A Response to Brian Borgman on Law/Gospel Preaching

I have been asked by a number of people about Brian Borgman’s lecture in which he issues warnings about law/gospel preaching, so I listened through it and dictated my thoughts in real time. What follows is not meant to be an exhaustive treatment of law and gospel, sanctification, or covenant theology. It is a response to the lecture more or less in the order Borgman makes his points.

I also want to say something about posture at the outset. I do not know Brian personally. I know of him, and I am appreciative of his ministry. I want to agree with him wherever I can. I want to represent his argument accurately and fairly. I do not want to manufacture disagreements or overstate criticisms. At the same time, law/gospel preaching and the law/gospel distinction are things I care deeply about, and I think there are several places in this lecture where the position being criticized does not accurately represent what I and a number of other law/gospel preachers actually mean to do.

That matters especially because this lecture is circulating among confessional Baptists—and perhaps amongst some outside our tradition. If we are going to critique law/gospel preaching as confessional Baptists, we need to be precise not only about law and gospel, but also about our own covenant theology. Appeals to Lutheran theology, Herman Bavinck, or the broader paedobaptist Reformed tradition can be illuminating, but they cannot simply substitute for our own Baptist covenantal distinctives.

1. A False Dichotomy at the Outset: Redemptive-Historical and Law/Gospel

Early in the lecture, Borgman speaks about men who mean to preach Christ from all the Scriptures, but who do so not so much from a redemptive-historical perspective as from a law/gospel perspective. Inasmuch as those are being set over against each other, I think that is a false dichotomy.

For myself, and for other law/gospel preachers I know, we mean to do both. We mean to preach every text in light of where it stands in the arc of redemptive history. We mean to read Scripture covenantally, typologically, and Christocentrically. And we want to rightly distinguish law and gospel. Those are not competing hermeneutical projects. I do not see any reason to choose between a redemptive-historical framework and a law/gospel framework. I want to hold them together.

This becomes important immediately because Borgman later describes law/gospel preaching as though the distinction itself tends toward flattening texts into only two categories. I do not think that follows. A redemptive-historical reading asks where a text stands in the unfolding economy of redemption and how it relates to Christ. A law/gospel distinction asks what in the text reveals God’s requirement and what announces or promises God’s saving provision. Those questions can be asked together without doing violence to the text.

2. Michael Horton’s Formulation

Borgman cites Michael Horton’s formulation of the law/gospel distinction. Put simply, everything in Scripture that commands—or, in Horton’s broader language, everything that reveals God’s moral requirements and standards—is law; everything in Scripture that promises God’s saving favor is gospel. I agree with Horton here. So, on this point I am standing with the position Borgman is criticizing. I am one of the people he would disagree with.

I think the categories are biblical and pastorally necessary. Law tells us what God requires. Gospel tells us what Jesus Christ alone has accomplished—and what God gives and promises to sinners through Christ. That formal distinction is not the whole of hermeneutics, but it is a real distinction, and Borgman himself later acknowledges that the distinction is helpful because it is biblical. I am thankful for that acknowledgement.

Where the conversation becomes more complicated is when law and gospel are described as antithetical. I am happy to speak of an antithesis in a precise sense. When it comes to justification, law and gospel stand in radically different relations to the sinner. The law commands, exposes, condemns, and kills. It cannot justify. The gospel announces Christ and his righteousness for sinners. It gives what the law demands but cannot supply.

But I do not want to speak as though law and gospel are combatants in God’s economy of salvation. They are distinct, but they are complementary. Borgman give acknowledgement to this, but I want to say more. The law is not bad; yet the law cannot save. The law is not bad; yet the law cannot sanctify. In sanctification the law can guide, instruct, expose, admonish, encourage good, and discourage evil. But the law cannot create life or transform the heart. Only Christ—and union with him can do that.

