Since the Reformation, theologians have identified different functions (uses) of law. First, there is the 'civil' use of the law. This is law in its most obvious sense: rules made by institutions, mainly, but not only, governments, to restrain human evil. The first use of the law restrains fallen men, preserving life and keeping the peace. Divinely-sanctioned offices held by government officials, parents, and others (e.g. teachers), make the continuation of human life possible, and make the proclamation of the gospel possible too. To the extent that governments and other institutions use their power in this way we are to respect them as God's instruments, manifesting his gracious concern and love for foolhardy, self-destructive fallen human beings.2
Then there is the second function of the law, what has been variously called its 'spiritual', 'theological', or 'pedagogical' use. Here the focus is on the moral law, especially as it was made the center of the religious law of Judaism. The law in its second use serves to refute our self-righteousness, and specious self-sufficiency, making salient our sinfulness and hopelessness before a just and holy God. The law in its second use drives us to despair, presenting standards which we cannot satisfy. In this way the law is a taskmaster, driving us toward Christ as our only hope.
So far this is relatively uncontroversial. But is there a third use of the law? The law in its third use would be a law for Christians as such. While the second use of the law is to bring us to the realization of our need for justification, the law in its third use would function as a guide or aid in the process of sanctification for those who have been justified by Christ as the object of faith. On a possible third use of the law the Reformers diverge. Luther makes no explicit reference to a third use for the law; whether he implicitly accepts a role for the law in the lives of the justified is a matter of controversy. For Calvin, there is a definite third use of the law; indeed this is in his opinion its principal use. The Anabaptists went further, arguing that Jesus is a 'new Moses' who gives us a new law. Full obedience to it, in the form of a life of radical discipleship, is the mark of the genuine Christian.
There is a great deal at stake here so far as our understanding of our lives as Christians is concerned. Whether, and if so in what way and to what extent one's spiritual journey into the Christian faith is a matter of obeying rules, is of decisive importance in our daily lives.
If there is a third use of the law, where are we to find its content? Presumably not by paying close attention to the statutes of the secular state, nor by examining the ceremonial law of the Old Testament. Neither is directly relevant to the growth of the person Christ has justified. Those who promote a third function of the law direct us toward the moral conscience, the Decalogue, and other biblical teachings, especially those of the Apostles and Jesus himself. The Sermon on the Mount is a central text for those who see the Christian life constrained by law, since it records many sayings of Jesus that are directed toward his disciples and which are imperative in form. Indeed, in the eyes of many, especially non-Christians, the Sermon on the Mount represents the essential summation of Christian ethics. In this talk I will briefly outline an analysis of the Sermon on the Mount that pays special attention to what Jesus is showing us about the place of law in Christian existence. I suspect that the way to understand the Sermon on the Mount is as in essence descriptive, telling us how things are, rather than prescriptive, telling us what to do. In explicating the Sermon this way I hope to say something about its continuing relevance for us today.
Because the overall context for the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus going about Galilee 'preaching the gospel of the kingdom' (4.23), it is reasonable to take the Sermon as somehow explicating the content of that good news. The 'beatitudes' (5.3 - 5.12) are an announcement that certain individuals are blessed, i.e. that they have been, or will be, brought into a right relationship with God, becoming part of the Kingdom of heaven. Those who are 'poor in spirit', 'those who know their need of God' (NEB) are the ones who are blessed. People who have given up on their own righteousness, on their own power, on their own wealth, and who, having no other hope, rely on God's anointed, are the ones who will find blessedness, who will find consolation, who will know God The blessed are those who, having abandoned the power of being right, and are now totally dependent on God's goodness, can be peacemakers and forgivers. The passage refers back to Isaiah 61, where it is God who takes the initiative on behalf of his people. Because here we have Matthew identifying Jesus as God's anointed in whom God takes that initiative, any reading of the beatitudes which makes them the entrance requirements for entry into the kingdom of God, that is, any reading on which they are ethical demands on anyone who hopes to be restored to a relationship with the living God, is impossible. The opening passage of the Sermon on the Mount congratulates and encourages those who see Jesus for who he is. It does not impose a new law upon them; it describes their new condition to them.
In the next verses (5.13 - 5. 16) Matthew portrays Jesus as taking what appears to be a more imperative stance toward those who are the light and salt of the world. Those who have heard the good news of God's freely-given blessing can forget it, going back to the bad news of self-reliance and righteousness by our own efforts. To do this makes no sense; it's like using salt that isn't salty, like putting a light under a basket. Jesus' appeal here is not to things we must do in order to gain God's favor. He is pointing out what, given the facts of the gospel which he has just delineated, it is reasonable for someone to do.3 In this way the descriptive has a prescriptive aspect. Jesus does not impose a new law of good works and evangelism on the poor of spirit, telling them what they must do if they are to stay in God's good graces. Jesus here continues to explicate the gospel; he does not retreat from it.
That this is what Jesus is up to here explains the transition to the next passage, where we find one of the most theologically important texts in the New Testament: 'Do not think I came to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill' (5.17). Jesus emphatically asserts that every part of the law will be fulfilled. This makes sense only against the background of a possible misunderstanding of the relation of the law and the good news. Jesus knows that his preaching could be understood as if he were saying: 'It doesn't really matter to God what we do; the law really never meant anything to him.' To believe this is to believe that Jesus, and the work he is doing, is unnecessary and unimportant. To believe that is to abandon the gospel. To combat this Jesus spells out something of what it would mean to really satisfy the requirements of the law. He shows why he is necessary Any attempt to capture what is required to please God in a prescriptive formula fails.
