Law and Gospel

The moral law of God, grounded in His eternal and unchangeable character, transcends all cultures, epochs, and dispensations. It is not an arbitrary imposition but a reflection of divine holiness, binding upon all rational creatures in every age. This law, existing prior to Sinai and perduring beyond it, manifests God's righteousness and establishes the immutable standard by which all human conduct must be measured.

The Ten Commandments constitute the distilled essence of moral obligation, a divine epitome of comprehensive duty toward God and neighbor. While the entire law expands upon these principles, the Decalogue provides the categorical framework within which all particular duties find their proper place. These ten words, spoken by God Himself and inscribed by His finger, possess unique authority as the summary expression of perpetual moral obligation.

God has inscribed the substance of His moral law upon the human conscience, rendering all humanity without excuse for transgression. This natural revelation, though obscured by sin and insufficient for salvation, nonetheless establishes universal moral accountability. Even those who have never heard the written law possess an innate awareness of fundamental moral distinctions, demonstrating that God's law is written on the heart of His image-bearers.

The moral law obliges every human creature without exception or exemption. Neither Christ's redemptive work nor the believer's justification nullifies the law's demands for perfect obedience; rather, the gospel upholds and establishes the law while providing what the law requires but cannot produce. All persons, in all places, at all times, remain under obligation to render complete conformity to God's moral requirements, though believers alone possess both the desire and the enablement to pursue such conformity.

The law serves to establish and maintain civil order within human society, providing a framework for justice and governance. This political or civil function restrains outward wickedness and promotes external peace, enabling human community to exist despite universal depravity. Magistrates wield the sword as ministers of God's law, executing temporal judgment upon evildoers and thus preserving society from utter chaos.

Through threat of punishment and appeal to conscience, the law curbs the expression of human depravity, checking the violent outbreak of sin that would otherwise render society impossible. This restraining function operates even upon the unregenerate, not transforming their hearts but limiting their hands. Like a dam that contains but does not cure the flood, the law prevents sin from achieving its full destructive potential in this present age.

God's law provides the foundational principles necessary for social cohesion, economic justice, and communal flourishing. It establishes boundaries for human interaction, protects the weak from the strong, and promotes general equity among people. Though civil government cannot save souls, it can and must employ divine law to structure society in ways that honor God and benefit humanity, creating conditions wherein the gospel may be freely proclaimed.

Through common grace, God employs His law to confer temporal blessings upon all humanity without distinction between elect and reprobate. This gracious restraint of evil, promotion of civic virtue, and enablement of cultural achievement proceeds from divine goodness rather than human merit. While insufficient for salvation, common grace demonstrates God's beneficence toward His creatures and His commitment to uphold creation until redemption reaches its consummation.

The law serves as a pedagogue or schoolmaster, conducting sinners to Christ by exposing their desperate need for a Savior. This educational function strips away self-righteousness and destroys confidence in human ability, preparing the heart to receive grace. The law teaches not merely by instruction but by devastating demonstration—showing us our sin, our inability, and our danger, thereby making Christ precious to those who flee to Him for refuge.

The law functions as a perfect mirror, reflecting with unbearable clarity the pollution and perversity of the human heart. It reveals not merely outward transgressions but the inward corruption from which all sin proceeds. Before this mirror, no one can maintain pretensions of goodness; every mouth is stopped and all the world stands guilty before God. This revelation of sin is necessary medicine, for those who are whole have no need of a physician.

The law's condemnation propels the awakened sinner toward Christ as the only refuge from impending wrath. It wounds in order to heal, kills that it might make alive, and casts down that grace might raise up. This is the law's kindest work—not to mock our misery but to end our complacency, not to destroy hope but to redirect it from self to Savior. Those thus driven to Christ discover that what the law demanded, grace supplies; what the law condemned, Christ endured.

The Spirit employs the law to produce conviction of sin and despair of self-salvation, essential prerequisites to genuine conversion. This legal despair is not the end but the necessary beginning, not punishment but preparation. The law must slay all hope in human righteousness before the gospel can raise hope in divine mercy. This is severe mercy—the crushing that precedes healing, the emptying that makes room for filling, the death that issues in resurrection.

For the regenerate, the law serves as a trustworthy guide for holy living, directing the believer into paths of righteousness and conformity to the divine will. No longer a covenant of works demanding perfect obedience for justification, the law becomes a rule of gratitude showing how those already accepted in Christ ought to walk. The believer looks to the law not for salvation but for sanctification, not to be justified but to be instructed in righteousness.

Believers obey the law not from servile fear of condemnation but from filial gratitude for redemption. This evangelical obedience springs from love rather than compulsion, from thankfulness rather than terror. The law's requirements remain unchanged, but the believer's relationship to those requirements has been radically transformed. What was once an impossible burden becomes a delightful path, not because the law has altered but because the heart has been renewed.

The regenerate soul finds true pleasure in God's law, delighting in commandments once despised and loving precepts once hated. This delight proceeds from the new nature implanted by the Spirit, which instinctively loves what God loves and desires what God desires. Such delight is both evidence of genuine conversion and means of progressive sanctification, for those who love God's law meditate upon it continually and seek to embody it completely.

