Let's say you're trying to convince a sinner who has somehow gotten the wrong impression. Maybe he's afraid God hates him, or is out to get him.
How do you make your case and convince him otherwise?
By properly making the distinction between Law and Gospel in teaching and preaching.
This confusion arises due to a failure to preach the Law as Law and the Gospel as Gospel.
When we get the Law and the Gospel wrong, when we mix them together or confuse them together, we end up preaching a confused message. A message that very usually communicates to sinners that it's up to them to get right with God by doing the right things, thinking the right thoughts, feeling the right feelings, saying the right words, or believing the right beliefs.
The proper and faithful preaching of the Law means an honest recognition of our sinfulness.
The proper and faithful preaching of the Gospel means that the sinner, even with all their sin, is forgiven freely in Jesus Christ.
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I greatly longed to understand Paul's Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, 'the justice of God,' because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against Him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.
Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that 'the just shall live by his faith.' Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the 'justice of God' had filled me with hate, now it became to be inexpressibly sweet in greater love." - Luther's reflections on his "tower experience" while studying Paul's Epistle to the Romans
Commenting on the Beatitude, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" Luther preached,
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What is, however, their reward, or what does He promise them? It is this: That they shall see God. A glorious title ["pure in heart"] and a splendid treasure! But what does it mean to see God? The monks have here again their dreams, that it means to sit in the cells and meditate heavenward, and lead a contemplative life--so they call it, and have written many books about it. But it will never do to call that 'seeing God', when you come harping on your own notions and scrambling heavenward; as the sophists and our factious spirits and crazy 'saints' insist upon measuring and mastering God and His word and works by their own brains. But it is this: If you have true faith that Christ is your Savior, etc., then you see at once that you have a gracious God. For faith leads you up, and opens up for you the heart and will of God, where you behold nothing but the superabundant grace and love. That is exactly what it means, to see God, not with bodily eyes, (for with these no one can see Him in this life), but with faith, that beholds His Fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is neither wrath nor disfavor. For whoever sees Him as angry, does not see Him rightly; but has drawn a veil and curtain, yes, even a dark storm cloud over His face. But to behold His face, as the Scripture expresses it, means to recognize Him rightly as a gracious, benevolent Father, upon whom one can rely for everything good; and this comes only through faith in Christ."
The sinner beholds God as angry because the sinner does not see the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose superabundant love and grace is poured out through Christ. The sinner does not behold God in Christ ("If you have known Me then you have known My Father also", "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father", etc) but instead beholds God veiled behind the dark storm cloud of His hidden and terrifying Divine glory--the God who thunders over Mt. Horeb when giving the Law.
When we look at God through His Law, in our sin, we behold an angry and aloof God. A hidden and veiled God.
It is only in Christ, through faith in Christ, that we can behold God as God is--as the gracious and good Father whom we know through His only-begotten Son.
The true theologian does not pontificate on God's glory and power as though there is wisdom in speaking of such things. The true theologian instead points to the humility, suffering, and cross of Jesus Christ.
As St. Paul says in Romans chapter 1, that man beholding God's power and wisdom on display in creation did not lead them to true worship of God, but rather to idolatry. Rather, we have the folly and weakness of the Cross, of the Gospel, "a stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greek" because God chose the weak and foolish things to confound the strong and the wise.
Without faith, no one can see God.
With faith, one sees God fully on display in Christ who was crucified for us and our sin.
That is why we preach the Gospel to sinners, not a preaching of moral improvement, nor successfully completing a theology exam; but of the free and finished work and goodness of God in Jesus Christ for the world. That God loves and reconciles the world--the world of sinners--to Himself as pure merciful grace.
My sins are forgiven.
My guilt is washed away.
I have been given a free and clear conscience before God on Christ's account.
I have the free and full righteousness of Jesus; and I can now live here and now in that freedom and grace. That is what it means to trust in Christ as our Savior, that we have a God of love and grace and freedom; and He intends to love, be gracious, and grant freedom to sinners bound to the shackles of sin, death, and the devil.
God breaks down the prisons and sets captives free.
-CryptoLutheran
