Does the Law-Gospel Distinction Make Sense? An Analogy to the Writ of Habeas Corpus

Within Protestantism, especially within Lutheranism, the distinction between law and gospel seems to be a cornerstone of our theology. Supposedly the Law requires, demands and binds, and in our failure to comply, it condemns. The Gospel however proclaims, grants, and gives and does not demand, and thereby it liberates us from the condemnation of the law without works. Allegedly this distinction either flows or is a necessary consequence of the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

While the distinction is expressly established in Lutheranism, it is only at most implicit in most other confessions, maybe a higher order principle for framing their theologies. What I want to do here is to discuss the phenomenology of commandments and laws, and how they can in fact be themselves liberating, and paradoxically in that sense, "Gospel". We can reason by analogy by looking at the curious history of the writ of Habeas Corpus.

Habeas Corpus today has a totemic status within the Anglophone world as a cornerstone of liberty. It is a command that a person be released from prison and brought to a court of law to determine the reason for his imprisonment and if it is lawful. However, the writ of habeas corpus initially started out, not as a writ for liberation, but as a writ for arrest. In Latin it is literally just means "have his body", a requirement to produce a person before a court of law. In medieval times a writ of habeas corpus was issued to have a person arrested and brought before a court of law to answer a suit or certain charges. Overtime however, English lawyers used the writ of habeas corpus, not to have a person arrested, but to free a person from prison and brought before a court of law where the arresting authority instead was required to explain and justify to the court the reason for the detention/imprisonment.

This little example just goes to show that whether a law liberates/binds depends on how it is used and for what objective. Naturally commands and laws can be burdensome, binding, revealing our sins and weaknesses when we fail to comply. However, laws and commands can also be liberating, especially when we are imprisoned or bound to our sins. It would be a strange thing for a prisoner to say, when an officer of the court appears with a writ of habeas corpus commanding that the prisoner be released, to sigh in exasperation, "What? More laws and commands? Am I not burdened enough? Why do you require of me more works, this time to appear in court?" This law and command is joyful news because it is a command for the prisoner's liberation from his bonds, it is in fact "gospel".

Likewise, when a prisoner of sin is plagued with sins or despair, uncertain of God's willing to forgive, to give grace or love, bound to the condemnation of the law, what can be more joyful to such a man then to hear God's herald commanding, come to me all ye who labour and are heavy burdened and I will give you rest? In this context, the law or command to believe that God does love us and wants to forgive us, or the command to turn to God, is not burdensome or an additional bond, it is liberation from our sins, liberation from condemnation and the bonds of our iniquity.

If laws can in fact be "good news", if laws and commands can liberate, then how can the law-gospel distinction be sustained?

What after all was Jesus's first message to the Synagogue?

-Luke 4:18-19

He proclaimed the Jubilee as *commanded* by God. It is by commands and laws that God releases the prisoners from their sins. So the law, in this sense, *is* the Gospel, the good news of liberation. It is a joyful thing to be commanded and bound to receive divine love, and freed from the bounds of other obligations and condemnations.