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Walther

The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel

Read Walther's public-domain 1929 edition of The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel in a local reading hub organized by preface, theses, and thirty-nine evening lectures.

About This Edition

Public-domain Walther text

The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel

by C. F. W. Walther

Note: This work is an electronic reproduction of Walther's Law and Gospel, published by Concordia Publishing House in 1929. The 1929 edition is in the public domain. In 1989, CPH released a copyrighted edition of Law and Gospel. It is identical to the 1929 edition, except that a new preface by J. A. O. Preus was added. The 1989 edition was not consulted in the production of this online edition.

This work follows the public table of contents at LutheranTheology.com and serves as a searchable reading edition inside your library.

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Contents

Read the work in order

Start with the preface and theses, then move sequentially through the thirty-nine evening lectures.

Structure

Two opening documents

Begin with the prefatory material and Walther's theses before moving into the full lecture cycle.

Lecture Cycle

Thirty-nine evening lectures

Read the lectures in sequence, with each one now available as its own local page in your library.

Reading Flow

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Front Matter

Begin with Walther's framework

These opening pages explain the edition and lay out the theses that shape the rest of the work.

Preface and Introduction

The treatise which is herewith offered to the public will be found, in the last analysis, to be a searching study of the will of God as related to the will of man. From Genesis to Revelation, the Scriptures teach us that

Theses

Read Walther's twenty-five theses on rightly distinguishing Law and Gospel, with each thesis linked for quick reference.

Lecture Sequence

Move through the evening lectures in order

The lecture summaries are cleaner now, so it is easier to choose a starting point or continue where you left off.

Lecture 1

First Evening Lecture

If you are to become efficient teachers in our churches and schools, it is a matter of indispensable necessity that you have a most minute knowledge of all doctrines of the Christian revelation. However, having achieved

Lecture 2

Second Evening Lecture

A person may pretend to be a Christian while in reality he is not. As long as he is in this condition, he is quite content with his knowledge of the mere outlines of the Christian doctrines. Everything beyond that, he sa

Lecture 3

Third Evening Lecture

Christ Himself has described the way to heaven as a narrow path. Just so narrow is the path of the pure doctrine. For the pure doctrine is nothing else than the doctrine regarding the way to heaven. It is easy to lose yo

Lecture 4

Fourth Evening Lecture

When a theologian is asked to yield and make concessions in order that peace may at last be established in the Church, but refuses to do so even in a single point of doctrine, such an action looks to human reason like in

Lecture 5

Fifth Evening Lecture

It is a glorious and marvelous arrangement, passing comprehension, that God governs the kingdoms of this world, not by immediate action, but through the agency of men who — not to mention other things — are far too short

Lecture 6

Sixth Evening Lecture

A godly Lutheran theologian of a former age, among other things, gives the following description of students of theology: “When they arrive at the university, the know everything. In their second year of study they becom

Lecture 7

Seventh Evening Lecture

Fourteen days ago I communicated to you Luther’s statement that without illumination by the Holy Spirit no person can properly distinguish the Law from the Gospel and that Luther had declared himself to be nothing but a

Lecture 8

Eighth Evening Lecture

If the Holy Scriptures were really so obscure a book that the meaning of all those passages which form the basis of articles of the Christian Creed could not be definitely ascertained, and if, as a result of this, we sho

Lecture 9

Ninth Evening Lecture

The latest statistics of ethnologists figure the present population of the earth at 1,400 millions of human beings. Not quite 400 million of these, that is, not quite one-third of the race, profess faith in Christ as the

Lecture 10

Tenth Evening Lecture

The most important resolution a person can make by the almighty grace of God is to become a true Christian. Yet this resolution cannot make him truly happy and save his soul if he is not in full earnest when forming this

Lecture 11

Eleventh Evening Lecture

Many solemn warnings against false teachers are found in Holy Scripture. One of the most solemn of them, if not the most solemn, is that found in Jer. 23, 22, where the Lord says regarding false teachers: “If they had st

Lecture 12

Twelfth Evening Lecture

The worst fault in modern preaching, my dear friends, is this, that the sermons lack point and purpose; and this fault can be noticed particularly in the sermons of modern preachers who are believers. While unbelieving a

Lecture 13

Thirteenth Evening Lecture

To achieve creditable results, my friends, a minister must needs preach the Word of God in its truth and purity, without any adulteration whatsoever. This is the first and foremost requisite for success. Some preachers o

Lecture 14

Fourteenth Evening Lecture

As regards the difference between the Lutheran and the Reformed Church, my friends, the Lutheran people, at least in former times, imagined that the whole difference was this, that in reciting the Lord’s Prayer in German

Lecture 15

Fifteenth Evening Lecture

Beloved in the Lord: — You know that the papists teach that even godly persons do not enter heaven immediately after death, but before being admitted to the vision of God must first pass through a so-called purgatory, wh

Lecture 16

Sixteenth Evening Lecture

No doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church is more offensive to the Reformed than the doctrine that the grace of God, the forgiveness of sins, righteousness in the sight of God, and eternal salvation, is obtained in

