This month’s preaching article continues a series that gives readers a taste of several different aspects of preaching. Articles will discuss preaching’s purpose (why we preach), content (what we say), form (how we arrange what we say), context (where and to whom we preach), and the person of the preacher (the preacher’s relationships with his listeners and with God and his Word).

Lutheran preachers treasure God’s law and gospel. Could it happen, though, that we preach too little law and gospel? Or—this sounds strange even to suggest—too much?

As we move through different aspects of preaching, we come this month and next to content—what we say when we preach. We could easily say a million things on this topic, but in these next two articles we will limit ourselves to a chapter in the 2001 book Liturgical Preaching, which CPH republished ten years later under the title Preaching Is Worship: The Sermon in Context. The chapter for our consideration is “Law and Gospel in Sermon and Service” by David Schmitt.¹ The beginning of this chapter will sound familiar to readers of Devote Yourself; it is a summary of the Tapestry of Preaching, which we walked through several months ago. The latter half of the chapter, which some might have encountered in a seminary or Grow in Grace class, has to do with twin dangers preachers face: law-gospel negligence and law-gospel obsession. This month we tackle law-gospel negligence.

What Causes Law-Gospel Negligence?

“The distinction between law and gospel is a particularly glorious light. It serves to divide God’s Word properly and to explain correctly and make understandable the writings of the holy prophets and apostles” (FC SD V 1).² Yea and Amen to that! Confessional Lutheran pastors agree on the value of the distinction between law and gospel. How, then, could a Lutheran preacher ever neglect law and gospel?

The influence of theory
One thing that could lead to law-gospel negligence is “the influence of theory.” The “theory” David Schmitt refers to is homiletical theory—a preacher’s concept of how sermons should look and sound. He points out that some Lutheran preachers adopted tenets of the New Homiletic with gusto. This movement in preaching (see Jacob Haag’s description in a Preach the Word article) opened the eyes of preachers to new possibilities beyond deductive, thematic, propositional preaching. The use of inductive movement, whereby preachers walked with their listeners on a journey of discovery during the sermon, was refreshing. Employing narrative and the power of story, strategies encouraged by figures like Fred Craddock and Eugene Lowry, felt natural to many preachers and their hearers. We could add any number of homiletical methodologies, many of them more recent, to this list. Many Lutheran preachers make use of approaches to preaching like those of Andy Stanley, Timothy Keller, and many others. Almost all of these different and new (or new to us) approaches to preaching contain something commendable, even brilliant. However, when a preacher commits to any homiletical theory or method and adheres to it, he should be aware that that method may not prioritize preaching law and gospel. So, it can happen that a Lutheran preacher may, even unconsciously, end up preaching most of or all the time in one favorite way. But while preaching in that way (whatever it may be), the proclamation of law and gospel may get sidelined or left on the bench entirely.

One well-meaning but problematic solution to this is to “Lutheranize” a homiletical method by injecting into every sermon a brief section about Jesus’ death and resurrection for our forgiveness. Such a section may of course be good, but in reality it does not honor the proclamation of law and gospel. Schmitt explains why:

Such negligence is not faithful preaching and certainly not what is meant by properly distinguishing Law and Gospel in the sermon. It turns the Word of God, his life-giving message of judgment and salvation, into some Lutheran mantra that when spoken will redeem any excuse for a sermon ex opere operato. Would that preaching were so easy! One form of Law and Gospel negligence, then, arises from the influence of theory and diminishes evangelical proclamation to a short Lutheran statement meant to save any homiletical technique. (34)

Or, simply stated, “Here, Law and Gospel content are relied upon to save the sermon, not the people.” (34)

The force of habit
Another way law and gospel can be neglected—and this may be a bit counterintuitive—is, Schmitt writes, through the force of habit. Here’s how it works. A Lutheran preacher knows that he is supposed to have law and gospel in every sermon. He’s supposed to “show our sin” and then “show our Savior.” So he does. Every Sunday. In almost exactly the same way every time. The preacher thinks he’s being consistent; he has law and gospel in every sermon, after all. His listeners, however, begin to tune him out. Schmitt shares an anecdote in the chapter about one preacher’s exhortation near the end of every sermon. The preacher thought his every-Sunday, go-to words of encouragement were inspiring, but his congregation heard them mainly as, “The sermon’s almost done.”

