The law of God is something absolute and objective. It is outside and above the fluctuations of human experience. Whenever the authority of God's law is lacking, people must set up some other authority. While the Roman Church has set up the authority of the pope, many of the Protestant churches have set up the authority of human experience.

The aberrations of some of the sects have tended to make evangelicals so suspicious of law and legalism, that there has been a real tendency to run to the opposite extreme and neglect the proper use of the law altogether. Many have obtained the idea that the Christian can live without adherence to any rules or without submission to any discipline. This coincides with the spirit of this permissive age. But the gospel can never be understood or appreciated without the background of law.

We challenge anybody to try to explain any of the great Christian doctrines outside the context of law. It cannot be done! What is sin if there is no law? What is the purpose of the atonement apart from the law? How can you explain repentance or faith if there is no reference to the demands of law? Is not justification itself a legal word which implies setting one right before the law? Consider also that great Bible word righteousness. Girdlestone says:

The God of the Old Testament is the God of law. He is the righteous God. All His acts and ways and words are said to be righteous (Ps. 7:9; 145:17; 1 Sam. 12:7; Isa. 45:19). Above all, His law is righteous, and He demands absolute obedience to it (Deut. 4:8; Ps. 19:9; 119:160; 106:3). Dr. Leon Morris, Australian evangelical scholar, has written:

The importance of law as a category for understanding the ways of God is seen in Abraham's question, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Gen. 18:25). God is designated by the legal term, "Judge." His relationship to the whole earth may be expressed in legal categories. And the question gives expression to the certainty that He will act in accordance with moral law. The gods of the heathen could not be depended on in this way. They might be expected to react in the most capricious fashion. Not so Jehovah. This difference in understanding the connection of the deity with law may well be the basic reason for the superiority of the religion of Israel to those of the nations round about. Yahweh's actions were always in accordance with law. He could be depended upon to act righteously. And because He was righteous He demanded of His people that they should also act righteously, act in accordance with ethical. law. If they did not, then this same ethical nature of Yahweh demanded that He should punish them. It was inevitable that the wrath of God should be the divine reaction to all sin. The Hebrew could depend on it. It was God's nature to act in this way. Jeremiah can say, "Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the Lord" (Jer. 8:7, marg.). Judgment is as natural to the Lord as the movements of the birds are to them.

Significant also is the fact that the men of the Old Testament sometimes seem to go out of their way to use legal illustrations when they have the divine activity in mind. Today we are inclined to be suspicious of "legalism." Indeed, if we can convict an opponent of too great an interest in law we are half-way to confuting him. No-one today is interested in a legalist. But we should not read this attitude back into antiquity. Legal categories were used not by way of compulsion, because the legal facts were plain and must be stated. They were used from choice. They were eagerly seized on and used with delight. The men of the Old Testament loved a good legal scene, and they never tire of depicting their God as taking part in one.

"The Lord standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the peoples. The Lord will enter into judgment with the elders of his people" (Isa. 3:13); "the Lord sitteth for ever: he hath prepared his throne for judgment. And he shall judge the world in righteousness, he shall minister judgment to the peoples in uprightness" (Ps. 9:7f.). Or consider the very majestic legal scene depicted by Micah, "Hear ye now what the Lord saith: Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear, 0 ye mountains, the Lord's controversy, and ye enduring foundations of the earth: for the Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel" (Mic. 6: lf.; cf. Is. 41:1, 21; 50:8; Jer. 25:31). The list could be prolonged. Yahweh and law went well together ....

From this brief examination it seems quite clear that the Old Testament consistently thinks of a God who works by the method of law. This is not the conception of one or two writers but is found everywhere. It is attested by a variety of conceptions, many of them taken straight from forensic practices. Among the heathen the deity was thought of as above all law, with nothing but his own desires to limit him. Accordingly his behaviour was completely unpredictable, and while he made demands on his worshippers for obedience and service, there were few if any ethical implications of this service and none of a logically necessary kind. Far otherwise was it with the God of the Hebrews. The Old Testament never conceives of anything outside Him which can direct His actions, and we must be on our guard against the thought of a law which is over Him. But Yahweh was thought of as essentially righteous in His nature, as incorporating the law of righteousness within His essential Being.—Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (London: Tyndale Press), pp. 253, 254, 256-258. 

