In today’s world, things seem to be unraveling. Headlines flash daily with abuses of power, breaches of trust, assassinations, shootings, riots, and protests. The spirit of anarchy is alive and well.
How is it possible that depraved individuals recognize evil? Why do we care about injustice at all? It is because the law of God is written in our hearts (Romans 2:14–15). When we see atrocities occurring day after day, it is human nature to long for justice.
Within Christianity, however, there has always been dispute over how the law of God should be understood in the life of believers.
Antinomians teach that the law has no place in a Christian’s life.
Neonomians desire to make a new law from the gospel, demanding faith and obedience to the law as the ground of salvation.
Against these errors, the Reformed faith insists that we must rightly distinguish between law and gospel, and also affirm the three uses of the law. Doing so not only provides clarity among Christians, but also gives us a solid blueprint for how we are to live for the glory of God.
Law and Gospel
So, what does it mean to properly distinguish between law and gospel? Martin Luther gave this classic definition:
“The law says, ‘do this,’ and it is never done. Grace says, ‘believe in this,’ and everything is already done.”
The law is what we do. The gospel is what Christ has done for us. The law reveals God’s requirement for eternal life—perfection (Galatians 3:10; James 2:10). The gospel proclaims the wonderful promise that Christ is our righteousness, received by faith alone (Galatians 3:13–14).
Both the law and the gospel are God-given and necessary in the Christian life. The law is good because it expresses God’s being. The gospel is good because it announces Christ’s finished work on our behalf. But mixing them—what some call “glawspel”—is dangerous. This is what leads to neonomianism and the errors of the Judaizers.
As Herman Bavinck wrote, Reformed Christians perceive “the sharp contrast between law and gospel” and realize that this restores “the peculiar character of the Christian religion as a religion of grace.” In contrast, “The law demands that humans work out their own righteousness, and the gospel invites them to renounce all self-righteousness and to accept the righteousness of Christ.” (1)
The Three Uses of the Law
With the law/gospel distinction in place, the next question arises: what is the relationship of a regenerate believer to the law of God? Reformed theology distinguishes three uses of the law, because this is how we observe it functioning in Scripture.
- Pedagogical (schoolmaster)
- Civil/Moral (society)
- Normative (the Christian life)
First Use of the Law
First, the law functions as a mirror to destroy the spiritual narcissist lurking within us all. Calvin writes:
“First, by exhibiting the righteousness of God—in other words, the righteousness which alone is acceptable to God—[the Law] admonishes every one of his own unrighteousness, certiorates, convicts, and finally condemns him.” (2)
This first use of the law exposes our self-righteousness and arrogance. It puts the old Adam to death. We realize that God does not accept us “just as we are.” Apart from Christ, no one can stand on Judgment Day.
God’s law requires perfect obedience, and no fallen son or daughter of Adam can attain this. By ourselves, we are without hope. We cannot plead our good works before the throne, since “all who rely on works of the law are under a curse” (Galatians 3:10).
The first use of the law, then, serves as a schoolmaster to drive us out of ourselves and into Christ.
Second Use of the Law
Second, the law restrains evil in society. Calvin explains:
“The second office of the Law is, by means of its fearful denunciations and the consequent dread of punishment, to curb those who, unless forced, have no regard for rectitude and justice.” (3)
Commands such as “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” and “Do not commit adultery” are written on human hearts by natural law (Romans 2:14–15). This use of the law restrains evil and promotes order. The Westminster Larger Catechism summarizes:
“The moral law is of use to all men, to inform them of the holy nature and will of God, and of their duty, binding them to walk accordingly.” (Q.95)
Our society functions only because of this innate sense of right and wrong. The second use of the law protects us from harm and maintains civil order, applying equally to believers and unbelievers.
Third Use of the Law
Third, the law serves as a guide for regenerate believers. Calvin remarks:
“The third use of the Law has respect to believers in whose hearts the Spirit of God already flourishes and reigns.” (4)
This use of the law—called the normative use—reveals God’s righteous will for our lives. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works (Ephesians 2:10).
To say a believer is “not under law” means that we are not under it as a covenant of works, as the way of salvation. But the law is not discarded. Paul makes this clear: “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law” (Romans 3:31).
Louis Berkhof put it this way:
“The Law is a rule of life for believers, reminding them of their duties and leading them in the way of life and salvation. This third use of the law is denied by the Antinomians.” (5)
To deny the third use is to fall into antinomianism, which perverts God’s grace into a license to sin (Jude 4). Instead, Christians strive to uphold the law—not to earn salvation, but as new creations who live out of gratitude for God’s redeeming love.
The Lutheran and Reformed Views Compared
Both Reformed and Lutheran confessions acknowledge a third use of the law. The Formula of Concord (Epitome, Article 6) puts it beautifully:
“People who truly believe in Christ and are genuinely converted to God have been liberated and set free from the curse and compulsion of the law through Christ. They indeed are not for that reason without the law. Instead, they have been redeemed by the Son of God so that they may practice the law day and night.”
This aligns with Reformed theology. Yet since the Reformation, Lutheran theologians have often struggled to articulate the third use consistently. Walther in The Proper Distinction of Law and Gospel (1897) appeared to repudiate it (Thesis 23). Gerhard Forde rejected it entirely. David Scaer has noted that this contributed to theological decline in American Lutheranism. (6)
Still, the great Lutheran theologian Martin Chemnitz recognized that the law continues to contend against the “old man” in the regenerate. (7) And Herman Bavinck observed:
“Lutherans do speak of a threefold use of the law, not only of a…civil use for the purpose of restraining sin, and of a pedagogical use to arouse the knowledge of sin, but also of a didactic use of the law to be a rule of life for believers. This last use, however, is solely necessary since…believers still continue to be sinners and have to be restrained by the law and led to a continuing knowledge of sin.” (8)
The Reformed tradition, by contrast, has consistently affirmed the third use as a distinct, positive guide for the Christian life.
Concluding Thoughts
It is critical to distinguish law and gospel, but it’s just as necessary to affirm the three uses of God’s law. As the Heidelberg Catechism reminds us, even the holiest make only a small beginning of obedience, yet they have a sincere resolution to walk in God’s ways (Q.114).
We must never base our justification on our sanctification. Our obedience in the Christian life flows not from fear but from gratitude. This is the essence of the third use of the law.
The Reformed view of the Christian life can be summed up in three words: Guilt, Grace, Gratitude.
Guilt – the law convicts (first use).
Grace – the gospel redeems.
Gratitude – the law guides (third use).
When guilt crushes us, grace restores us. And when grace restores us, gratitude compels us to live according to God’s law. In this rhythm, the law fulfills its holy purpose—not to save, but to guide us in a life of thankfulness to our Savior.
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Endnotes
- Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 453. ↩
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.7.6. ↩
- Ibid., 2.7.10. ↩
- Ibid., 2.7.11. ↩
- Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1938), 615. ↩
- David Scaer, “Walther, the Third Use of the Law, and Contemporary Issues,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 75, no. 3 (2011): 329. ↩
- Martin Chemnitz, Loci Theologici (St. Louis: Concordia, 1989). ↩
- Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 455. ↩