The same distinction matters with conviction of sin. I get concerned when men begin to speak as though the gospel itself produces conviction of sin. Conviction of sin belongs properly to the work of the law when applied by the Holy Spirit. The law shows us what God requires, exposes our sin, condemns us, and in its first and greatest use drives us outside ourselves to Christ. The gospel is the good news that answers that condemnation. In its third use, the law convicts Christians of sin and produces in us humility and a greater sense of our need of Christ, amongst other things. But that convicting work is still the work of the law applied by the Spirit.

3. Lutheran and Reformed Differences: Real, but Needing Nuance

Borgman distinguishes between Lutheran and Reformed ways of handling law and gospel. I think there is legitimacy to that distinction, but I would locate much of the practical difference in how the law is used in the life of the Christian, especially in the question of the third use.

I have dear Lutheran friends, and one thing those relationships have made plain is that Lutherans are not monolithic on this issue. There are differences among Lutheran theologians and pastors in the way they describe the third use, how comfortable they are with the category, and how they preach the commands of God to Christians.

Martin Luther himself is important here. Whether Luther consistently used the later category ‘third use of the law’ is secondary to me. He wrote in ways that sound very much like what I mean when I speak about the third use. He could say, with great force, that the law accuses. But he could also speak positively and concretely about the Ten Commandments and about how the saints are to live in Christ. That matters. We should not criticize Lutherans as though the only possible Lutheran use of the law is accusation.

This is one place where I actually agree with Borgman later in the lecture. It is one thing to confess a third use of the law; it is another thing to preach it. True. My point is simply that neither Luther nor the Lutheran tradition should be caricatured here.

4. Borgman’s First Major Critique: A Justification-Centric View of Salvation

Borgman’s first major warning is that law/gospel preaching presents a justification-centric view of salvation and, in his words, puts sanctification ‘in a straitjacket.’ Anything that might conceivably conflict with justification sola fide becomes marginalized or sidelined.

What is interesting is that I could not agree more strongly with the theological premise he then articulates. Borgman says that, from our Reformed Baptist perspective, the center of the doctrine of salvation is union with Christ. Yes and amen.

He then speaks of the double benefit, duplex gratia: justification and sanctification are both grounded in union with Christ. Again, I could not agree more strongly. We are delivered from sin’s guilt and from sin’s dominion.

I often borrow language from Robert Haldane because I have internalized it: our sanctification rests on the same foundation and comes from the same source as our justification—that is, our union with Christ by faith. Our justification comes from Christ. Our sanctification comes from Christ. We do not have Christ for justification and something else for sanctification.

I believe justification is monergistic. I also believe sanctification is monergistic, though we certainly have agency in sanctification because we have been made alive in Christ. We act. We strive. We pursue good. We fight against our corrupt desires and flee from sin. But only God sanctifies. Our agency is the agency of people who have been united to the living Christ and are acted upon by his Spirit.

So, I agree with Borgman’s ‘union with Christ’ emphasis. I disagree with the inference that law/gospel preaching therefore introduces a tension between justification and sanctification. I see no such tension.

In fact, one of the things I often find myself pushing against is the opposite problem: great angst to emphasize obedience, holiness, piety, and sanctification to the end that justification becomes functionally contingent upon the perceived quality of our sanctification. If I am not being sanctified enough, or if I am not doing well enough in the Christian life—however we define the standard—then I should probably question whether I am justified at all.

I think that is a significant pastoral problem. I want to preach the whole Christ: Christ for justification, Christ for sanctification, Christ for glorification. I do not need to diminish sanctification in order to preserve justification sola fide, and I do not need to unsettle justification sola fide in order to preach sanctification robustly.

I also disagree with the common objection that making justification through faith alone, in Christ alone a major emphasis of preaching will somehow hinder sanctification. I think the opposite is true. If you want to see sanctified people, you better preach Jesus. You better preach justification by faith in Christ alone. Not because justification and sanctification are the same thing, but because the Christ who justifies his people is the Christ to whom they are united and from whom their sanctification flows. As I will get to more later, pointing people to their standing, status, identity, and security in Jesus—before spilling ink on Christian living—is the apostolic pattern.