Sin and the Law

If righteousness is conformity to the law of Jehovah (Rom. 2:13; Ps. 106:3; Luke 1:6), sin is lack of conformity to it. What could be clearer than the words of the apostle John, "Sin is the transgression of the law." 1 John 3:4.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism says, "Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God." Dr. A.H. Strong likewise says, "Sin is lack of conformity to the moral law of God, either in act, disposition, or state."—A.H. Strong, Systematic Theology, p. 549.

Modern theology, however, scorns the simple Bible definition of sin and prefers to use a lot of fancy words to tell us what it is. Paul Tillich, for example, declares that "Sin is the unreconciled duality of ultimate and preliminary concerns, of the finite and that which transcends finitude, of the secular and the holy."—Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, p. 218. In a meeting of the American Philosophical Association at New Haven, Tillich also said, "When I use the word 'sin' I do not mean anything like the violation of the ten commandments."

Imagine how much conviction of sin would be created in the hearts of those listening to preachers who feed on Tillich! Neither will speaking in generalities prepare the hearts of sinners for the gospel. Ministers who do not wish to disturb the carnal slumbers of sinners, should follow this unfailing rule: Attack sin in general, but never become specific. Abraham Kuyper says:

From this we may confidently draw the following conclusions:

1. Where there is no knowledge of the law, there is no knowledge of sin.

2. Only those who take the law seriously will take sin seriously.

3. It is useless to preach the gospel to those who have not found themselves to be sinners before the law or those who are not interested in coming to terms with its righteous demands. The law is a mirror. While a man cannot wash his face in a mirror, neither will he desire to wash his face unless he looks into the mirror and sees his state of uncleanness.

Redemption and the Law

Just as we cannot understand what sin is apart from the law, so we cannot understand God's redemptive acts apart from the law. The word redemption, as used in both the Old and New Testament, means a release or deliverance by means of payment. The idea of price must not be forgotten. The word implies deliverance at a cost (see Morris, op. cit., pp. 12-64).

While God is omnipotent, we must not entertain the idea that He accomplished our deliverance as an easy matter. This is why the Bible writers use a word which implies deliverance at a great price. The question arises, Why a price? or, To whom did God pay the ransom? One theory of redemption, advocated by some of the church fathers, was that God paid the ransom to the devil. But man did not belong to Satan in the first place. Man might be the devil's captive, but certainly Satan was not man's rightful owner.

The apostle Paul relates redemption to the law when he says, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law." Gal. 3:13. Redemption is related to the justice of God, the moral Governor of the universe. God's justice requires that the law be fulfilled by a life of perfect obedience, and, where there is a failure to conform to His holy will, His justice requires satisfaction by an adequate penalty. God is merciful. He delights in mercy and longs to forgive. But He is also just and will uphold the moral order of the universe. Justice is an attribute of God's character just as much as is mercy, and justice demands that sin be punished and the death penalty executed. God cannot deny Himself, nor can He act contrary to His nature. The Bible writers never give the impression that God forgives sin without regard for justice. The only way God could forgive sinners and remain just was to see to it that His law was fulfilled by a holy life and satisfied by a penal death. This required a price so great that God was the only one in the universe who could save men by meeting the demands of justice. In the person of His Son, He came to this world and undertook for us. He stood in our place as our Substitute and Representative. In our name and on our behalf, He was "made under the law" (Gal. 4:4). First, by a life of holy obedience, He fulfilled its just claims of a perfect life. Then, by a shameful death, He bore the penalty of sin for the race of sinners. All this proved that "God will not, and God cannot, change His law by one hair's breadth, even to save a universe of sinners" (Lord Bacon).

