God's Law: Its Use & Misuse

God's Law: Its Use & Misuse

~Marissa Namirr, Gospel Gal & Joy Dudley

Here the Gospel Gal YouTube episode by the same title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neDHxuA7RSk&t=761s&ab_channel=GospelGal

Zacharius Ursinus, co-author of the Heidelberg Catechism defines God's Law this way: “Law now, in general, is a rule, or precept, commanding things honest and just, requiring obedience from creatures endowed with reason, with a promise of reward in case of obedience, and with a threatening of punishment in case of disobedience. It is a rule, or precept, commanding things honest and just, otherwise it is no law. Requiring obedience from creatures endowed with reason: the law was not made for those who are not bound to obedience. With a promise of reward in case of obedience; the law graciously promises blessings to those who perform acceptable obedience; because no obedience can be meritorious in the sight of God.”

However, the Reformed community has broken God's Law down into three distinct categories:
1. Pedagogical
2. Civil/Ceremonial
3. Normative.

Ligonier Ministries breaks it down like this:

"Its first function is to be a mirror reflecting to us both the perfect righteousness of God and our own sinfulness and shortcomings. As Augustine wrote, "the law bids us, as we try to fulfill its requirements, and become wearied in our weakness under it, to know how to ask the help of grace." The law is meant to give knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20; 4:15; 5:13; 7:7-11), and by showing us our need of pardon and our danger of damnation to lead us in repentance and faith to Christ (Gal. 3:19-24).

A second function, the "civil use," is to restrain evil. Though the law cannot change the heart, it can to some extent inhibit lawlessness by its threats of judgment, especially when backed by a civil code that administers punishment for proven offenses (Deut. 13:6-11; 19:16-21; Rom. 13:3, 4). Thus it secures civil order, and serves to protect the righteous from the unjust.

Its third function is to guide the regenerate into the good works that God has planned for them (Eph. 2:10). The law tells God's children what will please their heavenly Father. It could be called their family code. Christ was speaking of this third use of the law when He said that those who become His disciples must be taught to do all that He had commanded (Matt. 28:20), and that obedience to His commands will prove the reality of one's love for Him (John 14:15). The Christian is free from the law as a system of salvation (Rom. 6:14; 7:4, 6; 1 Cor. 9:20; Gal. 2:15-19, 3:25), but is "under the law of Christ" as a rule of life (1 Cor. 9:21; Gal. 6:2)." ~Nathan W. Bingham

As we are no longer under Israel's civil or ceremonial codes, we will primarily be discussing the first and third uses of the Law and how they are applied in the life of the Christian.

Listen to Lee Irons discuss the first and third use of the Law that applies to the believer (min 46:03: http://links.christreformed.org/irons/20211107-Law-And-Gospel-In-BT-Perspective.mp3?fbclid=IwAR1fQ3SS-x0ZuNY1dN8rnyxr9cfpUPcYW02RBdJzJ5382aBqRFZgrlL5ZSE

In the first use of the Law, we are drawn back to the memory of our sin and misery, and our need of Christ in the recollection of the first use. Each week in our liturgy we are issued a solemn reminder:

"Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ says: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

Jesus says this is the summary of all the Law, and we are reminded of the Law of God week after week, according to the Heidelberg Catechism, 

"First, so that throughout our life
we may more and more become aware of
our sinful nature,
and therefore seek more eagerly
the forgiveness of sins and righteousness in Christ. 
Second,
so that, while praying to God
for the grace of the Holy Spirit,
we may never stop striving
to be renewed more and more
after God's image,
until after this life we reach
the goal of perfection."
The response is to fall on our knees and recite the Kyrie: "Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy." The awareness of sin and its consequences without Christ as Mediator would fall under the heading of the first use of the Law.

In the third use, however, the Christian remembers that even what is required of us is given. The fruit of faith is new inclination, new obedience, and new gratitude springing forth in love for God and neighbor (the fulfillment of the Law). As a child relates to a loving, nurturing father, so we also relate to our Father in heaven. He could never have demonstrated more love to us, than the giving of His own Son for us. We now look for ways to express gratitude for what has been done outside of us and for us. Gratitude is not earning favor, but the outflow of having received favor. The believer is no longer under the Law as a covenant of works: “Do this and live." But in Christ, we are no longer under the Law’s penalties. We know from the Epistles that those who seek to be justified by the Law will receive it's curses for disobedience. This is not what Christian obedience is about.