5. The Second Critique: Law/Gospel Reduces Every Passage to One of Two Categories

Borgman’s second criticism is that law/gospel preaching reduces every passage of Scripture to either law or gospel. In other words, it becomes an irresponsible and reductionistic way of handling the Bible because every text has to be forced into one of two silos.

Again, there may be people who do that. That is not how I mean to approach Scripture. Narrative is an obvious example. I do not feel compelled to force every verse or paragraph of narrative into a rigid ‘either/or’ classification. Often law and gospel realities appear in the same narrative account. The same is true in wisdom literature; law and gospel can appear concurrently (Borgman appeals to Proverbs and James, and I will address those later). The distinction remains useful without becoming the only question I am allowed to ask of a text.

So, if Borgman is criticizing a reductionistic, mechanical method in which every verse must receive an ‘either/or’ label before it can be preached, I can agree with the criticism. If he is saying that the law/gospel distinction itself requires that method, I disagree.

6. ‘Is the Gospel to Be Obeyed?’

Borgman then asks a question that I think gets at a more important theological issue: Is the gospel to be obeyed? He means this as a challenge to the law/gospel formulation that treats command and imperative as law and promise as gospel.

My answer is yes, the gospel is to be obeyed. But then we have to ask: what does it mean to obey the gospel? What is the obedience of faith?

Paul uses the phrase “obedience of faith” in Romans 1 and Romans 16. In Romans 10 he says that not all have “obeyed the gospel.” In the same context he has said that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word (message) of Christ.

So, what does it mean to obey the gospel? It means to believe in Jesus Christ, to trust Christ, to rest in Christ, to receive Christ for you. That is the obedience of faith.

The fact that Scripture can speak of ‘obeying’ the gospel therefore does not collapse gospel into law, nor does it weave law into the gospel. It does not turn the gospel into another covenant of works. The gospel summons faith, and faith receives Christ.

7. ‘Is There Any Grace in Law?’ and Why Baptist Covenant Theology Matters

Borgman also asks whether there is any grace in law. This is where I think we need considerably more covenantal precision than the lecture provides.

At the broadest level, of course God must condescend in order to relate to creatures at all. God freely chooses to relate to human beings covenantally. If someone wants to call that condescension gracious, fine. But that is not the same thing as saying that law, considered formally as law or as a ‘covenant of works’ principle, contains grace in itself.

As it pertains to law under a ‘covenant of works’ principle, there is no grace. There is no mercy. There is no do-over. The demand is perfect, personal, perpetual obedience. That’s it. The law does not relax its requirement. Nor does it, in any sense, provide the righteousness it commands.

This is where Borgman’s repeated appeal to Herman Bavinck needs to be situated covenantally. Bavinck is a paedobaptist Reformed covenant theologian. When he can speak about promises associated with law or commands associated with gospel, he is speaking from within a covenantal framework that is not identical to 1689 Federalism.

That distinction matters. In Westminster Federalism, the one covenant of grace is administered under the old covenant through promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the Passover, and the other types and ordinances that foresignified Christ. The Abrahamic and Mosaic economies are therefore treated within the administration of that one covenant of grace. That creates a theological reason for Westminster theologians to insist upon the genuinely gracious character of the Mosaic administration even while they account for its severe conditional and legal features.

The Second London Baptist Confession deliberately speaks differently at this point. Rather than describing one covenant of grace as administered through the Old Testament covenants, the 2LCF speaks of the covenant of grace as revealed in the gospel, beginning with the promise after the fall and then by further steps until its full establishment through Christ in the new covenant (2LCF, Chapter 7). That confessional difference is significant. It allows us to distinguish between the covenant of grace itself and the historical covenants through which the gospel promise was progressively revealed before the new covenant was established in Christ.

So, regarding Abraham, I want to distinguish the gospel promise—the promise of the covenant of grace—from the Abrahamic covenant considered in its typological, historical form. The gospel was preached to Abraham. The promise is Christ and the blessing of the nations in him, and it belongs to Abraham and all of his spiritual offspring. But the Abrahamic covenant made with Abraham, signified by circumcision, concerns his physical seed and the promises of a people, a land, and kings.