It was this view of the atonement which led Adolphe Monod to cry out, "Save first the holy law of my God — after that you can save me." The great Puritan, John Flavell, observed, "Never was the law of God more highly honored as when Christ stood before its bar of justice to make reparations for the damage done." And Spurgeon declared, "I felt that it would not satisfy my conscience if I could be forgiven unjustly."

When men see the atonement only as a means of escape for themselves, a mere skillful way to have their sins pardoned, it will not have the necessary ethical and moral motivation that real Christianity will produce. Those who do not see how seriously the atonement takes the law, will not be led to take the law seriously in their daily living. Our view of the atonement tends to be far too subjective. The object of the atonement was not just our salvation but that the divine law and government might be maintained and vindicated.

If there is a failure to relate the atonement to the law, the death of Christ may appear awesome — but completely unintelligible. On the one hand, people are left with the impression that an angry, vindictive God punished His Son so that, being appeased, He could let us off. (This heathenish view of sacrifice is the philosophy of antinomianism.) On the other hand, some imagine that there was nothing in the divine character or government which demanded punishment for sin. It is said that the death of Christ was merely an exhibition of God's love designed to change us. (This is the view of liberal humanism, which denies the Bible principle of salvation by substitution, representation and penal satisfaction. This is the philosophy of legalism.)

Justification and the Law

Justification is a legal word which means to declare righteous, especially in reference to trial and judgment. It is a word that belongs to the law court. It is therefore impossible to understand this great Bible doctrine unless it is related to law. In the book of Romans, which is the Bible's great charter on justification, the word law is used fifty-six times. Dr. A.H. Strong points out, "Justification is setting one right before law."—Strong, op. cit., p. 856.

At the outset of his great statement on justification, the apostle Paul declares, "The doers of the law shall be justified." Rom. 2:13. This is an eternal truth which can never be modified or relaxed. A just God and a just law will justify a man only on the condition of perfect obedience. There are two ways in which man may meet the terms. Either he can come before God in his own personal obedience, or he may come in the vicarious obedience of Another. But the principle remains: he must bring to God a life which fulfills the law.

The conflict between Rome and the Reformers was not over the question of whether or not righteousness was necessary for justification. Rome taught that men could be justified before God by a personal righteousness (albeit worked in their hearts by an infusion of divine grace). The Reformers said that men could be justified only by a vicarious righteousness (performed by Christ centuries ago and imputed to the believer). The dispute was never about whether the claims of the law should be satisfied but how they are satisfied.

For a thorough discussion of the relationship of justification to the law, we refer the reader to Dr. Buchanan's lecture in the appendix. See also Martin Chemnitz's material in volume 8 of Present Truth Magazine.

The great doctrine of justification by faith has often been taught in such a way that it is positively dishonoring to God and to His law. Many think they are following Paul when they speak contemptuously of the law, not realizing that they are blaspheming the honor and majesty of God Himself. The great apostle unsparingly attacks law as a method of salvation but never, never as a moral and ethical norm.

Sanctification and the Law

The Reformers all clearly saw that the law has three main uses:

1. Political — to restrain evil in society.

2. Theological, or pedagogic — to point out sin and to be a schoolmaster (pedagogue) to lead the sinner to Christ.

3. Didactic — to be a guide to regenerate Christians.¹

A large section of Protestantism today has either neglected or abandoned the great Biblical and Reformation concept of "the third use of the law." (And we are not just referring to the liberals, some of whom have wandered so far from "the holy commandment" that they talk of condoning homosexuality.) A number of evangelicals have been actively promoting this brand of "evangelical" antinomianism for years. In fact, the American evangelical movement is largely caught up in the theories of dispensationalism, views which began to be promoted a little more than a hundred years ago in England. Dispensationalism and Reformation theology are incompatible. Dispensationalists deny the third use of the law. As Louis Berkhof says in his Systematic Theology (London: The Banner of Truth Trust), page 614, "it is pure Antinomianism . . . ."