Listen to how Ralph Erskine describes the Law for the Christian:

“The commands of the law, in the hand of Christ, have lost their old covenant-form, and are full of love. The command of the law of works is, Do, and Live; but in the hand of Christ, it is, Live, and Do: the command of the law of works, is, Do, or else be damned: but the law in the hand of Christ, is, I have delivered thee from hell, therefore do: the command of the law of works is, Do in thy own strength; but the law in the hand of Christ is, “I am thy strength; My strength shall be perfected in thy weakness,” therefore Do. The command is materially the same, but the form is different: the command of the law of works is, Do perfectly, that you may have eternal life; but now, in the hand of Christ, the form is, I have given thee eternal life in me, and by my doing; and therefore do as perfectly as you can, through my grace, till you come to a state of perfection.”

And the writers of the Heidelberg Catechism would view obedience to the Law of God as an expression of gratitude in the life of the believer. Listen to John Fonville describe how our Savior draws us in as he describes the lawful use of Law and Gospel, in the paradigm of comfort from the Heidelberg Catechism, here (minute 6-10:11: 

https://www.paramountchurch.com/sermons/sermon/2019-07-28/guilt-grace-gratitude:-a-paradigm-for-comfort

Our Triune God no longer relates to us as a Judge ready to penalize us for moral failures, but views us as righteous, based on Christ's merits and perfect obedience to His Father's will. Christ's perfect obedience to God's Law has been imputed to us.

The Christian must understand that it is not his keeping of the Law that is 

meritorious. It is Christ's work for and outside of us that is meritorious before God. However, as we taste of the Lord's goodness to us in the Gospel, we respond with fruits of gratitude. Walter Marshall, author of The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, explains how it is that believers are motivated to obey God's commandments (third use). "Slavish fear may extort some slavish hypocritical performances from us, such as that of Pharaoh in letting the Israelites go, sore against his will. But the duty of love cannot be extorted and forced by fear, but it must be won, and sweetly allured by an apprehension of God’s love and goodness towards us, as that eminent, loving and beloved disciple testifies. ‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love thrusts out fear - because fear has torment, and he that fears has not been made perfect in love. We must love Him because He first loved us’ (1John 4: 18,19). "The Gospel, when revealed by the Spirit, enlivens and strengthens the hearer. Such an understanding is crucial in the church according to Graeme Goldsworthy. He writes: "When we approach sanctification as attainable by any means other than the gospel of Christ--the same gospel by which we are converted--we have departed from the teaching of the New Testament." (The Gospel in Revelation).

Along with understanding the third use of the Law as an expression of gratitude in the life of the believer, it is also important to make sure that we don’t misuse any of the uses of the Law. And there a couple of ways the Law of God, which is good, holy and right, can be misused.

Misuse #1: Law without Gospel:

Having established that the Law is good, holy and right, we must also understand that the Law, in its three uses, only offer life to those who keep it perfectly, personally and perpetually. So the preaching of the Law, without offering the hope of the Gospel is only going to condemn the hearer.

Listen to how Dr. Rod Rosenbladt explains the dangers of misusing the 3rd use of the Law:

“At any rate, if we Reformation folk do the “third use of the law” badly, we get very close to the infamous “application section” of the sermon so common in Wesleyan & evangelical preaching. And if we do it badly, the sensitive Christian believer can be driven to a slavery as bad as any slavery done to them by a totalitarian dictator. If the Ten Commandments were not impossible enough, the preaching of Christian behavior, of Christian ethics, of Christian living, can drive a Christian into despairing unbelief. Not happy unbelief. Tragic, despairing, sad unbelief. (It is not unlike the [unhappy] Christian equivalent of “Jack Mormons” – those who finally admit to themselves and others that they can’t live up to the demands of this non-Christian cult’s laws, and excuse themselves from the whole sheebang.) A diet of this stuff from pulpit, from curriculum, from a Christian reading list, can do a work on a Christian that is (at least over the long haul) “faith destroying.”  (Excerpt from The Gospel For Those Broken By the Church)

Misuse #2: Confusing Law and Gospel:

This is a common problem in the Church, and has been thoughout her history. Confusion of Law and Gospel makes the Gospel a new Law, or turns the Law into a means of salvation.

