Whole systems of religion are devised to facilitate our understanding of salvation-by-increments.

John Berridge was a very odd person, a comet rather than a planet, a man who must be put in a class by himself.

“It’s not about you, stop your navel-gazing, get down from the pillar, get a job at the factory and live for God there!”

Reflecting later on his ministry, he noted that after preaching sanctification as vigorously as he could for those years, he never brought one soul to Christ by his continual fussing.

We are blessed to have Ashley Null on our Board for the Center for Reformation Anglicanism. Ashley is well known for his research and writing on Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation, and has contributed to the vocabulary of God's love for undeserving sinners - guilt, grace, and gratitude.

There is small comfort in Jesus as an example to follow, but what we really need is a Savior who brings us from death to life. We don’t need self-improvement tips from the pulpit; the word that saves and sanctifies is not a laundry list of things to do, but the “rest” that Jesus promises in the Comfortable Word. Moralism always leads to dull, defeated, judgmental Christians on a moral-improvement pilgrimage .

Perkins passionately believed that Scripture can be best understood and preached from a reference of law & gospel: the law (the Bible’s commandments and imperatives) show us God’s standard for living and our failure to live up to it, and it then leads to our need for a righteousness beyond our own self-righteousness. The gospel is the word of Scripture about God’s solution for human sinfulness: Jesus who lived the life we failed to live in our good efforts, and who died the death that we deserve because of our sin.

It is worth recalling that in Cranmer’s carefully ordered collection of homilies, the “Homily of Salvation” followed the homily on the “Misery of Mankind.” This reflects Cranmer’s Reformational understanding of the order and function of the law and the gospel.

The Bible is not a rulebook or a catalogue of good examples to keep us in line, but primarily the overarching story of God’s saving grace in Jesus. Reformation Anglicans join the English reformers in recognizing that God’s word speaks in two ways: law and gospel. Law is the portion of Scripture that commands, prescribes, and exposes our guilt.