That matters when we come to Moses. As a 1689 Federalist, I do not say that the Mosaic covenant is simply the covenant of works republished in its original form. But I am comfortable speaking of a typological republication of the ‘covenant of works’ principle in the Mosaic covenant. Israel’s tenure in the land, the covenantal blessings and curses, and the demand for obedience operate typologically on a works principle, while the Mosaic economy also contains gracious provisions—the priesthood, sacrifices, and other types that proclaim Christ in promise and shadow.

Those gracious provisions do not mean that law itself becomes gracious in its essential character. Grace can be proclaimed alongside law. Gospel promise can be embedded typologically within a legal covenantal economy. God can mercifully provide sacrifices to sinners under Moses. None of that requires me to say that the law, as law, is itself gracious.

I think this distinction is especially important for confessional Baptists. If we begin blurring works and grace simply because every covenantal dealing of God involves condescension, we can lose the categories that distinguish the covenant of works and the covenant of grace in the first place. Push that logic far enough and we move toward monocovenantal ways of speaking in which works and grace begin to collapse into one another. I know Borgman does not want that, and no confessional Baptist should.

So, my concern is not that we can never cite Bavinck, Westminster divines, or paedobaptist Reformed theologians. Of course we can. I am greatly helped and indebted to all of them! My concern is that our Baptist covenantal distinctives actually matter here. We should not borrow paedobaptist formulations at exactly the point where the difference in covenant theology has implications for the categories under discussion.

8. Proverbs, James, and the Apostolic Pattern

Borgman raises Proverbs and James as examples that would supposedly be difficult for law/gospel preachers. I do not see any problem with either book.

Much of Proverbs is law in the sense that it reveals God’s moral order and wisdom for human life. At the same time, I am going to read and preach Proverbs covenantally, typologically, and Christocentrically. Christ is the wisdom of God and the fulfillment of everything toward which biblical wisdom points.

James contains a great deal of imperative. Fine. Are those imperatives means by which we justify ourselves? Of course not. Are they means through which we merit final salvation or prove ourselves worthy before God? No.

But can I preach James with all of his fervor and unction? I certainly would mean to. I can implore the saints to live in a particular way because of their new identity in Christ and their union with him. I can admonish Christians. I can plead with them. I can call us to obey.

The apostolic pattern is key here. The apostles ground the saints in Christ. They point them to Jesus, their identity in him, their union with him, the hope of the glory of God they possess in him, and their adoption as sons and daughters of the Father in Christ. From there, the apostles exhort. They admonish. They plead. They implore. May every preacher do the same.

What I do want to guard against is a kind of ‘prove yourself’ Christianity—in which we effectively preach a ‘gospel of sincere obedience.’ We do not have peace with God, nor will we be finally vindicated before him, on the basis of our sincere obedience. We will be finally saved on account of Christ alone.

Our union with Christ will result in sanctification. Sanctification will result in good works. But we do not point Christians to those works as the place where they are to find comfort before God. We point them outside themselves to Christ.

Can our assurance be bolstered by our good works as fruits of sanctification? Yes. Can our works adorn our profession of the gospel? Yes. Do they benefit our brothers and sisters? Yes. Do they benefit our neighbors? Yes. Can our works vindicate our profession horizontally in the eyes of men? I am happy to say that they can.

But never in the eyes of God are we vindicated or validated on the basis of those good works. Before God, our validation is in Christ, through union with him, received by faith alone.

9. The Third Critique: Law/Gospel Leads to Antinomianism

I have heard the objection that the law/gospel distinction leads to antinomianism a thousand times if I have heard it once. Admittedly, I am weary of it.

Borgman says he does not think he is building a straw man. I disagree, at least with the way this portion of the argument is framed. He then uses Tullian Tchividjian as his example, and even acknowledges that Tullian is an extreme example, though a safe one.

That itself illustrates the problem. If we want to cherry-pick extreme examples, every theological tradition can be made to look dangerous. I would not hold Tullian up as the representative example of law/gospel preaching, and I do not think it is right, sound, or appropriate to lump law/gospel preachers holistically into his category.

Borgman then goes further and points to Tullian’s subsequent, very public moral failure—and at least implies that perhaps those moral failings were the fruit or result of his law/gospel perspective. And I just want to say: we need to be very careful here. Because the implication is that if Tullian had not been a law/gospel distinguisher in the way that he was, or if he had held a different theological framework, that somehow would have kept him from moral failure. I want to push back strongly against that. Sound doctrine has never made any man immune to temptation. There are men who have held very sound theological positions who have nevertheless sinned in egregious ways, and that is not necessarily because of the doctrine they held, taught, or espoused. It is because the corruption of the flesh runs deep in all of us. We all still have corrupt flesh, and the flesh always loves sin.

Was Tullian’s theology helpful to him at every point? Maybe not. I am perfectly willing to grant that. But if he had possessed a better doctrinal framework, would that necessarily have kept him from his sin? I do not think we can say that. And if we are going to argue this way, then people in every theological stream imaginable have serious problems with which to deal. There have been plenty of men who leaned very much in the opposite direction—men who preached holiness constantly, who were pietistic or revivalistic, who emphasized obedience and Christian living—and who nevertheless fell into the same kinds of grievous sin. So, we need to be extremely cautious about taking a man’s moral failure and then working backward to suggest that his theological paradigm produced it.

That is why, if Tullian is going to be held out as something like the poster child for law/gospel preaching, and then his adultery is even tentatively offered as evidence of where that theology might lead, let’s pump the brakes. Tullian may be a legitimate example of a first-use-only form of law/gospel preaching. Fine. Criticize that. But his moral failure does not establish that the law/gospel distinction leads to lawlessness. And it certainly does not establish that a different theology of sanctification would have preserved him from the corruption of his own flesh.

The real heart of the issue is the uses of the law. If you rightly divide law and gospel and preach the law in its three historical uses, I do not know how the antinomian charge sticks.

In particular, if you uphold the third use of the law—the law as the guide for Christian living in Christ—you are not an antinomian in any historical or theological sense of the term. I uphold the third use. Other brothers I know who are law/gospel preachers uphold it too.

So, when Borgman says that law/gospel preaching reduces every imperative to a matter of the first use, my response is simple: that is not true of the position I hold. Perhaps there are men for whom it is true. Then criticize that position. But do not make it intrinsic to the law/gospel distinction itself.

Likewise, there really are people who treat any talk of obedience as legalism. That is antinomian. There are people who regard any binding application of God’s commands to Christians as legalism. That is antinomian. Neither of those are my position.

We need all the uses of the law. The second use is to be preached publicly, restraining corruption and promoting civil righteousness and good. The first use must be preached in all of its condemning force, exposing sin and driving sinners to Christ. And the third use must be preached to saints as the good guide for Christian living in Christ.

Preach the law in all of its uses, and preach Christ above all.

10. The Fourth Critique: A Reductionistic View of the Law

Borgman’s next criticism overlaps with the previous one: law/gospel preaching can reduce the law to its first use only. Again, if that is what a man is doing, I agree with Borgman that it is a problem.

He makes an observation here that I also agree with: it is one thing confessionally to hold to a third use of the law; it is another thing to preach it. No doubt.

He also notes that Luther, though he did not necessarily use the later terminology in the same way, wrote in ways that sound very much like the third use of the law. That matters to me. Whether Luther used our later label is secondary. He could exhort Christians concerning how the saints are to live in Christ. So again, we should be thoughtful and nuanced in the way we engage Lutherans on this point.

Where I want to defend Luther more strongly is when Borgman brings up Luther’s remark that it was not his people’s sins that concerned him so much as their good works. Borgman somewhat scoffs at the line. I think I understand what Luther means—and completely agree with him.

