Another rundown on law and gospel, DNA level understanding of reality

In the Reformation era it was said if you can understand law and gospel you can become a master theologian. Most theologians though don't understand it, and if some do they don't explain it well.

Awhile back I got into it and came into understanding of it.

Law, first if all, has to be seen as a thing solely from God. We think penal code, common law, Magna Carta, Constitution, etc. All law - the thing - came from God. Anything having to do with law originally came from God's perfect law.

Two distinctions:

1. Adam in the Garden, before the fall, was totally in harmony with God's law. When he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he fell out of harmony with the law. The law was now something outside him which convicted him.

2. Once Adam fell out of harmony with the law, and all his progeny, fallen angels and fallen man then began to use the law in twisted, distorted, turned upside down ways to coerce, control, and oppress humanity. Law also had to be used to control the fallen nature - evil - in men. 

So you see we live in LAW as a sort of medium. Like fish live in water. 

But there is also Gospel. Which is the good news that this curse of law will one day be taken off humanity by a Saviour. This Gospel was first announced by God the very moment Adam left the Garden. God doesn't give the law without the Gospel. Even in the Garden when He gave the command about not eating from the tree of good and evil He also gave the Tree of Life, which held out future immortality in a glorified state if Adam had made it through the probationary period.

Law minus the Gospel is a formula for the demonic.

When things are all law and no gospel things get really evil. 20th century totalitarian states were all law and no gospel. Islam is all law (Allah, ha, ha) and no gospel. 

So, ironically the current North Korea totalitarian hell hole is using God's law to oppress. God's law twisted, distorted, turned upside down. With no gospel.

When Osama bin Laden wagged his finger in front of cameras as he lectured people he was wielding the law in that finger wag.

All shaming and accusing that occurs at the personal level is the wielding of the law. 

It occurs at the personal level, the government level, and at the level of false religions which are controlled by fallen angels. 

When Christians get legalistic they are forgetting the Gospel and drift from the true faith. 

This is what it means when they say it's better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of man. God is forgiving (Gospel), man is unforgiving and cruel as hell (all law and no gospel).

You see this unforgiving nature in current woke culture. They have no forgiveness for past or current sins. People must be cancelled. Shamed. Shunned. Accused and done away with. No forgiveness. Forgiveness is an attribute of the Gospel and they are all law. 

They also interestingly have no humor. I won't go on a rabbit trail on that though, but it's because humor is based in truth.

Jesus taught us how to do battle with fallen angels and fallen man who wield the law against us minus the Gospel. To be awake and love your enemy are battlefield tactics.

One note: we are born with original sin and we actively sin which is why the law is a curse for us. We can't follow it. And then we pay the price of death. Jesus, the Saviour King, did it for us, a sinless life He lived, and He paid the price of death for all. We just have to have faith in Him to have that victory.

A corrolary subject is the relation of sin to the law. Without law there would be no sin. But God wrote the law on our hearts, so we've always known certain things were wrong like theft and murder and lying. This feeling of guilt we have makes us acquiesce to oppression, even to the prison cell or the gallows. This is, that is, where there is no gospel. 

So we have to see these things - law and gospel - as major, foundational phenomena in all aspects of life, not just church and Christian books. In human nature. In places we would least suspect law and gospel had anything to do with it like a totalitarian atheist state. In Marxist ideology. In how your neighbors deal with you. Your family and friends. The tension between law and gospel can be seen in the court room. To throw the book at a criminal or to show mercy. 

For spiritual warfare knowing law and gospel makes you a higher level knight, so to speak. Order level. 

We need to emulate Muslims

It's galling, but since Christians have gotten off course so much I reiterate we need to emulate Muslims. They're just counterfeiting our traditions anyway. 

We need to focus on our holy Book like they focus on the Koran.

We need to recognize our greatest teacher(s). The most foundational or fundamental. That is John Calvin. Specifically the Institutes of the Christian Religion. Matthew Henry is a treasure house of wisdom. Foxe's Book of Martyrs is an effecting monument to the faith and the struggle of being followers of Christ. Those three books alone feel plain and basic. 

We need to emulate Muslim zeal. 

We need to emulate their practice of prayer. Christians use to pray multiple times a day. 

We need to be in a warfare stance. Christianity is a warfare worldview a warfare reality. We're on a spiritual battlefield. 

We need to stop feeling shame in the face of the enemy. We need to stop being on the defensive against darkness and evil. 

It's easy for Muslims because they follow Satan. They are naturally in the current of this dark and evil world. We are aware of our fallen nature and our sin. We also don't have the advantages of Satan's followers. Destruction is easy. Ignorance is easy. Evil ideas are easily accepted by the fallen nature of man. 

We follow the Creator of heaven and earth.