What Is the Glawspel and How Can You Be Aware of This False Teaching?
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“Glawspel” is an identifier within Christianity that pinpoints a merging of the law and the gospel. The practice of conflating the law and the gospel, however, has been around since the earliest days of the church. The culprit is a “man-centered” hermeneutic (biblical interpretation) regarding what the Bible teaches. Being centered on himself and what he can do for his salvation, a person tries to please God or otherwise keep himself in God’s kingdom through obedience to the law or good works.
When a pastor acknowledges the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior yet preaches that man must do good works to earn and/or keep his place in heaven, that’s the glawspel. It takes a keen eye and a discerning heart to realize when a pastor or teacher is teaching a glawspel because, as humans, we naturally desire to play a role in our salvation and sanctification.
Glawspel preachers often ask questions like:
Are you obeying well enough to be considered a legitimate Christian?
Are you taking your faith serious enough?
Are you repenting enough?
These are all nebulous quantifiers which base our assurance on our performance rather than what Christ has done.
The term glawspel is trending because this kind of preaching is growing. Additionally, the practice is being uncovered more as wise and discerning Bible students and pastors expose this wrong handling of God’s Word (Ephesians 5:11; 1 Timothy 6:3-6). Merging the law and the gospel promotes a doctrine contrary to what Jesus and the Apostles taught (Romans 16:17-18).
What Is the Law?
When you think law, think command. Think, “do.” Think righteousness, which is God’s moral law and what is required for a person to be righteous before Him by their own effort or works (Genesis 2:17; Exodus 20:1-18). The ten commandments (the law) are an either/or equation. Either keep the law according to God’s standard, or be subject to His wrath.
We should acknowledge, however, the law itself is good because it flows out of God’s perfect and righteous nature. The law was designed to tell us about who God is and to reveal His righteousness. The problem is, because of our sinful nature, no human can fulfill the law’s requirements according to God’s exacting standards. Paul tells us plainly in Romans 3:20, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” The law cannot save us. Period.
What Is the Gospel?
When you think gospel, think grace (Romans 5:9; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21). Think good news. Think, “done.”
According to the Bible, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (1 Kings 8:46; Romans 3:23). Yet in Romans 6:23, Paul tells us, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
How did we arrive at being gifted by God with eternal life (1 John 5:11-13)? In the beginning, God created a perfect man and woman: Adam and Eve. Sin entered through Satan, a fallen angel who enticed the first couple to transgress God’s directive to Adam. And so, through Adam, all men are sinners in need of a Savior because man cannot — in his sinful state — redeem himself.
Jesus Christ, as the second Adam, succeeded where Adam failed. He is God incarnate and is perfect in His righteousness. No one other than He could save humanity from its fallen state. He was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life on earth, died on the cross to justify us, rose in resurrection, and is alive forevermore as the King of kings and Lord of lords. All who surrender to Him in faith-filled acknowledgement of who they are and who He is are saved from God’s righteous wrath.
Paul, immediately after he tells us all have sinned, writes this about us, “…being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith, for a demonstration of His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:24-26).
The gospel is God’s work of grace through our Savior Jesus Christ by the power of His Spirit. As you read through the Bible, you can see how everything points to Christ and His grace. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone; we have done nothing nor can we do anything to merit His favor for salvation. He has done it all.
Yes, we are still sinners. But in Christ sin no longer has any condemning power over the life of a believer (Romans 8).
What Does It Mean to Combine the Law with the Gospel?
While they are complimentary, the Bible teaches a definite distinction between the law and the gospel.
When we combine the two, we are nullifying the gospel, as if we believe the gospel is incomplete without our works. It’s basically saying Christ’s Person and work are inadequate.
The law reveals sin (Romans 3:20, 7).
The law reveals God’s righteousness (Romans 3:21-26).
We might well ask, “Aren’t we supposed to still try to obey the law?”
The correct use of the law serves as a guide for our sanctification (the Christian life), but is not the source of our justification.
In Paul’s letter to the Galatian church, he targets the false teachers who taught circumcision must be added to their faith. Those false teachers were adding to the gospel, and that was no gospel at all, because the burden was on their works. Had the Galatians followed the false teachers – and some were (Galatians 3:1) – they would have been led back to a works-based life instead of living lives leaning into the grace of God through Jesus. Paul said, “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly” (Galatians 2:21).
Many people believe the Old Testament is the law and the New Testament is the gospel. But God gave us His redemptive history in one continuing narrative. The Lord Jesus Christ permeates the entirety of Scripture, and the need for His grace is obvious as we read how no one could or can keep the law. When the Lord God set the commandments (Exodus 20), He knew they would break His law and covenant, and He told the people this through Moses (Deuteronomy 28:45).
How Can I Tell if My Pastor Is Preaching a Glawspel?
Every teacher of the Bible is responsible for rightly dividing the Word of Truth (2 Timothy 2:15). Pastors, because of their role as overseers and shepherds of God’s flocks, are held to greater responsibility (James 3:1). Therefore, if a pastor preaches a gospel contrary to that which Jesus or the Apostles taught, he “is to be accursed” (Galatians 1:8). The Lord God takes the handling of His Word with the utmost importance.
If a pastor preaches the Glawspel, he will promote a works-based salvation where people need to obey the commands of Scripture, not only to secure their salvation, but to keep it. When a pastor preaches a works-based salvation, his congregation is led to question their salvation because their works never measure up. People therefore look to their personal performance to keep the law as their measure of assurance instead of to Jesus and His grace. If you leave your Sunday service disheartened because you feel you can never do enough to be saved or be assured of your salvation, you might be a victim of a glawspel preacher.
Pastors often unintentionally preach the glawspel because they have an ignorance regarding sanctification and of the Bible’s three uses of the law. The glawspel-teaching pastor may also have an assumption Jesus is always preaching the gospel when in fact He also preaching law to condemn the self-righteous.
Scripture tells us we can’t do anything to earn our salvation. So, knowing the difference between the law and the gospel points us to the right theology which doesn’t mingle the law and the gospel. The best way to explain this is to give an example of wrong teaching.
In the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), Jesus is responding to a man who wants to know what they have to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus gives an impossible standard of love which someone would have to keep every second of their life. He then tells the man to go and do likewise. Oftentimes this gets preached as, “be a better neighbor.” But Jesus’ point is no one loves like this, and we need a Savior. Paul explicitly says the law doesn’t justify anyone (Galatians 2:16), and Jesus, in His earthly ministry, implies it. The problem is, we assume everything Jesus teaches is gospel (how to be saved). The reality is when He preaches on law (“do”), He’s using the law to show we can’t measure up.
Understanding and applying the distinction between the law and the gospel will be life changing for you. The law is God's conditional command for its recipients; the gospel promises fulfillment by God alone.
As we trust Christ as our gospel, we see His grace at work in us as He effects our sanctification. Only when we understand the magnitude of the gospel can we see the beauty of the law. That’s because it expands our adoration of our magnificent Lord God and Who He is.
More excellent resources concerning the law and the gospel include:
“Law and Gospel” by Robert Hiller and Michael Horton
Theocast series on the law and the gospel
“What’s so Good About the Gospel”
“Basics of the Reformed Faith: The Law and the Gospel”
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