In the last year I’ve come into a new understanding and appreciation of God’s law, and it’s been a thrilling journey. Up until August of last year when I had what I call an eschatological awakening, I looked at God’s law much the way almost all Evangelical Christians do. It was kind of an Old Testament thing, whereas Jesus came in a sense to supersede the law so we would no longer be condemned by not fulfilling it. It’s not that I thought God’s law was irrelevant, but I didn’t think of it much at all. It did its job bringing me to Christ, and now I live by grace and the Holy Spirit guided by God’s word. This, however, is only one aspect or use of the law as I’ll explore below. For example, one passage among many that gave me this impression is in Romans 3. Paul seems to imply God’s law is no longer necessary, although I would never have said that:
21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.
Reformed theology had given me an appreciation of God’s law. I knew it reflected God’s character, who he is, and it is as perfect as he is. I’d read Psalm 119 many times in my Christian life, the longest chapter in the Bible, and every verse but two mentions some variation of the greatness of God’s law. I believed it all, but nonetheless, God’s law was never a focus for me. Now it is—all the time.
I was prompted to write this because I recently went to the Baptist church my son attended (he’s since gotten married and now lives across the state), and the pastor made a statement that made me cringe. He said, “The Ten Commandments are not your friend.” I screamed out in my mind, you are wrong! He then went on to contrast the law with being under grace, as if they are mutually exclusive. He doesn’t seem to realize that God’s law has more than the one use of condemning sinners and driving them to Christ. We might think this is some esoteric theological debate like scholastic theologians in the Middle Ages arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but for me it changed my perspective on everything. It was like watching food coloring drop into a glass of water—soon it changed the color of everything.
Calvin and The Three Uses of The Law
Not long ago I learned this idea came from John Calvin, and I recently came across his explanation of it in the preface to his commentary on the book of Isaiah:
Now, the law consists of chiefly three parts: first, the doctrine of life; secondly threatening and promises; thirdly, the covenant of grace, which, being founded on Christ, contains within itself all the special promises.
The three are numbered differently and described in various ways, which I will do below, but all three are relevant for all time until Christ returns. Here is how Calvin describes the perpetual relevance of God’s law:
To make this matter still more clear, we must go a little farther back, to the law itself, which the Lord prescribed as a perpetual rule for the Church, to be always in the hands of men, and to be observed in every succeeding age.
So contrary to the pastor mentioned above, the Ten Commandments (the law) is indeed our friend, and our guide for life. We’ll go through each use and see what the implications are for us and our world.
Instead of the narrow view I used to have, I now realized Christ’s mission affects not only how we live, but how we see the church’s mission in this fallen world. Negatively, the purpose of the gospel is not only to go to heaven when we die and achieve personal holiness. That is an entirely too constricted understanding of the Christian faith, as if it’s implications were solely personal. Not only are the implications societal, impacting every area of life in which people interact, but that is the purpose for which Jesus came when he accomplished redemption. He came to save and transform the entire world, not just us! Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” for a reason. He gave the Apostles the Great Commission to disciple the nations because he expected that to get done. An accurate understanding of God’s law will help us to obediently contribute to Christ’s mission.
The Three Uses of The Law Distinguished
Since they come in no particular order, let’s start with the use we’re most familiar with:
1. The Law Condemns Us – One of the purposes of the law is to condemn sinners. Some have called this the law as a mirror because when we see ourselves in it, it is not a pretty sight. In fact, the closer and longer we gaze into this mirror, the worse we look. Most of us don’t feel so bad about ourselves when we compare ourselves to other sinners, and we often feel quite superior to those wretches. When we look at God’s perfect law, by contrast, we can’t feel superior to anyone. That’s the point. Paul’s two great letters regarding the essence of salvation, Romans and Galatians, have over 50 and almost 30 references to the law in them, and most are in reference to this first use. The law is meant to show us our inadequacy, and highlight our need for a Savior who fulfilled the law in our place. The danger, as Paul indicates more than once, is thinking that if we obey the law we will gain acceptance before God, that the law becomes a means to save ourselves. I won’t spend anymore time on this use because it’s one all Evangelical Christians are familiar with. Unfortunately, we tend to think it’s the only use.
2. The Law Restrains Evil – This is the civil use of the law necessary for civilizations to exist, and where I will spend the most time because it’s the most contentious. The law in the civil realm has no power to make bad people good, but keeps them from fulfilling their evil desires on innocent people. This use is where we Reformed types get into a bit of a tussle. It gets bloody sometimes, and I’m in the distinctly minority position, for now (that’s called positive thinkin’!). Those who are not Reformed tend to think we are absolutely nuts, even dangerous.