For example, Jesus says: "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not commit adultery' but I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (5.27-28). Should we assume, as some do, that Jesus is showing us that the law must be internalized, involving not only external actions but our inner intentions and motives as well, and that if we avoid 'lusting in hearts' we have kept this part of the law? On this account Jesus purges the law of its ceremonial inessentials, properly interpreting it in its inner moral meaning. I think this would be a radical mishearing of Jesus' words. His point, I take it, is that it is impossible for us to really keep the law, no matter how it is improved and refined.
Any attempt to say 'I have done this, so I have made myself acceptable to God' is to try to relate to God in a way he will not be related to. It is to try to control God, coming toward him with our works of righteousness, expecting him to accept us on the basis of our strength and goodness, rather than depending entirely on him for our very lives. Despite what Satan promised in Eden, we cannot approach the true God as little Gods, equipped with our little knowledge of good and evil, refusing to let him be our God. Relating to him that way, every obeyed law we bring him he will reject, saying it's not good enough. Consider the case of the rich young ruler (in ch 19). When he claims to have obeyed the law fully, Jesus simply adds a new and intolerable requirement. He thereby demonstrates that legalism is recursively self-defeating. The perennial human effort to be as gods, knowing good and evil, and thus to relate to God as our equal, is doomed to despair and defeat. Here Jesus puts the law to its pedagogical use, backing us into a corner and thereby drawing us to himself, the one who fulfills the law because he has a relationship of complete faith and love with his Father. In Jesus the possibility of a covenant relationship between man and God is finally made actual. We participate in that relationship by faith in Jesus, not by obeying law.
This lesson is properly directed to Jesus' disciples as well as to the uncommitted crowds. The pedagogical use of the law applies to Christians as well as those who do not yet trust in Christ. Our self-righteousness is insidious and tenacious. We need to be reminded that we relate to God on the basis of nothing but faith. And we need to hear what this means. In fact we often need to hear precisely this sort of thing just because, knowing the truth of the gospel, we start thinking our theological rightness makes us better than those who don't know it. The utter impossibility of our pleasing God by being right and doing right needs to be vividly presented to us, as Jesus does in the Sermon. This creates in us what Luther called an 'evangelical despair,' the humbling but joyful realization that God accepts us unconditionally, by grace alone. The law in its pedagogical use is at work, in Calvin's words: 'dismissing the stupid opinion of [our] own strength....by it [we] come to realize [we] stand and are upheld by God's hand alone; that, naked and empty-handed, [we] flee to his mercy, repose entirely in it, hide deep within it, and seize upon it alone for righteousness and merit. For God's mercy is revealed in Christ...in Christ his face shines, full of grace and gentleness, even upon us poor and unworthy sinners.'4
Shall we say then that although there is a pedagogical function of the law relevant to Christians and everyone else, there is no third use of the law, no law directed to Christians alone? The short answer is to say Yes: either the work of Jesus Christ is sufficient or it isn't. Jesus did not go to the cross to fulfill the law and then, having risen, introduce a new law for you and I to fulfill. When Jesus says, e.g. that if we do not forgive those who wrong us, then God will not forgive us (6.15) he does not mean that our being accepted and forgiven by our father is, after all, conditional, not decisively brought about by what Jesus did at the cross. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus does not unwrap the good news to show us the bad news within. The gospel is good news all the way through, despite the fact that we will surely go on being judgmental, unforgiving, lusting in our hearts, feeding our children stones, and in general, being stinkers. Indeed, we will even go on trying to live by law, and failing, try to fake it, angling to present ourselves to others as doing better than we are. We must have a righteousness greater than that of anyone who tries to live by the law; we must have - and we can have - the righteousness of Christ. That is the gospel which is always of relevance to us, no matter how often and how long ago we've heard it.
In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus does tell us what to do. He tells us to not be foolish, like the man who built his house on the sand - his own righteousness - but to build on Christ's righteousness (7.24 - 28). It is foolish to try to live by the law, because there is no possibility of success. Only absolute perfection is good enough for God, and we can't produce it. But we can have it for the asking (7.7). It is crazy not to take what he offers. We cannot by our own devices produce the fruit of good works for which God made us. But the fruit of righteousness comes naturally, given the root of the gospel (7.17-18). It is ridiculous to think it can come about in any other way. Jesus concludes this great gospel message, his Sermon on the Mount, with an appeal to the facts, and to what makes sense in light of them.
Holy Scripture contains many imperatives directed toward those who have accepted Christ. Many Christians take them as a set of rules we are supposed to follow, and thus as constituting a third use of the law. I submit that we must not understand them as conditions we are being called upon to satisfy: Jesus Christ has satisfied every condition; instead, they are descriptions of what God is like, what he has done, and indications of what is reasonable given God's goodness and saving action on our behalf. They point us toward the natural outcome of our hearing the good news. These indications are not there to induce fear and anxiety in us, pushing us back into the realm of performance, where we have no choices but despair or hypocrisy. On the contrary, they direct our wandering attention back to the facts of what our gracious Lord has done for us, and what he will certainly do in us.
1. Luther, 1535 Lectures on Galatians (LW, 26, p. 312)
2. When institutions go beyond this, striving to realize the good for
human beings, they usurp God's place and become demonic powers.
3. Note that to 'become worthless' here is a translation of a Greek
term meaning to become insipid, foolish. To know the gospel, yet to act
as though it isn't true, is silly.
4. Institutes of the Christian Religion, (2.7.8)
Donald H. Wacome
2 November 1989