We all have such a legal frame that we need our confidence in our good works undermined on a regular basis, because we are so prone to put our works in the place of Christ. We are prone to overestimate our virtue and make it our validation and vindication, as Christians.

That is dangerous in two directions. For some it will produce pride and self-righteousness. For others it will produce despair and anxiety because they will never be able to determine whether they are doing well enough.

In an analogous way, we might speak of how perhaps the most dangerous thing for a Christian is when everything is going well. Why? Because we begin to put our confidence in things other than Christ. We become so comfortable here that we lose sight of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. But does that mean we should pray for suffering and calamity? Of course not. Neither did Luther mean that his people should aim to sin.

Unequivocally, our fleshly confidence in our good works needs to be continually undermined. This is Philippians 3. We put no confidence in the flesh. Paul renounces not his vice but his virtue. His religious accomplishments, his law-keeping, his pedigree—he counts it all as rubbish compared with the surpassing worth of being found in Christ, not having a righteousness that comes from the law but through faith in Jesus.

That has to remain a constant emphasis from every Christian pulpit.

We should absolutely preach obedience as law/gospel preachers. Yet we can do so in a way that does not undermine justification sola fide. Sometimes the rhetoric in these conversations makes it sound as though we have to choose: either we preach obedience with real force, or we preach justification by faith alone with real comfort. I know Borgman does not formally believe that. But at points the argument can sound as though the preaching of obedience needs to unsettle the believer’s standing before God in order to really mean anything. I disagree.

Preach the third use. Exhort. Admonish. Call Christians to obedience. But do so because of Christ—because of union with Christ, because of our standing, because of our status, because of our security, because of our assurance. Preach it because of the good our obedience to God’s commands will bring to the lives of our brothers and sisters and neighbors.

Because of those things, we live in a certain way. Not so that we will finally be saved. Not so that we might obtain peace with God.

Christian living is a ‘because of’ reality, not a ‘so that’ reality. We are not chasing after something we do not already have in Christ. We live from our justification, not for it. We live from our status, not for it. We live from our union with Christ, not for it.

11. The Fifth Critique: A Minimalistic View of Sanctification

Borgman’s fifth critique is that law/gospel preaching has a minimalistic view of sanctification. He cites a Lutheran theologian who effectively defines sanctification as getting used to our justification. If that is meant as a complete definition of sanctification, I agree with Borgman’s criticism. That is reductionistic.

There is certainly something true in the statement. Part of the Christian life is learning to rest more deeply in Christ, to become more anchored in Christ, and to live there. Assurance is not a trivial matter. But sanctification is more than getting used to our justification.

Borgman then points to the Puritans as being excellent on sanctification because they did not see sanctification as a rival to justification sola fide. I agree with the premise. In fact, I have been saying this throughout: let’s not pit these things against each other. Justification by faith alone, on account of Christ alone, is not a rival to sanctification.

Borgman says the Puritans could write robustly about sanctification because they saw it as the fruit or necessary consequence of a living faith. I can agree with that, but I want to be more precise. Sanctification is a fruit of our union with Christ by faith.

Our justification comes from that union. Our sanctification comes from that union.

And, this is big: our good works are not our sanctification; good works are a result of the sanctifying work of God in us. I have said this before and have been told that I am splitting hairs or making a semantic distinction without a difference. I disagree. The distinction makes all the difference in the world. God is the sanctifier. Christ is the source. Union with Christ is the ground. The transformation of our lives—repentance, fleeing from sin, doing good works, learning obedience, growing in love—is fruit.

And I would put the emphasis not finally on ‘living faith,’ but on the object of faith. It is Jesus Christ, the righteous one, the fountainhead of holiness, to whom we are united, who is the source of our sanctification.

That sanctification produces real change. We are not what we used to be. We really do repent. We really do learn obedience. We really do perform good works, sincerely though imperfectly. There is no inherent contradiction between saying all of that and preaching justification sola fide. We do not need to be nervous about it.