Lecture 17

Seventeenth Evening Lecture

In 1529, Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, instituted a colloquy at Marburg between Luther and his followers and fellow combatants in the Reformation, on the one hand, and Zwingli and some of his followers, on the other. At fi

Lecture 18

Eighteenth Evening Lecture

Without question, my friends, the condition of a prisoner who is awaiting execution for his misdeeds and is unable to verify a vague rumor of his pardon is dreadful. He starts at every creaking of the door of his prison

Lecture 19

Nineteenth Evening Lecture

Ninteenth Evening Lecture. (February 20, 1885.) One of the most important of the many doctrinal differences that were discussed during the first half of the eighteenth century between the so-called Pietists and the Ortho

Lecture 20

Twentieth Evening Lecture

When a place has been assigned to a Lutheran candidate of theology where he is to discharge the office of a Lutheran minister, that place ought to be to him the dearest, most beautiful, and most precious spot on earth. H

Lecture 21

Twenty-first Evening Lecture

The world of unbelievers regards the tenet of the Christian religion that for salvation everything depends on a person’s faith as an impossibility and discredits it. It seems to them a manifest folly, yea, a proof that e

Lecture 22

Twenty-second Evening Lecture

It is an undeniable fact, my friends, that at the present time there is a greater number of believing theologians than when I was young, fifty years ago. In those days hardly any others than vulgar rationalists occupied

Lecture 23

Twenty-third Evening Lecture

Among the various functions and official acts of a servant of the Church the most important of all, my friends, is preaching. Since there is no substitute for preaching, a minister who accomplishes little or nothing by p

Lecture 24

Twenty-fourth Evening Lecture

About one hundred twenty years ago Rationalism had become dominant in the so-called Protestant Church of Germany. It was at the time of the deepest ignominy and humiliation that the nation had ever passed through when de

Lecture 25

Twenty-fifth Evening Lecture

Manifold are the difficult and arduous tasks of a minister of Jesus . Christ; but the most difficult and arduous of all, beyond question, is the task of proclaiming the pure doctrine of the Gospel of Christ and at the sa

Lecture 26

Twenty-sixth Evening Lecture

In order to be a true Christian genuine faith is an indispensable requisite. However, in order to be a true minister, genuine faith is not sufficient, but there must be, in addition to faith, the ability to express in pr

Lecture 27

Twenty-seventh Evening Lecture

All mankind, you know, is distributed among three estates, appointed and ordained by God Himself: the estate of teachers, of producers, and defenders, the Lehrstand, Naehrstand, and Wehrstand, as the Germans call them. I

Lecture 28

Twenty-eighth Evening Lecture

Preparing to write a sermon which he is to deliver from his pulpit, a minister should approach this task every time with fear and trembling, that is, with the reverent concern that he preach nothing contrary to the Word

Lecture 29

Twenty-ninth Evening Lecture

Without question, the words which, in Rev. 3, 15. 16, Christ addressed to the bishop of the church at Laodicea are of a memorable and awful import. He said: “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would

Lecture 30

Thirtieth Evening Lecture

Many young men whom God has endowed with splendid gifts, gifts especially suited for the office of the ministry, and who even have a certain inclination toward that office, nevertheless do not like to become ministers. T

Lecture 31

Thirty-first Evening Lecture

The fact that sin exists and the question how it originated are two of the greatest problems with which the mind of man is wrestling. Even the more serious philosophers of pagan antiquity were occupied with this highly i

Lecture 32

Thirty-second Evening Lecture

During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Rationalism rushed in upon the so-called Protestant Church with the force of a spring-tide. In the lecture halls of universities it was held up as a new and great light

Lecture 33

Thirty-third Evening Lecture

It goes without saying, my friends, that the first and the indispensable requisite of a theologian is a complete, accurate, and clear knowledge of every single doctrine of the divine revelation. It is a self-contradictio

Lecture 34

Thirty-fourth Evening Lecture

Nowadays any one who insists that pure doctrine is a very important matter is at once suspected of not having the right Christian spirit. The very term “pure doctrine” has been proscribed and outlawed. Even such modern t

Lecture 35

Thirty-fifth Evening Lecture

Jesus says regarding Himself: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” John 14, 6 Peter confirms this statement by his declaration before the Jewish Sanhedrin, saying: “Neither is

Lecture 36

Thirty-sixth Evening Lecture

One should think that after their fall into sin and unutterable misery all men would with great joy accept the doctrine of Holy Scripture that a person is made righteous and saved by grace alone, through faith in Jesus C

Lecture 37

Thirty-seventh Evening Lecture

One of the most necessary and important qualities of a minister, my friends, is this, that he is animated by a sincere and ardent zeal to discharge his office properly and accomplish something of real value in the sight

Lecture 38

Thirty-eighth Evening Lecture

Many ministers, not all inefficient otherwise, imagine that they have accomplished much, in fact, that they have achieved their aim, when they have roused their hearers from their carnal security and reduced them to a st

Lecture 39

Thirty-ninth Evening Lecture

There is not a profession or calling, my friends, that has been made the subject of as profound contempt and intensive hatred as that of theologians, or teachers of religion. The world regards these men as the chief, if