Theopedia

Law

The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul… the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.

— Psalm 19:7-8

Definition

The moral law is God’s own righteousness expressed as a rule for rational creatures. He wrote it on the human heart at creation, so that even Gentiles without Scripture “show that the work of the law is written on their hearts” (Rom. 2:14-15), and later summarized it in the Ten Commandments given to Israel at Sinai. This moral law differs from the ceremonial and judicial law God also gave Israel, both bound to that nation’s history and now fulfilled or expired.12 It exposes sin, restrains evil in society, and, for those united to Christ, serves as a rule of life.

Confessional Witness

The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689) opens its chapter “Of the Law of God” by grounding the moral law in creation rather than in Sinai alone: God gave Adam “a law of universal obedience written in his heart,” and “this law, so written in the heart, continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness after the fall,” delivered again at Sinai “in the form of the ten commandments.”34 The Westminster Confession (1646) states the same thing in nearly identical wording,56 so this is the Reformed confessions’ collective witness rather than a Baptist distinctive. Both confessions go on to distinguish this moral law from the ceremonial and judicial law given to Israel, worked out in full alongside the Ten Commandments. Of the moral law itself, both confessions state:

The moral law doth forever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof… Neither doth Christ in the gospel any way dissolve, but much strengthen, this obligation.7

Biblical Basis

Paul grounds the moral law’s universal reach in creation rather than in special revelation alone: Gentiles “who do not have the law” still “show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness” (Rom. 2:14-15). Where the law does meet a sinner directly, its first effect is conviction rather than righteousness: “through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20), and “the law came in to increase the trespass” (Rom. 5:20), stopping “every mouth” so “the whole world may be held accountable to God” (Rom. 3:19). Paul calls the law a paidagogos, the household slave who escorted a child to school: “the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24). Yet the law is not only a court that convicts: the psalmist calls it his own delight, “my meditation all the day” (Ps. 119:97), and Paul insists it remains “good, if one uses it lawfully” (1 Tim. 1:8), rightly used rather than set aside.

Doctrinal Implications

Reformed theology distinguishes three uses (usus legis) the moral law serves, a “threefold use” both Lutheran and Reformed theology affirm in some form.8 The usus politicus or civil use restrains and promotes external righteousness in society generally; it presupposes sin and belongs to God’s common grace rather than to saving grace as such.8 The usus elenchticus or pedagogical use convicts a person of sin and of inability to meet the law’s demands, making the law a “tutor” leading to Christ (Gal. 3:24).8 The usus didacticus or tertius usus legis, the third use, is the law as a rule of life for believers, “reminding them of their duties and leading them in the way of life and salvation.”8

Lutheran and Reformed theology hold this third use with different weight. Lutheranism “almost exclusively” has “an eye for the accusing and condemning function of the law,” so the third use is necessary “only because, and in so far as, believers continue to be sinners”; left to itself, “when faith and grace come on the scene, the law expires and loses all its meaning.”9 The Reformed hold the moral law “everlasting” instead, inscribed on Adam’s heart at creation and “again engraved on the heart of the believer by the Holy Spirit,” so that “in heaven all believers will live according to it.”9 Calvin calls this the law’s “principal use,” “more closely connected with its proper end,” belonging to “believers in whose hearts the Spirit of God already flourishes and reigns”: even a regenerate heart still needs the law’s daily instruction and, since the flesh remains sluggish, its exhortation, “like a whip,” to press onward.10 What changes at conversion is the law’s power to condemn, not its claim as a rule of righteousness; the moral law, the confession states, “is not contrary to the grace of the gospel, but does sweetly comply with it.”11

Historical Development

Philip Melanchthon’s Loci Communes first set out a twofold use of the law, civil and pedagogical; the third, normative use for believers does not appear in his own formulations until 1534.12 John Calvin brought the doctrine to its classic Reformed statement in the 1559 final edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, naming all three uses in order and calling the third “the principal use.”10 The Westminster Assembly (1646) and the Particular Baptists who drafted the Second London Baptist Confession (1689) then wrote a strong doctrine of the third use directly into their confessions’ own chapters “Of the Law of God,” in substantially the same terms.13