12. Kevin DeYoung, Hebrews 12, and the Tone of Sanctification

In this section Borgman points to Kevin DeYoung’s book, The Hole in Our Holiness, as a good example of a Reformed treatment of sanctification. I would have some strong pushback to portions of that book.

The book was written in the midst of the sanctification controversy of the 2010s and in significant measure as a response to Tullian Tchividjian. One thing that should be acknowledged about that controversy is that a number of Protestants, in reacting against Tullian, began to sound effectively Roman Catholic in the way they spoke about sanctification and final salvation.

I am not saying Kevin does that holistically. I am saying that certain ways of handling particular texts can lean in that direction.

Hebrews 12:14 is an example. ‘Strive for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord’ can be isolated and preached as a threat. But the context of Hebrews 12 matters enormously.

The chapter has already told us that God disciplines the sons (and daughters) he loves. Discipline is not pleasant, but it leads to good. In particular, God disciplines us so that we might share in his holiness.

Then comes the exhortation to lift drooping hands and strengthen weak knees, to bear up under the discipline of God, to strive to live peaceably with all and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

I do not think the apostle is suddenly introducing a threatening contingency into salvation. I think he is encouraging the saints to bear up under the fatherly discipline of God. Again, because discipline is hard! We are all in the school of the Lord’s discipline. The Father disciplines his children for good purposes and good ends, including that we might share in his holiness. So bear up under it.

13. Sanctification Is Real, but We Are Terrible Evaluators of It

There is another qualification I think has to be preserved in these conversations. We are very poor evaluators of the sanctifying work of God in our lives.

We have a certain notion of how sanctification is going to look, and often it does not look that way. The problem is not only that the Lord sanctifies us through means we would never choose. He often sanctifies us through means we would not even think he would use—our struggles, our failings, our weakness, and even our sinning.

I am not saying sin is good. I am not saying God delights in our sin. I am saying that in his providence the Lord uses even our sinning and failing for just and holy purposes in our lives (2LCF 5.5). He humbles us. He exposes us. He strips us of confidence in ourselves. He deepens our repentance. He teaches us dependence upon Christ. That category matters because when people push back against law/gospel preaching with the concern that it will kill sanctification, there is often an implicit picture of sanctification as measurable progress. I do not think that is normally how the Christian life looks. It certainly is not clean and linear.

Sanctification is real, but it is often messy. There are fits and starts. There is suffering. There is weakness. There are failures. There is repentance. There is the Father’s discipline. Sometimes the very thing we would interpret as evidence that sanctification is failing is being used by God as part of his sanctifying work. The humbling itself can be part of the sanctification.

14. What This Actually Looks Like in Preaching: Philippians 4

Borgman eventually seeks to apply his criticism more directly to preaching. He appeals to Philippians 4, where Paul exhorts the saints to rejoice in the Lord.

The way Borgman frames the example is roughly this: if a preacher is operating with the law/gospel hermeneutic he is criticizing, he cannot simply say that the theme of the text is ‘rejoice in the Lord.’ Instead, the command to rejoice becomes primarily another condemning word: you have not rejoiced adequately, therefore the text condemns you and drives you to Christ.

I completely disagree with that as a description of how I would preach the text.

If I preach Philippians 4, I am absolutely going to exhort all of us to rejoice in the Lord. The key question is: what is the ground and the fuel of that rejoicing?

You do not have to look far because Paul has already answered the question. Philippians 3:1 introduces the category: rejoice in the Lord. Then Paul says that to write the same things again is no trouble for him and is safe for them, and he spills a bunch of ink telling us to put no confidence in the flesh.

Paul renounces his virtue and his stellar religious accomplishments, counting them as rubbish compared with the surpassing value of being found in Christ Jesus, not having a righteousness of his own that comes from the law, but a righteousness that comes through faith in Christ.

Then Paul talks about pressing on because Christ has made him his own. He reminds the saints that their citizenship is in heaven. He fixes their hope on the resurrection. He encourages them to imitate godly examples. And then he exhorts them to rejoice in the Lord.