Natural Law/Common Grace verses God’s Revealed Law-Word
The primary distinction in our understanding of the law comes between Old Testament Israel and the New Covenant Church. Most Christians believe that God’s civil law to Isarel was abrogated when Israel ceased to exist and Jesus ushered in a new kingdom. I do not believe that because God’s law and the gospel are not in any way at odds. It is always and everywhere for all time a reflection of His being, and He calls all to obedience to it if they are to experience His blessing and true human flourishing. If they don’t, the results will always be bad. On societal law we keep the badness to a minimum through the common law, which developed over a thousand years going back to King Alfred the Great of England in the 9th century. King Alfred based his law on the Ten Commandments.
Most Christians and conservatives, by contrast, believe we can have a basically secular society, and natural law or common grace is enough to keep society’s dark impulses in check. This doesn’t work because God’s revelation, and thus the knowledge of how fallen human beings are to live in harmony with other sinners, is not limited to creation. God has also revealed His will in his word, the Bible, and in Christ. Jesus commanded discipling the nations to include, “teaching them to obey everything” he commanded them. This means a nation if it is to be obedient to God and experience his blessings, it must be affirmingly a Christian nation. America was founded as a Christian nation, and that is how Americans saw themselves until well into the 20th century. The Supreme Court affirmed as much in 1892 in a case providentially titled, Church of the Holy Trinity v. The United States:
These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.
Today, most Christians, let alone non-Christians, would accuse me of trying to make America into a theocracy, apparently a scary proposition. In their minds when they see or use that word, they don’t see what it means, a society ruled by God, but the Christendom of Medieval Roman Catholicism and the Spanish Inquisition, or the Salem witch-trials, or in a modern fictional horror story, The Handmaiden’s Tale. In other words theocracy equals tyranny. R.J. Rushdoony counters these spurious claims:
Theocracy is falsely assumed to be a take-over of government, imposing biblical law on an unwilling society. This presupposes statism which is the opposite of theocracy. Because modern people only understand power as government, they assume that’s what we want.
Those who misunderstand theocracy think secularism is the only means to liberty, except the evidence doesn’t back that up. All we need is to open our eyes. Secular societies inevitably lead to tyranny exactly because of what Rushdoony said. Modern people think government is sovereign, and the individual and the family is limited. Christianity and God’s law, by contrast, sees government as limited, and the individual and family as sovereign. We either bow down to power, or we bow down to Christ. There are no other options on a societal level.
The key words Rushdoony uses are “imposing” and “unwilling.” All secularists, be they religious or not, believe if we bring Christianity and God’s law into the public square, we will be “imposing” our faith and it’s moral values on others. Believing this, skeptics of an ignorant type make the statement, “You can’t legislate morality,” which is like saying, you can’t cook food; food is what you cook, as morality is what you legislate. The only issue is whose morality, and from whence it comes. As we see clearly, the secular leftist state is tyrannically imposing its morality, the latest example being transgenderism enforced by the state. Talk about “imposing” law on an “unwilling” society! Few people in Western societies are secular progressive absolutist woke leftists who believe sex is merely a social construct changeable at will, yet the woke have no problem imposing their policies on an unwilling society. That’s the way it works—no neutrality, God’s law, or man’s.
The difference is God’s law is the “law of liberty” (James 1:25, 2:12). When Jesus proclaimed “liberty to the captives” in Luke 4:18 quoting Isaiah 61:1, he wasn’t proclaiming liberty from the law of God, but the liberty coming from obedience to it. As the Apostle Paul states in I Timothy 1, “the law is good if used properly,” and it “conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God.” It will be either God’s law or the will to power of paganism. Liberty was established in Christian Western civilization because Christians affirmed God’s laws as normative for the nations. It’s either God and liberty, or secularism and tyranny or anarchy, the logical conclusion of man’s law without God.
Secularism is a jealous god, and it will have no other gods before it which is why a proper understanding of theocracy is so important. Christians must understand something the Christians of the first three centuries of the church understood all too well: “Jesus Christ is Lord” is a political statement. If they refused to confess Caesar as Lord they were seen by the Roman state as a threat to its absolute power. This is exactly where we are in the twenty-first century West. It is Jesus as Lord, or the state as Lord. My goal is to persuade Christians to simply be open to the concept of the law of God in Christ as the only Christian option against secular totalitarianism.
3. The Law is our Moral Guide – Finally, because we are saved by grace doesn’t mean we become antinomians, or against law. We do not use our liberty in Christ, as Paul argues in Romans 6, to go against God’s law, i.e., sin; the reality is exactly the opposite. When our hearts are transformed from spiritual stone to flesh ( Ezk. 36:26), we go from being God’s enemies (Rom. 5:10, Col. 1:21), his implacable foes, to his beloved children. The transformation includes our affections. We now want to obey and please him, and are distressed when we don’t. His law is our delight, holiness our aspiration, and our chief desire in life is to please Him. What ties God’s law together is the beautiful bow of love, as Jesus taught us, the greatest commandment.
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