"The Church Preaches the Law Only as the Law Fulfilled in Jesus Christ"

Bonhoeffer: "The nature of heresy is to turn a sermon on the gospel into a sermon on the law."

Last Sunday’s lectionary scriptures lured many public proclaimers of the gospel to preach instead the law, skewering ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶a̶g̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶s̶i̶d̶e̶n̶t̶ Elon Musk.

The passages certainly were tempting for such a task:

“Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or take the path that sinners tread or sit in the seat of scoffers.”

— Psalm 1

“Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”

— Luke 6

Nevertheless!

Christ Jesus should be more than source material for political hot takes.

That is, you don’t get the afflict the comfortable in the way Jesus does in the gospels.

After all, there is no sin but forgiven sin, and there is no commandment that has not been fulfilled already in the obedience of Christ.

We do not use the law; he uses it as we preach the word.

This coming Sunday’s texts present another daunting challenge for preachers to resist flinching and proclaim a promise from the gospel rather than the threat of the law:

“Do not fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of wrongdoers, for they will soon fade like the grass.”

— Psalm 37

“Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you…”

— Luke 6

Our times, the Times, and the texts all demand that proclaimers discern rightly how the church should preach the law. In 1936, the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer— teaching at the underground seminary in Finkenwalde— engaged in a disputation with Gerhard Ebeling on how preachers of the gospel handle God’s first word, the law. The Gestapo closed the seminary a year after Bonhoeffer offered the following theses on preaching the law.

I’ve paraphrased them so: