In this week’s installment from Off the Record with Martin Luther, Luther comments on the relationship between the Law and the Gospel:

6717. Those two teaching sources, the Law and the Gospel, are of the highest necessity.One must use them together and use them well, but still treat them differently and with great simplicity, otherwise the people will become either mistaken or doubtful, especially when the devil makes the Gospel into a Law. That is why Moses described these two teaching sources very well by using an over and under mill stone. The top stone pounds and pulverizes; that is the Law and its hung by God correctly, so that it always turns.The lower stone is still and rests, that is the Gospel. Our Lord God fashioned the upper stone in such a way that it would not completely grind and pulverize everything, and instead He put mercy into both, in the upper stone and the lower stone. (p. 235-236)