The law guides believers in the lifelong process of sanctification, marking out the path of increasing conformity to Christ. While justification is instantaneous and complete, sanctification is gradual and progressive, requiring both divine enablement and human effort. The law shows believers what holiness looks like in practice, exposing remaining sin and pointing toward fuller obedience. Thus the law serves as an instrument of the Spirit in transforming justified sinners into the image of the glorified Son.

The gospel constitutes genuinely good news—the announcement that God has accomplished redemption through Christ's substitutionary death and victorious resurrection. This message declares what God has done, not what man must do; it proclaims divine achievement rather than human assignment. The gospel is news precisely because it reports accomplished facts, historical realities that secure salvation for all who believe. This is tidings of great joy: Christ has satisfied justice, conquered death, and opened heaven to sinners.

Unlike the law which commands and requires, the gospel promises and bestows. It does not demand what man must render but announces what God has provided. The gospel's indicatives precede its imperatives; its gifts ground its claims. Where law says "do this and live," gospel says "it is finished." This distinction is fundamental: law prescribes duty, gospel proclaims mercy; law requires righteousness, gospel grants righteousness; law threatens the disobedient, gospel invites the unworthy.

The heart of the gospel is the free offer of Christ Himself to sinners. Not merely His benefits but His person, not only His gifts but Himself, becomes the possession of believers. This offer extends to all who hear the gospel, though only the elect will embrace it through Spirit-worked faith. Christ is presented as Prophet, Priest, and King—the complete and sufficient Savior who perfectly meets every need of guilty, helpless, hell-deserving sinners.

The gospel reveals grace that is truly free—unmerited, unearned, and unconditional regarding human qualification. This grace flows from God's sovereign good pleasure rather than human worthiness, operates according to divine initiative rather than human cooperation, and persists despite human unfaithfulness. Free grace means that salvation costs sinners nothing because it cost Christ everything. Those who receive this grace discover that it is sovereign in its bestowal, efficacious in its operation, and unchanging in its character.

The law demands perfect obedience and threatens eternal punishment for failure; the gospel gives perfect righteousness and promises eternal life through faith. This fundamental distinction must be maintained: law requires, gospel provides; law extracts, gospel bestows; law drains, gospel fills. Confusing these categories produces either despair or presumption. The law shows what man owes God; the gospel shows what God gives man. Both are necessary, but they must not be conflated.

The law's ministry is condemnation, declaring all guilty and worthy of death; the gospel's ministry is salvation, declaring believers righteous and heirs of eternal life. The law cannot save because it demands what fallen man cannot provide; the gospel saves because it provides what condemned man desperately needs. The law kills, the gospel makes alive. The law curses, the gospel blesses. These ministries are not contradictory but complementary—the law prepares the way for the gospel by showing the need which the gospel alone can meet.

The law operates on the principle of works—do this and live; the gospel operates on the principle of faith—believe and be saved. These are mutually exclusive grounds of justification. If salvation is by works, then faith is unnecessary; if by faith, then works cannot contribute. The gospel announces that Christ has performed the works the law requires, and faith receives the benefits of His finished work. Thus faith and works are not competing contributions but sequential realities: faith in Christ's works, not trust in our own.

The letter of the law, written on stone, kills by exposing sin and pronouncing condemnation; the Spirit accompanying the gospel gives life by regenerating hearts and enabling obedience. The old covenant's letter demanded without empowering; the new covenant's Spirit enables what it commands. This is not a contrast between written and spiritual interpretation but between law without grace and law with grace, between command without enablement and command with power. The Spirit writes the law on hearts, accomplishing what the external letter never could.

Legalism is the error of seeking justification or sanctification through law-keeping rather than through faith in Christ's finished work. It may add human traditions to divine commandments, or it may corrupt gospel grace by making salvation contingent upon human performance. Legalism kills by burdening consciences with requirements God never imposed or by suggesting that Christ's work requires human supplementation. It is the persistent temptation to trust in our obedience rather than Christ's, to build on works rather than grace.

Antinomianism is the error of rejecting the law's ongoing authority over believers, denying its third use as a guide for Christian living. It may claim that grace nullifies moral obligation or that justification renders obedience unnecessary. This error fails to distinguish between the law as a covenant of works (from which believers are freed) and the law as a rule of life (to which believers are still bound). True gospel liberty is freedom from the law's curse, not license to violate the law's precepts.

Neonomianism is the subtle error of presenting faith and repentance themselves as the new law, the new works that God requires for salvation. It transforms gospel grace into gospel requirement, making faith a condition we must fulfill rather than a gift we receive. This error maintains the vocabulary of grace while reintroducing the principle of works, suggesting that God accepts imperfect obedience (faith, repentance, etc.) in place of the perfect obedience He originally demanded. It thus obscures the sufficiency of Christ's righteousness and the freeness of grace.

Moralism reduces Christianity to ethical behavior, confusing moral improvement with spiritual transformation. It emphasizes external conformity to divine standards while neglecting the heart's renewal through union with Christ. Moralism can acknowledge total depravity yet deny the necessity of definitive sanctification, urging believers to "try harder" rather than pointing them to the resources available in Christ. It produces either proud Pharisees or despairing failures, for it knows the law's demands but not the gospel's provision.