though without regenerating the heart. Thirdly, the normative or didactic use: having been justified freely in Christ, the believer returns to the law, not as a covenant by which life must be earned, but as the holy rule of grateful obedience.
The order must therefore be preserved: law, gospel, law again—condemnation, justification, sanctification; not because these can be separated in the living work of the Spirit, but because they must be distinguished if grace is to remain grace and obedience is to remain gospel obedience.
The same principle lies behind the familiar Reformation maxim that we are justified by faith alone, yet the faith which justifies is never alone. Faith receives Christ without works; having received Christ, it immediately begins to work by love. Works neither prepare the sinner to merit Christ nor contribute to the righteousness by which he is justified; they follow justification as the necessary fruits of a living faith.
Thus the errors of both parties may be stated with precision. To preach indiscriminately to sinners that Christ is dead for them is to attempt to preach the gospel without first allowing the law to establish the sinner’s actual condition before God. It supplies a personal interest in Christ where Scripture has supplied instead the command to repent and believe, together with the promise that all who believe shall be saved. But to require sinners first to display evidences of repentance, reformation, or evangelical obedience before they may come to Christ is to introduce the third use of the law before the gospel has done its justifying work. The rule appointed for the justified is thereby turned into a qualification demanded of the unjustified.
The first error bypasses the law’s condemning office. The second anticipates the law’s sanctifying office.
Between them stands the apostolic order: the law first discovers the sinner as guilty, empty, and condemned; the gospel then reveals Christ as his only righteousness and hope; and the law thereafter returns in the hand of Christ as the rule of that new obedience which necessarily follows justification.
Thus our Lord’s words remain sufficient to overturn both constructions:
“I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
I. The Historical Setting
The controversy arose within the Church of Scotland in the early eighteenth century, but the book which gave the controversy its name was considerably older.
The Marrow of Modern Divinity first appeared in England in 1645, while the Westminster Assembly was still sitting. It was published under the initials “E. F.” and is generally attributed to Edward Fisher, an English lay writer. Its first part dealt particularly with the covenant of works, the covenant of grace, and the way of salvation in Christ; a later second part expounded the place of the moral law in the Christian life. The work was constructed as a dialogue among Evangelista, representing the evangelical minister; Nomista, the legalist; Antinomista, the antinomian; and Neophytus, the young Christian. Fisher drew extensively upon earlier Protestant and Reformed writers, including Luther, Calvin, Beza, Sibbes, Goodwin, and others.
Fisher hoped to steer between legalism and antinomianism. He aimed at neither a salvation partly grounded upon works nor a Christianity emancipated from the moral law.
But good intention cannot sanctify bad theology.
The book contained expressions which were genuinely dangerous. Its method of assembling excerpts from various theologians also meant that statements arising from somewhat different theological contexts could be made to stand together without all the qualifications that a systematic treatment required.
Thomas Boston encountered the book during his early ministry and came to value it highly. By the time of the later controversy he acknowledged that he owed much of his distinctive understanding of the gospel to it.
The immediate occasion of the Scottish controversy, however, was not originally the book itself.
The Auchterarder Proposition
In 1717 William Craig, a candidate for the ministry, was examined by the Presbytery of Auchterarder. Candidates were being required to approve a proposition which became derisively known as the Auchterarder Creed:
“It is not sound and orthodox to teach that men must forsake their sins in order to come to Christ.”
Craig would not subscribe to the proposition and was refused licence. The matter reached the General Assembly, which condemned the proposition as unsound. Contemporary Marrow sources interpreted the Assembly as though it were saying that men must first rid themselves of sin by repentance before coming to Christ.
The wording of the Auchterarder proposition itself was unfortunate.
If “forsake sin in order to come to Christ” means:
A sinner must first morally reform himself, obtain an acceptable measure of repentance, and thereby acquire a qualification entitling him to Christ,
then the proposition was right to reject it.
But if it means:
No one savingly comes to Christ while remaining inwardly committed to self-righteousness, impenitence, and the love of sin,
then the proposition could be gravely misleading.
The whole later controversy was already present in embryo.
Both sides were speaking about something real, but neither had yet stated the matter with sufficient theological precision.