This reminds me of an insight by author Graeme Goldsworthy, shared with many of us by Richard Gurgel. Goldsworthy speaks of the habit of dropping a predictable, formulaic section about Jesus into a sermon on an OT text: “Some of the students that I teach . . . discussed their concerns with me about listening to preachers who deal with the Old Testament in such a way that the students were moved to think, in the course of the sermon, ‘Ho hum! Now here comes the Jesus bit.’”³ Granted, it’s true that predictable, “Jesus-bit” law-and-gospel is better than no law-and-gospel at all! But David Schmitt would remind us that when such phrases are stuck into a sermon out of habit, that’s really a form of law-gospel negligence.

Responding to a related problem
I would add one more way that I perceive law-gospel negligence happening. Sometimes preachers hear fellow pastors or theologians speak of law and gospel as the only thing that matters in preaching, to the exclusion of virtually anything else. As they see it, they are being guilted into a narrow, do-this-or-you’re-not-a-real-Lutheran mold. They may be detecting a serious problem—law-gospel obsession, which we will discuss next month. But in reaction to this law-gospel obsession, they move away almost entirely from preaching law and gospel. Topics related to sanctified living, debated theological points, responses to current cultural concerns—all excellent things to preach in the context of law and gospel!—become almost the only food for their sermon listeners. As a result, the the love of Jesus, and the chief article of how people stand righteous by faith in him, get overshadowed. And this happens perhaps not intentionally, as a matter of principle, but more as a matter of protest: an overemphasis on one pole results in a swing toward the other. That may be the story behind some law-gospel negligence.

Do you detect any of these paths to law-gospel negligence in your preaching?

As we will hear next month, law and gospel are not the only things to think about when preaching. But they are important things. When law and gospel are absent, believers in the congregation don’t hear much of God’s power for salvation, and neither do non-Christian guests.

How to Address Law-Gospel Negligence

If we find that we do sometimes neglect law and gospel in our preaching, what can we do about it?

If we’re using a homiletical method or theory that originated outside of Lutheran circles, we should not be surprised if that theory does not prioritize law and gospel. Such methods warrant careful examination, since their foundational principles for preaching may differ from those of confessional Lutheran preachers. That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that a Lutheran preacher needs to abandon such methods. Rather, he can look for ways to integrate faithful preaching of law and gospel into them. Some sermon structures naturally welcome the law-gospel dynamic. Lowry’s Loop, with its shift from conflict/complication (which would focus on the law) to an “aha” moment of gospel, can offer the preacher a way to honor these core theological truths in an engaging way. Paul Scott Wilson’s Four Pages of the Sermon is similar; Lutheran preachers see in Wilson’s movement from “trouble” to “grace” a natural way to preach law and gospel. In Andy Stanley’s Relational Structure, the initial “me” and “we” sections can use the law as mirror as preacher and listeners together delve into a shared sin problem, and the “God” section can proclaim God’s Christ-centered gospel response to that sin. The basic expository message format that Timothy Keller suggests in his book⁴ has natural places for law and gospel. The point: you can faithfully proclaim law and gospel while tapping into many homiletical models.

To avoid law-gospel negligence because of the force of habit, a preacher can renew his appreciation for the varied ways that the Scriptures speak. It’s so easy for me to revert to my own standard ways of communicating law and gospel. I need to ask continually, “What is the unique way that this part of Scripture proclaims sin and grace? What metaphors did the Spirit choose? What contrasts? Can we see law and gospel in the way biblical characters are richly depicted? In their words and actions?” The point—David Schmitt expresses it well: “Rather than use the same formulaic pronouncement Sunday after Sunday, the preacher forms his Gospel proclamation in response to the varied forms of proclamation present in the biblical text.” (36) Numerous resources can help with this; one I’ve found helpful is Jacob Preus’s Just Words: Understanding the Fullness of the Gospel. Instead of dropping in a predictable “Jesus bit,” preachers can share the vivid comfort and colors the Spirit inspired.

Next time: Avoiding Law-Gospel Obsession.

This article in Devote Yourself was contributed by the team that previously created and distributed Preach the Word. View past preaching-related articles at worship.welsrc.net/downloads-worship/preach-the-word.

¹ Paul J. Grime and Dean W. Nadasdy, eds., Liturgical Preaching: Contemporary Essays (Saint Louis: Concordia, 2001), 25-51. Page numbers in parentheses refer to this article in the 2001 publication.
² Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and Charles P. Arand, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 581.
³ Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), xi.
⁴ Timothy Keller, Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Penguin, 2015), especially pages 228–234.