The law/gospel distinction has for a long time, and increasingly as of late, been accused of weakening Christian obedience.
Those who criticize the distinction, while well-meaning, I’m sure, fear that if the words of God are distinguished too carefully, all commands will be treated as condemning and thus every instruction of obedience will be dismissed as legalism.
However, much like Don Quixote’s tilting at windmills, the problem is that the wrong enemy has been identified. Critics charge the law/gospel distinction with weakening obedience, silencing imperatives, and making the Christian life practically lawless. Missing the real problem, which is a failure to distinguish between the first and third uses of the law.
The irony is that critics end up tilting at windmills, not realizing that the law/gospel distinction is the very thing needed to solve the problem.
We Must Distinguish
The first use of the law serves to point us to our inability to keep it. In the words of the apostle, it functions to shut the mouth of the self-righteous and to leave us without hope (Rom. 3:19).
In its third use, that same law directs the believer’s life. It reveals the will of God, identifies what pleases Him, restrains remaining corruption, and gives shape or guides the grateful obedience of those in Christ.
These are distinct uses of the same law, but when they are collapsed, one use will always be swallowed by the other.
When the first use swallows the third, every command is heard only as accusation, and while it may still drive the believer to Christ, it loses its function to direct the believer in Christ.
Once that happens, the only apparently “gospel-centered” response to the law is to move away from its commands as quickly as possible. The Christian is treated only as a defendant who must be acquitted, never as a child who is being instructed by his Father.
Ironically, the believer is being bound up under a covenant of works that he has been freed from, and complete missing that he has been freed from the law as a master. While this posture may not openly declare that obedience is unnecessary, it can appear as a suspicion toward any claim that the law has a positive, continuing, and non-justifying role in the Christian life.
On the opposite side, when the first use of the law is swallowed by the third, true legalism is produced. If the law is no longer permitted to expose sin and reveal our need for Christ, the sinner is directed toward obedience before being stripped of confidence in that obedience. The law ceases to function as a mirror that drives us outside ourselves and instead becomes a ladder by which we attempt to ascend toward God. This error does not take the law too seriously; it fails to take its condemning office seriously enough. Only when the law is allowed to destroy confidence in our righteousness can its third use direct Christian obedience without turning that obedience into merit.
The Confessional Answer
As a Baptist, the conversation should really be directed toward our confession.
“Although true believers be not under the law, as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified or condemned; yet it is of great use to them.” (2LBCF 19.6)
(Our Presbyterian brothers can find their counterpart in WCF 19.6)
Notice how that sentence preserves both the law/gospel distinction and the first and third uses of the law.
Believers are not under the law as a covenant of works. The law cannot justify them, but thanks be to God, Christ alone has fulfilled its demands, borne its curse, and provided the perfect obedience for His people. Yet the confession immediately adds that the law remains “of great use” to believers.
The confession goes on to explain that the law informs them of God’s will and their duty; it directs and binds them to walk accordingly; it exposes the sinful pollution remaining in their hearts, and it restrains corruption, warns against sin, and encourages obedience.
It is important to realize that the confession does not protect the gospel by removing the law from the Christian life (nor should we). Further, it protects the gospel by refusing to make the law the means of justification, while simultaneously protecting obedience by preserving the law as the believer’s rule of life.
Examination and Extra Nos
The question of self-examination gives a perfect example of the issue that happens when we confuse the two uses. If the target is someone who says that examination has no evidentiary role whatsoever in assurance, then I agree that the criticism has force. The fruits of grace may provide real evidence that the Spirit is at work within us. But evidence is not foundation.
According to 19.6, the law exposes the remaining pollution within believers so that, by examining themselves, they may come to further conviction, humiliation, and hatred of sin, together with a clearer sight of the need they have of Christ, and the perfection of his obedience.
Properly ordered introspection does not compete with extra nos; it serves it.
The believer looks within long enough to tell the truth about what remains there, yes, but he does not remain within himself searching for something substantial enough to quiet his conscience. What he discovers within gives him a clearer sight of his need for the righteousness accomplished outside of him.
Assurance may look within for evidence, but it must look outside itself for rest.
The Guard Against Antinomianism
Far from producing antinomianism, the law/gospel distinction actually gives us the categories necessary to resist it.
The distinction allows us to affirm the third use of the law without asking the law to perform the work of the gospel:
When the law is asked to provide our acceptance before God, we move toward legalism. When the gospel is used to silence the law’s direction of the Christian life, we move toward antinomianism. But when law and gospel are properly distinguished, Christ remains the believer’s only righteousness while the law remains the believer’s rule of life.
The law tells us what God commands, but the gospel does what the law cannot. It gives us Christ.
This distinction enables us to pursue obedience without converting obedience into merit. We can receive the law as instruction without imagining that our performance establishes our standing before God. We can examine ourselves without making our examination the foundation of assurance.
The Remedy
If the law can only accuse, then the believer must constantly be rescued from the law rather than also being directed by it. The third use disappears, and the resulting theology naturally leans toward antinomianism.
Conversely, if the law can only direct and is no longer permitted to expose sin, condemn self-righteousness, and drive us to Christ, the first use disappears. The believer is then sent to his obedience for the confidence that can be found only in Christ, and the resulting theology tends toward legalism.
In the first error, the law’s direction is silenced to protect the gospel; in the second, the gospel’s promise is obscured by the law. However, proper law/gospel distinction guards against both by allowing the law to expose our need for Christ and direct those who are already in Christ in grateful response, and reserving rest for the gospel alone.
Friends, the remedy is not to weaken the law/gospel distinction, and it is surely not to abandon it. The remedy is to distinguish more carefully between the law’s uses and then allow both law and gospel to perform their proper functions.
Far from undermining holiness, the law/gospel distinction is what allows us to preserve Christian obedience without turning that obedience into another means of justification.
This was superb and succinct, brother. Well done 👏