Thomas Boston was present during the ecclesiastical proceedings and believed the Assembly had struck at evangelical truth. In conversation he recommended The Marrow of Modern Divinity. The book passed through several hands until James Hog of Carnock determined to republish it. The first Scottish edition appeared in 1718 with Hog’s preface.
Hadow and the controversy over the book
James Hadow, Principal of St Mary’s College at St Andrews, became one of the most prominent opponents of the Marrow theology. In 1719 he preached before the Synod of Fife and attacked teachings associated with The Marrow. The dispute thereafter expanded through sermons, pamphlets, ecclesiastical examinations, and committee proceedings.
The principal charges concerned:
- the relation between faith and assurance;
- whether The Marrow implied universal redemption;
- whether holiness was necessary to salvation;
- whether fear of punishment and hope of reward could properly motivate believers;
- whether the believer remained under the law;
- and the nature of the gospel offer itself.
In 1720 the General Assembly prohibited ministers from recommending The Marrow and ordered that people be warned against using it.
This action produced the Marrow response.
The Twelve Representers
Twelve ministers eventually signed a Representation against the Assembly’s action: James Hog, Thomas Boston, John Bonar, John Williamson, James Kid, Gabriel Wilson, Ebenezer Erskine, Ralph Erskine, James Wardlaw, Henry Davidson, James Bathgate, and William Hunter. They became known as the Representers, or more commonly the Marrow Brethren.
Their Representation defended, among other things, the free warrant of preaching Christ, the believer’s deliverance from the covenant of works, the distinction between the law as covenant and the law as rule of life, and the rejection of holiness as the price of eternal salvation. It also defended forms of personal appropriation and assurance which the Assembly considered objectionable.
The Commission subsequently submitted twelve queries to them. Ebenezer Erskine and Gabriel Wilson played major roles in composing the answers. In 1722 the Representers were formally admonished and rebuked, though they were not deposed from the ministry.
Boston later produced his famous annotated edition of The Marrow, and the controversy continued to exert influence long after the formal ecclesiastical proceedings had subsided.
These events are necessary for understanding the dispute.
The question then remains:
What does Scripture actually require the minister to preach?
II. What Was Really at Stake?
Several questions occupied the controversy, but they are not equally fundamental.
The relationship between law and gospel is primary.
The question of the “warrant of faith” closely follows.
The deepest question is this:
What must a sinner know in order savingly to receive Christ, and by what means does God bring him to that knowledge?
The answer of Scripture is not obscure, though fallen man is by nature blind to it. Divine wisdom is not nebulous or inaccessible in itself; the difficulty lies in the darkness of the sinner who does not understand and does not want to understand. Solomon therefore says:
“A scorner seeketh wisdom, and findeth it not: but knowledge is easy unto him that understandeth.”
—Proverbs 14:6
The Scriptures certainly contain things which are profound and “hard to be understood”; yet Peter does not therefore excuse ignorant sinners or make obscurity the cause of destruction. Rather, he lays the fault upon those who lack the knowledge, diligence and stability necessary to handle the Word aright:
“As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.
But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.”
—2 Peter 3:16–18
There are therefore mysteries in divine revelation which demand reverence, labour, and spiritual understanding; but the way of salvation itself is not an ambiguous riddle. God has revealed what must be known, and commands men to seek that knowledge diligently:
“Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding;
If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures;
Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.
For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.”
—Proverbs 2:3–6
Saving faith therefore cannot be separated from knowledge. Yet this knowledge has a definite order and object. The sinner must know God, must thereby come to know himself, and must then know Christ as the only remedy for the misery which the former knowledge has uncovered.
First, he must know God sufficiently to know what God requires.
The fear of the Lord begins with the knowledge of God Himself. God is not merely the giver of salvation; He is the holy Lawgiver before whom man stands accountable. The sinner cannot understand sin until he understands something of the One against whom sin is committed, nor can he understand righteousness until he knows the righteousness which God requires.
Hence Solomon says:
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.”
—Proverbs 9:10
And our Lord reduces the whole demand of the law to perfect love toward God and neighbour:
“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
—Matthew 22:37–40
Until a man apprehends the weight of this demand, he cannot rightly apprehend the extent of his transgression. A corrupt knowledge of sin inevitably produces a corrupt knowledge of God.
Secondly, he must know himself sufficiently to know that he does not possess what God requires.
