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In practice it is always united with law and is therefore always interwoven with the law throughout Scripture. The gospel always presupposes the law and also needs it in its administration. It is brought, after all, to rational, moral human beings, who are responsible for themselves before God and therefore have to be called to faith and repentance. The demanding and summoning form in which the gospel is cast is derived from the law. Every person is obligated not first of all by the gospel but by nature, the law, to believe God at his word and by implication to accept the gospel in which he speaks to us humans. The gospel therefore immediately takes possession of all human beings, binds it on their consciences, for the God who speaks in the gospel is none other than he who has made himself known to them in his law. Faith and repentance are therefore demanded of people in the name of God’s law, by virtue of the relation in which humans stand to God as rational creatures; and that demand is addressed not only to the elect and regenerate but to all humans without distinction.