That confessional consensus has faced a modern challenge from dispensationalism, which treats law and gospel as belonging to successive, opposed dispensations: Israel stood under law, the church stands under gospel and so, on this reading, is “free from the law.”14 Berkhof answers that this conflates the law/gospel distinction with the Old Testament/New Testament distinction: the Old Testament already contains gospel, in the first gospel promise (Gen. 3:15), in the ceremonial law’s own types, and in the prophets, while the New Testament still holds believers to the law as a rule of life.15

Opposing Views

Lutheran theology affirms the same threefold distinction but treats the second, convicting use as the law’s primary business, holding the third use “with a certain reserve” as necessary only insofar as believers remain sinners in this life.16 The Reformed confessions give the third use equal or greater weight instead, tying it directly to sanctification; Berkhof notes that the Heidelberg Catechism alone devotes eleven full Lord’s Days to exposition of the law, under the heading of gratitude rather than accusation.16

Dispensationalism holds that the Mosaic law belonged to Israel’s own dispensation and does not bind the church as such, which lives instead under the gospel.14 Where covenant theology reads Old Testament law and New Testament grace as two administrations of one covenant of grace, dispensationalism reads them as two different economies with different rules for different peoples of God.

Critics of the threefold moral/ceremonial/civil division itself argue the distinction is a theological construct without clear biblical warrant. Douglas Moo holds that “the whole law came to culmination in Christ” and that no single Mosaic commandment can be assumed to carry straight over to the believer without first passing through Christ’s own fulfillment of it.17 Confessional Reformed theology treats the distinction as textually grounded rather than arbitrary, resting on real differences the Bible itself draws in what each kind of law rests on and how each relates to Christ.1

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t Paul’s negative language about the law, that it “worketh wrath” and “came in that the offence might abound,” mean the law itself is something evil to be escaped? Paul asks and answers the question himself:

Is the law sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin… So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. (Rom. 7:7, 12)

What the law exposes is sin already present in the sinner, not a fault in the law itself; its condemning effect is a function of what it meets in fallen creatures, not of any defect in a standard that simply states God’s own righteous character.18

If natural law already reveals God’s moral will to everyone, doesn’t that make Scripture’s own moral teaching unnecessary, or set up a rival source of ethical knowledge alongside it? Natural law is real but “imperfect” revelation, “made in the very constitution of our nature,” sufficient to leave the person without Scripture “without excuse” but not sufficient on its own; it “does not render unnecessary the clearer teachings of the Scriptures.”19 Scripture and conscience are not rival authorities but the same moral law under two different modes of address, one general and one special.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 19, para. 3. ↩ ↩2

  2. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 19, para. 4. ↩

  3. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 19, “Of the Law of God,” para. 1. ↩

  4. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 19, para. 2. ↩

  5. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 19, “Of the Law of God,” para. 1. ↩

  6. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 19, para. 2. ↩

  7. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 19, para. 5. ↩

  8. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 599. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  9. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 22, “The Spirit’s Means of Grace.” ↩ ↩2

  10. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 2, chap. 7, sec. 12, 309-311. ↩ ↩2

  11. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 19, para. 7. ↩

  12. Aaron Thomas O’Kelley, “Three Prominent Reformers on Justification,” in “A Historical-Theological Critique of the New Perspective on Paul” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 124n87. ↩

  13. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 19, para. 6; cf. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 19, para. 6. ↩

  14. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 597. ↩ ↩2

  15. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 597-598. ↩

  16. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 599-600. ↩ ↩2

  17. Ken Magnuson, Invitation to Christian Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2020), chap. 4, “Aspects of Biblical Ethics: Old Testament,” n. 24. ↩

  18. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), chap. 19, “The Law,” 257. ↩

  19. Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3:265. ↩