This is the peculiar work of the law. It does not merely give abstract information concerning morality; it brings the sinner under judgment and teaches him what he is before God.
Paul says:
“What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.”
—Romans 7:7
And again:
“Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”
—Romans 3:19–20
The law therefore produces the knowledge without which the gospel cannot be understood aright: knowledge of guilt, inability, condemnation, and the utter insufficiency of all human righteousness.
This is precisely why self-knowledge is necessary to saving faith. The sinner does not look within himself in order to discover something commendable which will entitle him to Christ. He looks upon himself beneath the light of God’s holiness and discovers precisely the opposite: that he possesses no righteousness capable of standing before God.
Paul describes Israel’s fatal error in exactly these terms:
“Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.
For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.
For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.”
—Romans 10:1–4
Their zeal did not save them because their knowledge was defective at the very point upon which the gospel turns. They did not understand the righteousness of God; consequently they did not understand their own want of righteousness; and therefore they attempted to establish what could only be received in Christ.
Ignorance of the law thus produces ignorance of the gospel. Ignorance of the condition man is in produces ignorance of Christ.
Thirdly, he must know Christ sufficiently to know that in Him alone is the righteousness, reconciliation, and salvation which he lacks.
The work of the law is not complete in itself. It discovers the disease but does not provide the cure. It shuts the sinner up under condemnation so that another righteousness must be sought.
Hence Paul immediately proceeds from the law’s condemnation to the gospel’s revelation:
“But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
—Romans 3:21–24
This knowledge of Christ is not bare historical information. Eternal life itself is described in terms of knowing God through the Mediator:
“These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:
As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
—John 17:1–3
Nor is this saving knowledge separable from Scripture. Paul reminds Timothy:
“And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.”
—2 Timothy 3:15–17
Scripture makes a man wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Knowledge and faith are therefore not rivals, for saving faith must be according to knowledge.
Thomas Watson says, “True faith is grounded upon knowledge; knowledge carries the torch before faith. There is a knowledge of Christ’s orient excellencies, Phil. 3:7. He is all made up of love and beauty. True faith is a judicious intelligent grace, it knows whom it believes, and why it believes. Faith is seated as well in the understanding as the will. It hath an eye to see Christ, as well as a wing to fly to him. Such therefore as are invailed with ignorance, or have only an implicit faith, to believe as the Church believes, have no true genuine faith.”
Finally, this knowledge is wrought by the Holy Ghost through the Word.
The natural man does not arrive at these truths merely because the propositions are placed before him. The same Word which outwardly declares God, sin, and Christ must be inwardly illuminated by the Spirit. Man is dead in sin and unable to believe correctly without the grace of God.
Paul therefore describes conversion as an act of divine illumination:
“But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.
For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
—2 Corinthians 4:3–6
Our Lord likewise attributes the several parts of this work to the Holy Ghost:
“Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.
And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:
Of sin, because they believe not on me;
Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more;
Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.
I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.”
—John 16:7–13
Here, again, the correct order is vital: sin, righteousness, judgment, according to the Spirit’s guidance into all truth—that is, a complete and absolute truth against which no lie shall finally prevail.
Thus the answer of Scripture is plain and simple in substance.
The sinner must know God, for without the knowledge of His holiness and righteousness there can be no true knowledge of sin.
He must know himself, for by the law comes the knowledge of sin, the stopping of every mouth, and the destruction of all confidence in man’s own righteousness, whether in works, good intentions, or free will. As it is written:
“For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.”
—Philippians 3:3
Note carefully. The apostle does not say, We are the better Christians, who hold more closely to the doctrine of free grace, while those who oppose it are merely weaker brethren. He says that those who truly worship God in the Spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus have no confidence in the flesh. This is not an accidental distinction between stronger and weaker Christians, but a mark by which the true worshippers of God are distinguished.
So also Paul writes:
“We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you,
Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints,
For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel;
Which is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth.”
—Colossians 1:3–6
Observe that the apostle does not speak merely of those who have heard the language of grace, but of those who have known the grace of God in truth. There may therefore be many professions of grace which are not the grace of God in truth.