To what does a denial of the third use of the law amount? Lutheran scholar, John Warwick Montgomery, calls it sanctification desanctified (see John Warwick Montgomery, The Suicide of Christian Theology [Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, Inc., 19701, pp. 423-428; reprinted in Present Truth, March, 1973). It means the destruction of that great doctrine of Christian sanctification. Why? Because, to use the words of G.C. Berkouwer, "Sanctification and law are inseparable; within their compass moves all of redeemed human life."—Berkouwer, op. cit., p. 182.

Just as sin, redemption, atonement, repentance and justification lose all true meaning apart from the law, so does sanctification. Sanctification flows from justification. At the same time as the repentant, believing sinner is justified by the imputation of Christ's righteousness (an act of God external to the sinner), he is renewed by the impartation of the Holy Spirit (an act of God internal to the believer). Justification sets him right before the law legally and positionally, but, being renewed in the spirit of his mind, he begins the life of new obedience. This is sanctification, and it means being conformed to the law of God morally and vocationally. "The children of God are ready to submit themselves to the holy law of God which is now the rule of their lives."—Ibid., pp. 191, 192.

"Whatever in his [the converted man's] previous course of life was at variance with God's law is at once abandoned."—James Buchanan, The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit (London: The Banner of Truth Trust), p. 1 1 0. In the gift of the Holy Spirit, God writes His law in the hearts of the justified (Heb. 8:10). They are no longer hostile to it (Rom. 8:7), for the scripture is fulfilled:\

For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Rom. 8:3, 4.

This has been the doctrine of all the great Protestant divines since the days of the Reformation — whether they be Lutheran, Calvinistic, Anglican or Puritan. Melancthon, in his Apology of the Augsburg Confession, clearly spelled out sanctification as the new obedience to the law.

There is not a trace in the Reformation, says he [Melancthon], of the supposed fixity of man's moral condition; as if faith were merely the reception of some obscure, external righteousness. It is quite otherwise. Once we have been justified through faith we must keep the law. Hementions the decalogue by name.—Berkouwer, op. cit, p. 37.

And since that time, there has not been one sound, responsible Protestant theologian who has deviated from this principle.

Acknowledging the law's third use is not a return to legalism or a new self-righteousness.

2. "When you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you don't need the law because the Holy Spirit tells you what to do." This is the kind of fanaticism that Luther had to meet in the more radical Anabaptists. They made a cleavage between Word and Spirit, and thought they could receive communications and revelations from the Spirit quite apart from the objective Word of God. The tragedy is that those who want to be led by God and want Him to speak to them apart from the guidance of the words of the Bible, have no way of telling the difference between the Holy Spirit and their own carnal religious impressions. They try to live by uncertain voices within themselves. But the true work of the Spirit is to teach Christians not to live by inward resources but by trusting submission to an objective authority. The Holy Spirit bears witness to the truth, and God's Word is the truth. Anyone who gives the slightest hint that he need not carefully study the Bible to determine God's will for his life, is not led by the Spirit of God.

3. "The essential thing is a warm, heart relationship with Christ. When you have this personal relationship, you don't live by the do's and don'ts of the law." This sentiment should be consigned back to its right place — to the father of lies.

Certainly a Christian does not live by the commandments of men. He pays no attention to the do's and don'ts of human traditions. This is what Paul is talking about in Colossians 2:14-22. "Let no man therefore judge you . . . after the commandments and doctrines of men." But may God help us if we think that Paul is talking about the commandments of God. In another place the apostle says, "Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God." 1 Cor. 7:19.