To clarify, when we say Gospel, we are talking about the joyful announcement that Christ came, that He really took on flesh, performed all the obedience to the Law that was necessary, in our place, that he died as a substitute, bearing the wrath of God that we deserved for our sin, his dead body was truly buried, and that three days later, He rose again from the dead having secured victory over sin and death for us. The Gospel is not what we do, not what is commanded of us, not the Law, but what Christ has done, under the Law for and outside of us.

It is a misuse of the Law to suppose that it has the power to rescue a sinner from sin and death as only the Gospel can do. Listen to Theodore Beza, student of the Reformer, John Calvin on the results of confusing Law and Gospel:

"We divide this Word into two principal parts or kinds: the one is called the “Law,” the other the “Gospel.” For all the rest can be gathered under the one or the other of these two headings…We must pay great attention to these things. For, with good reason, we can say that ignorance of this distinction between Law and Gospel is one of the principal sources of the abuses which corrupted and still corrupt Christianity."

He also states “The majority of men, blinded by the just judgment of God, have indeed never seriously considered what curse the Law subjects us to, nor why it has been ordained by God. And, as for the Gospel, they have nearly always thought that it was nothing other than a second Law, more perfect than the first. From this has come the erroneous distinction between precept and advice; there has followed, little by little, the total ruin of the benefit of Jesus Christ.”

As we have discussed, the Law without the Gospel is a recipe for crushing despair for a believer who is consistently aware of their propensity to sin. And confusing Law and Gospel is equally as dangerous for the church and the world that so desperately needs the true cure for our sin and misery. And there is a third way the Law of God can be misused: 

Misuse #3: Theonomy (second use): We won't take the time to define or refute it here, but for those interested in the topic, we recommend this episode of Back to the Reformation with Scott Clark: https://heidelblog.net/2021/11/with-back-to-the-reformation-podcast-taking-about-politics-and-the-church/

So, we should be wary of teaching that emphasizes doing over and above what has been done for you in Christ. Know that in your pursuit of holiness and obedience, you are covered in the righteousness of Christ, and it is the Gospel that fuels our gratitude. The law in it’s 3rd use gives shape and definition of how we are to show our gratitude, but it is never the ultimate grounds for our assurance. Jesus’ life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and intercession are the objective realities that will be forever and always true for His people. Jesus’ is the author and perfector of our faith and sanctification is a promise rooted in His abolishing of sin and death 2000 years ago.

The Law is good, pure, and holy. It teaches us how to love God and neighbor. It shows us our sin and misery and drives us to Christ when we see we have failed to keep it (first use of the Law). It shows us ways that the government reigns in society and protects us from crime (common grace/second use of the Law). It provides guidance on how we express gratitude to God for what He has done for us as His children (third use of the Law). 

We no longer fear the penalties of the Law, but rejoice that the Law has been kept for us, and that the perfect righteousness of Christ is ours' and always will be. Now, by the help of the Holy Spirit, we move on to love and serve our neighbor out of  gratitude for all that has been done for us. 

Resources: * Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism:Zacharius Ursinus *The Threefold Use of the Law: Nathan W. Bingham * http://links.christreformed.org/irons/20211107-Law-And-Gospel-In-BT-Perspective.mp3?fbclid=IwAR1fQ3SS-x0ZuNY1dN8rnyxr9cfpUPcYW02RBdJzJ5382aBqRFZgrlL5ZSE :Lee Irons

*The Heidelberg Catechism *The Sermons and other practical works of Ralph Erskine *Guilt, Grace, & Gratitude: A Paradigm For Comfort: Sermon (Paramount Chruch): John Fonville *The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification: Walter Marshall *The Gospel in Revelation: Graeme Goldsworthy *The Gospel For Those Broken By the Church: Rod Rosenbladt *The Christian Faith :Theodore Beza *Back To The Reformation Podcast "Taking About Politics And The Church": https://heidelblog.net/2021/11/with-back-to-the-reformation-podcast-taking-about-politics-and-the-church/ :R. Scott Clark, Matthew Rosenblum, Onnig Sayadian