Three Perspectives on Law

“Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” ~Romans 3:19–20

I am sure you have all heard of the three uses of the law. The first is the pedagogical use: the law shows us that we are sinners with no hope of saving ourselves and therefore stand in desperate need of salvation. In this use, the law is the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. The second use of the law is known as the civil use, which describes the law’s function in a well-ordered society to restrain sin. The third use of the law, or its normative use, explains the law’s capacity to direct the Christian in the ways of his Heavenly Father.

In preparing for the Greenville conference and my paper on the Marrow Controversy, I stumbled across another three-fold division in the way the Bible describes the law’s relation to human beings: the law of works, the law of faith, and the law of Christ. The terms are scriptural. At the end of Romans 3, Paul says, “Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith” (Romans 3:27). At the beginning of Galatians chapter 6,  Paul speaks of the law of Christ: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (v. 2). 

In his notes on Edward Fisher’s marvelous little book The Marrow of Modern Divinity, the Scottish Presbyterian minister Thomas Boston defines these terms like this: “The law of works is the law to be done, that one may be saved; the law of faith is the law to be believed, that one may be saved; the law of Christ is the law of the Savior, binding His saved people to all the duties of obedience.” 

It is important to realize that Paul does not use the term “law” here in the same way (univocally). The law of faith is not a precept to be done, but a promise to believe. God commands us to believe, but the belief is not, properly speaking, a work done by us, but it is trusting ourselves entirely to a work done by another, that is Christ (2 Thessalonians 1:8; Mark 1:15).

When Paul speaks of the law of works, he means to describe the relationship of unbelievers to the law. They are under the law. This is the way they relate to God. To live they must obey the law personally, perfectly, and perpetually. If they break the law–even once–they are liable to its wages: death.

The believer does not relate to God as one who is “ under law;” rather, we relate to God as those under grace. That is to say, our relationship to God hangs entirely on the life and death of Christ. We are saved by His law-keeping, not our own. The law no longer regards us as liable to the damning wrath of God because Christ completely absorbed this sentence into Himself when He died upon the cross.

As a result, Christians no longer need to fear the wrath and curse of God. Christ has removed these realities from us. As the hymn writer put it, “The terrors of law and of God with me can have nothing to do!  My Savior’s obedience and blood hide all my transgressions from view.” Without denying that, we must also realize that our sins still displease and grieve our Heavenly Father, but that is precisely the point, isn’t it? The displeasure He feels is the displeasure of a Father who has loved us at the cost of His Son. And so, having loved us once, He will love us always. He will never disown or de-son us. When God acts against us because of our sins, it will only be the stroke of His Fatherly displeasure aimed at our sanctification, never the stroke of His wrath aimed at our destruction. As the Puritans liked to say, the worst God ever does to His children is to whip them into heaven. He will never drive you into hell, Christian.

It is on and from this foundation that the Christian obeys the law. It is the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. He obeys as a Son and not in an effort to become a Son. Although our obedience is never perfect, God accepts it in Christ with the pity of a Father who knows well the frame of His children (Psalm 103:13-14). It is, therefore, as sons in the Son that we find the freedom and joy that come from resting as a child in the loving hands of our Heavenly Father, guided by His law, ruled by His smile, and energized by the Spirit of adoption.