The Gospel Gives, the Law Commands
Recovering the Difference Between Gift and Demand (Part 2)
When thinking through how we are to categorize the differences between the uses of the law and the application of the law to believers, it is important that we are as clear as possible. The goal is to understand that we are not working with a sliding scale of largely and strictly gospel, or largely and strictly law, but rather distinct categories that cannot and should not be mixed. A wrong understanding of the law inevitably corrupts the gospel, and a wrong view of the gospel inevitably distorts the law.
In line with this, The Marrow of Modern Divinity’s argument is straightforward: that all precepts belong to the law.1
Again, to be clear, the Marrow Men did not mean that every command places the hearer beneath the covenant of works, nor did they mean that the command to believe in Christ is identical to the commands of the moral law. Their point was that whatever God commands belongs categorically to the moral law because the moral law is the total of human duty.2 This includes the commands to believe and repent.
Thomas Boston explains Fisher’s threefold distinction between the law of works, the law of faith, and the law of Christ by insisting that the law of faith is not a proper preceptive law.3 The law of faith is the gospel, or covenant of grace, because it presents the promise of salvation to faith and excludes boasting.
The law of works and the law of Christ, by contrast, are the same moral law in substance, although they address persons in different covenantal relations. The law of works requires obedience for life, while the law of Christ is the moral law in the hand of the Savior, binding those already saved to the duties of obedience.
Boston then makes the point clear by stating that, because the moral law is perfect and sin is any transgression of it, all divine commands must be categorized under it, including the command to repent and the command to believe in Christ.
In short, Boston’s point is that if it is a command from God to do anything, it belongs to the category of the law.
The command to believe becomes binding wherever the revelation comes, not because the gospel has become law, but because the moral law obligates the sinner to receive God as he reveals himself and therefore to receive the Christ whom God reveals and offers in the gospel.
Rather than merging categories, this distinction enables us to speak more carefully about faith.
Faith is not merely a work performed in response to a demand, because saving faith is appropriative and instrumental. It does not supply righteousness but receives Christ and his righteousness.
Nevertheless, the fact that faith is receptive does not mean that the divine command to believe ceases to be a command.
This is the reason the law condemns unbelief, because unbelief is disobedience to God’s command to all men everywhere to believe.
The gospel provides the object of faith because it announces Christ as freely offered to sinners, and the law says that the sinner must not reject God’s command concerning his Son.
To summarize the point, the obligation to believe comes from the authority of God in the law, while the warrant to believe comes from the revelation and offer of Christ in the gospel.
Against the Baxtarians, this protects the gospel from being transformed into a new law, but it also protects the obligation of all to believe.
A sinner cannot excuse unbelief by claiming that faith is an optional response to an invitation, because God commands all who hear the gospel to receive the Christ proclaimed to them. Yet the responsibility of unbelief does not mean that the gospel promise itself has become a command.
William Perkins is also helpful in proving the Marrow Men’s claim. The preacher’s basic task, according to Perkins, is to determine whether a particular passage is a statement of law or gospel because these two divine words operate differently.
The law exposes the disease of sin and may even provoke and stir it up, but it supplies no remedy. The gospel, by contrast, comes with the power of the Holy Spirit and not only declares what is true but also communicates the saving benefits of Christ.4
The Stakes
So we are again clear about the stakes. The Marrow Men argued that if faith and repentance do not belong to the law as commanded duties, then they cannot clearly be excluded from justification under Paul’s category of the works or deeds of law.5
Boston writes:
“The holy Scripture teaches, that we are justified by grace, and by no law nor deed, or work of a law, properly so called, call it the law of Christ, or the gospel law, or what law one pleaseth; and thereby faith itself, considered as a deed or work of a law, is excluded from the justification of a sinner, and hath place therein, only as an instrument.”6
The distinction that Boston is making is that the command to believe belongs to the law because God truly requires belief and condemns unbelief.
Considered as a deed performed in response to the law, faith is excluded from justification, together with every other work. Faith has a place in justification only instrumentally, because it receives Christ and his righteousness.
In short, the command to believe belongs to the law, but faith does not justify as a work of law. It justifies only as the instrument by which the sinner receives Christ.
The problem with describing faith and repentance as commands of the gospel, even when one adds the qualification “largely speaking,” can obscure the difference between the promise offered and the response required. This matters because faith saves only by virtue of its object.
Faith receives what the gospel gives, repentance follows from the apprehension of faith, and obedience flows from union with Christ.
Repent and Believe
To obey the gospel, then, is to submit to God’s testimony by believing the message that has been proclaimed. The gospel is the object believed, while repentance and faith are the commanded responses.
It is therefore more precise to say that God commands faith in the Christ whom the gospel reveals than to say that the gospel commands faith.
The same divine speaker utters both the command and the promise, but the two words perform different functions. The law establishes the sinner’s obligation to believe, while the gospel supplies the Christ whom faith receives.
The law leaves the sinner without excuse for unbelief, while the gospel leaves the sinner without reason for despair.
When these two words are distinguished, faith remains duty without becoming merit, and the gospel remains promise without becoming demand.
The command to believe belongs to law because it requires an act of obedience from the hearer, but the ability, warrant, and object of faith are supplied through the gospel.
This is not an artificial division imposed upon Scripture but a distinction demanded by the different operations of God’s Word.
Edward Fisher, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, with notes by Thomas Boston (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1850; modernized by William H. Gross, 2014), 348
Ibid., 348.
Ibid., 19-23.
William Perkins, The Art of Prophesying (1592; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1996), 54–55.
Fisher, Marrow of Modern Divinity, 348-349.
Ibid., 198