Handling the Word of Truth: Law and Gospel

I’m long overdue in reviewing Reverend Professor John Pless‘s Handling the Word of Truth: Law and Gospel in the Church TodayYet, now no longer. 🙂

Review

Handling the Word of Truth: Law and Gospel in the Church Today

I appreciate many things about this book: it’s writing, it’s content, and it’s timely sensibilities. I first read it in 2005, when it was first released, but it is still a resource I turn to. Page by page I enjoy it with a growing appreciation. Even though it’s something of a summary of CFW Walther’s Law and Gospel, its language remains fresh, undated, and a pleasing mix of explanation and one-liners!

Seriously, there are lines that just make me stop and think. Good, solid, well-crafted masterpieces of theological sentences! lol Otherwise, you know, it’s paragraph by paragraph and possibly a little on the academic side in writing style.

I really appreciate John Pless as a reader, writer, professor, and theologian. I highly recommend this enter into a regular reading rotation with Walther’s Law and Gospel I know LCMS pastors who take turns reading between the two and we laymen can benefit from that very thing, too. 🙂 After all, handling the Word isn’t reserved just for pastors! It’s necessary in so many ways throughout our days and seasons in life!

As a writer, I find it important in my personal life as well as my professional life. Want to seek balance in what you’re writing? Want to avoid presuming how your audience may respond to certain turns of phrase? Law and Gospel is not only true, revealed in Scripture, and a distinction given by God, but it’s so, so very handy when dealing with other human beings!!! And oneself!!!

I’d honestly be happy to recommend John Pless’s Handling the Word of Truth: Law and Gospel in the Church Today book to anyone.

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