In this book, Colquhoun helps us understand the precise relationship between law and gospel. He also impresses us with the importance of knowing this relationship. Colquhoun especially excels in showing how important the law is as a believer’s rule of life without doing injury to the freeness and fullness of the gospel. By implication, he enables us to draw four practical conclusions: (1) the law shows us how to live; (2) the law as a rule of life combats both antinomianism and legalism; (3) the law shows us how to love; and 4) the law promotes true freedom.
Table of Contents:
The Law of God or the Moral Law in General
The Law of God as Promulgated to the Israelites from Mount Sinai
The Properties of the Moral Law
The Rules for Understanding Aright the Ten Commandments
The Gospel of Christ
The Uses of the Gospel, and of the Law in Subservience to It
The Difference between the Law and the Gospel
The Agreement between the Law and the Gospel
The Establishment of the Law by the Gospel
The Believer’s Privilege of Being Dead to the Law as a Covenant of Works
The High Obligations under Which Believers Lie
The Nature, Necessity, and Desert of Good Works
Quote from the Author:
The law and the gospel are the principal parts of divine revelation; or rather they are the center, sum, and substance of all the other parts of it. Every passage of sacred Scripture is either law or gospel, or is capable of being referred either to the one or to the other … If then a man cannot distinguish aright between the law and the gospel, he cannot rightly understand so much as a single article of divine truth. If he does not have spiritual and just apprehensions of the holy law, he cannot have spiritual and transforming discoveries of the glorious gospel; and, on the other hand, if his view of the gospel is erroneous, his notions of the law cannot be right. –John Colquhoun