The essential thing is a relationship with God, true! But let us not forget that God sets the terms of that relationship. His terms are obedience. Let us not fool ourselves in thinking that we can get above the do's and don'ts of God's Word. There are plenty of do's and don'ts in the New Testament just as well as in the Old. The epistles of Paul are full of imperatives: don't lie to one another; don't let the sun go down on your wrath; don't judge and criticize your brother; don't eat (the sacrament) with immoral men; don't be conformed to this world; don't take a brother in the faith before a law court; and many, many more. Try reading Romans 12 to 14, and see how many do's and don'ts are given to us. Or read Ephesians 4 to 6, Colossians 3 to 4 and 1 Thessalonians 5.

Our keeping the commandments of God does not establish our relationship with God. This is purely of grace, on account of Christ, through faith. ("I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt.") The duty of hearing and obeying Him springs out of the fact that He has delivered us and established a Father-son relationship with us. The "Thou shalt nots" plainly spell out the things that will spoil that relationship.

God even saw fit to impose some do's and don'ts on man in his sinless state. To Adam and Eve He said, "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it." We can imagine the deceiver saying to the woman, "Listen, Eve. If you have a warm, loving relationship with God, that is all that matters. Since you have now achieved this wonderful experience, you have no need to live by the do's and don'ts of the law. In fact, the way you can prove you have entered this higher experience is to eat this fruit. That will prove that the only thing that matters is a love relationship with God." Eve forgot that divine love set the terms of that relationship. Through disobedience the relationship was destroyed.

God remembers that we are but dust. Because of Christ He does not impute sin to the faltering lives of the stumbling saints. But He cannot be in fellowship with those who "rebel against God's law by changing its demands and accommodating them to their own capacity. This is done by eliminations in the Decalogue and also by additions" (Edmund Schlink, Theology of the Lutheran Confessions [Philadelphia: Fortress Press] , p. 75).

Conclusions

If the great doctrine of justification is to be restored to its rightful place in the church, we must preach "the second use of the law" — the law to point out sin, the law as a schoolmaster to lead to Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:24).

If the great doctrine of sanctification is to be restored to its rightful place in the church, we must proclaim "the third use of the law" — the law as a guide to justified believers.

If the second use of the law falls, so does the third, or vice versa. Then there is neither a correct basis for justification nor for sanctification. This is why the church is drowning in an unprecedented flood of religious subjectivism.

Again: we are justified by faith in an objective work, and we are sanctified by faith(ful) obedience to an objective law.

Let the church return to her unabashed allegiance to God's Word. Let her not be ashamed of her conscientious obedience to the commandments of God. Let her not be afraid to call sin by its right name. Let her shake off all traces of sentimental subjectivism. Let her take up the two-edged sword of law and gospel. Then will she again look "forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners."

¹ With regard to the third use of the law, some have tried to argue that Luther did not agree with Melancthon (who first coined the expression, "the third use of the law") and Calvin (who deals with the law's third use in great detail in his Institutes of the Christian Religion.). But their claim is not in harmony with the facts. What could be clearer than Luther's Small Catechism: "The purpose of the law is to train people to be decent and orderly, to show them that they are sinners so that they may repent and turn to Christ, and to serve as the rule of life for Christians." In The Theology of Martin Luther, Paul Althaus says, "Luther saw the commandments not only as a mirror in which he recognizes sin—although they certainly are and remain that even for the Christian—but beyond this as instruction about the 'good works' God wants; and such instruction is necessary and wholesome for the Christian.... Luther does not use the expression 'the third function of the law (tertius usus legis).' Melancthon did use this expression and it was then adopted in the Formula of Concord, in Lutheran orthodoxy and by nineteenth century theology. In substance, however, it also occurs in Luther."—Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, pp. 272, 273. Reformed scholar, G.C. Berkouwer, says this about Luther: "Convinced though he was of the sovereignty of God's grace and of our inability to be justified by the works of the law, he nevertheless held the law in high esteem and spoke of its threefold intent to maintain the external order, to induce sinners to recognize their guilt, and to direct the life of believers."—G.C. Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), pp. 164, 165.