Amen to all of that.

So, when I preach ‘rejoice in the Lord,’ I want to say: beloved, rejoice in the Lord, and here are all the myriad reasons why! Christ has made you his own. You have a righteousness that is not your own. Your citizenship is in heaven. Your bodily resurrection is certain. You will share in the inheritance of Christ. You will live with God in the new heavens and the new earth.

That objective, declarative reality is the ground and fuel of Christian rejoicing.

Does the command expose the fact that we do not rejoice as we ought? Of course it does. There is repentance needed there. There is a fleeing to Christ there. But that does not exhaust what Paul is doing with the exhortation.

I can preach the imperative with all of its force while preaching Jesus and the gospel as the ground and fuel of the rejoicing. I think that is how Paul wrote the letter.

15. What This Actually Looks Like in Preaching: Ephesians 5

Borgman also appeals to Ephesians 5: ‘Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.’ I would handle that passage similarly.

I am not only going to look at that command and say, husbands, you have not done this, so flee to Jesus. Of course that is applicable. None of us as husbands has loved his wife as God requires. There is repentance necessary, and there is a fleeing to Christ. Amen.

But if I am narrowing in on that verse, I am going to do what Paul is doing. Consider Jesus, brothers. And love your wife accordingly.

Consider Christ for you. Consider how he who was rich became poor to save you. Consider how he took on human nature and came into this wasteland called fallen earth. Consider how he lived under the law that he gave and obeyed it for you. Consider how he took your sin upon himself and died for you.

He does not lord over you. He served you. He saved you. He is gentle and lowly toward you. His yoke is easy. His burden is light. He invites you to come to him for rest.

Brothers, look at him. Consider the ways he loves you. Now how do you want to go and love your wife?

Go and do it. Lay yourself down for her. Live with her in an understanding way. In humility, seek to know her. Consider her interests as more valuable than your own. Be kind. Be gentle. Be patient. Be quick to seek reconciliation. Be quick to confess sin. Be quick to forgive. Strive for mercy and forgiveness and grace and charity to characterize your marriage and your home.

That is what I mean to do as a law/gospel preacher. There is no conflict whatsoever between that kind of exhortation and the law/gospel distinction.

16. Final Assessment

Borgman’s final comments are brief. He returns to the claim that the kind of law/gospel preaching he has in view is reductionistic in its treatment of Scripture and kills sanctification among God’s people. He also alludes to ways some men preach the Sermon on the Mount. I suspect he has Steve Meister’s sermon in view. He would be critical of me as well if he heard the way I have preached the Sermon on the Mount, whether in my own church or at the Grace Reformed Network general assembly this year.

That is fine. I am a fallible man. I am open to criticism.

And I want to agree with Borgman wherever I can. If a man preaches only the first use of the law, that is a problem. If every imperative is reduced to nothing more than condemnation, that is a problem. If someone treats every call to obedience as legalism, that is antinomian. If someone defines sanctification as nothing more than getting used to justification, that is too thin. If someone confessionally affirms the third use but never actually preaches it, Borgman is right to raise the concern.

But that is not what I mean by law/gospel preaching, and it is not what the law/gospel preachers I know mean either.

What I mean is rightly distinguishing law and gospel, preaching the law in its three historical uses, and above all heralding Christ for sinners: Christ for justification, Christ for sanctification, Christ for glorification.

I mean union with Christ. I mean refusing to separate Christ and his benefits. I mean preaching Christ’s person, work, and heart.

I want to preach repentance. I want to preach obedience. I want to exhort, admonish, plead, and implore. I want to call the saints to live as members of the household of God.

But I want to do all of it because of Christ, not so that we might finally get Christ. Because of our union with him. Because of our standing. Because of our status. Because of our security. Because of our assurance.

We live from our justification, not for it. We live from our status, not for it. We live from our union with Christ, not for it.

Preach the law in all of its uses. Preach Christ above all. And trust that the Christ who justifies sinners is the Christ who sanctifies his people and will bring them safely to glory.