One man may say, I believe that I am saved by grace, and yet deny the abiding validity of the moral law. Another may say, Jesus saved me; I did not save myself, while retaining in his heart the idol of free will and attributing to man some native moral power by which he distinguishes himself from another. Such men fulfil the word spoken against hypocritical religion:
“This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”
—Matthew 15:8–9
They profess to know God, yet by doctrines of free will, inherent righteousness, and natural moral ability they deny the grace they profess and re-establish a doctrine of works and human merit. The name of grace remains upon their lips while its substance is overthrown in their theology.
We may therefore know from the apostle’s words that it is nothing merely for men to say, I hold to the grace of God; neither is it sufficient for the Marrow men to say, We are defending the free preaching of Christ to sinners, if a thousand errors are erected upon the same foundation. Error cannot be overthrown by error, nor can the kingdom of Satan be cast down by lies and false doctrine.
Peter establishes the same point when he writes:
“By Silvanus, a faithful brother unto you, as I suppose, I have written briefly, exhorting, and testifying that this is the true grace of God wherein ye stand.”
—1 Peter 5:12
The words true grace necessarily imply the existence of that which bears the name of grace while being false. The apostles were well aware that false gospels and counterfeit forms of grace would arise within the visible church, deceiving men so thoroughly that those most obnoxious before God might appear most approved before men.
And is this strange? Were not the Pharisees highly esteemed among men?
“And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.”
—Luke 16:15
Are we then to imagine that the Pharisee has vanished from the earth? Nay. He has merely assumed other names: Papist, Baptist, Pentecostal, Evangelical, and even Calvinist. The name alters; the old confidence in the flesh remains wherever men establish some righteousness, power, decision, disposition, or merit of their own alongside the sovereign grace of God.
Therefore, if we would follow the doctrine of the apostles, we must understand that everything called grace is not therefore the true grace of God.
Calvin speaks well concerning this grace:
“If this is received, it will be beyond dispute that man does not have free will sufficient for good works unless he is helped by grace—and by that special grace which is given only to the elect through regeneration.”
Since God must therefore of His own good pleasure grant us the true knowledge of His mind and will, as it is written:
“Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself.”
—Ephesians 1:9
let us be sober and do battle valiantly against the lies and deceits of Satan which spring up everywhere in the world. Let us not foolishly imagine that men are true ministers of God merely because they bear Christian names, occupy pulpits, invoke the language of grace, or testify concerning themselves that they preach Christ.
The sinner brought to this knowledge must then know Christ; for God effectually brings the sinner out of vain confidence in himself into the knowledge of his misery, the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of salvation through Jesus Christ by the Word.
Therefore all this knowledge, if it is to be called true knowledge unto salvation, must be truly taught from the Word and effectually ministered through that Word by the power of the Holy Ghost.
False doctrine cannot save men from perishing. Yet all who truly believe in Christ, casting aside every confidence in the flesh and resting upon Him alone for salvation, shall certainly be saved.
Away, therefore, with such mad retorts as, No one has perfect doctrine, or, Doctrine does not save. God does not save His elect through lies. He works in their hearts through the light of His Word, and brings them to salvation through the true understanding and believing of that Word by the illumination of the Holy Ghost. Faith does not rest upon error. Saving faith believes the truth of God.
The proper order of conversion is therefore not artificial, nor some man-made theological construction imposed upon the Word, but arises from Scripture itself:
God known in His holiness;
man known in his sin and misery;
Christ known in His righteousness and salvation;
faith receiving what Scripture reveals.
This is why law and gospel must ever be distinguished with clarity and conviction. The law reveals to the sinner what righteousness God requires and demonstrates to his conscience that he does not possess it. The gospel reveals the righteousness which God has provided in Christ. The law empties the sinner of boasting; the gospel fills the empty with the good news of salvation in Christ.
Thus the simplicity of the gospel does not consist in the mere profession of knowledge, and still less in the absence of knowledge, but in the concise and certain doctrinal conclusions which Scripture sets forth clearly and unmistakably.
As the Westminster Confession states:
“Those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.”
And again:
“The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men. Nevertheless we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word.”
There is therefore no opposition between the clarity of Scripture and the necessity of divine illumination. The truth is objectively revealed with sufficient clarity in the Word; the sinner is subjectively blind until the Spirit opens his understanding. Nor is there any opposition between the simplicity of the gospel and doctrinal precision. The gospel is simple precisely because, when God has taught a man the truth concerning Himself, his sin, and Christ, every false refuge falls away and the whole matter terminates in one conclusion:
Christ alone.