{"id":11920,"date":"2012-06-20T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T10:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geneveith.com\/?p=11920"},"modified":"2012-06-20T06:00:59","modified_gmt":"2012-06-20T10:00:59","slug":"the-law-in-the-life-of-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/06\/the-law-in-the-life-of-christians\/","title":{"rendered":"The Law in the life of Christians"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

As promised yesterday, here is Jono Linebaugh discussing the role of the Law in the life of someone who has faith in the Gospel of Christ.\u00a0 I know the Third Use of the Law is a big controversy in Lutheranism.\u00a0 Paul McCain, for example, has been warning Lutherans\u2013including some theologians\u00a0 in the ELCA\u2013of forgetting that Christians are, indeed, obliged to follow God\u2019s Law.\u00a0 Dr. Linebaugh, a professor at Knox Theological Seminary (a Reformed institution)\u00a0 here seems to be downplaying the Third Use as it is often understood in Luther, but I think he is mainly fighting the Calvinist understanding and that he is restoring a properly Lutheran understanding of the Law in the life of Christians.\u00a0 But, hey, I\u2019m no pastor or theologian.\u00a0 Let me ask those of you who are:\u00a0 Does this account properly explain the use of the Law in the life of the Christian? What is the difference between the Reformed and the Lutheran understanding of this issue?\u00a0 When they both use the same term (\u201cThird Use of the Law\u201d) are they meaning the same thing?<\/p>\n

\n

For Luther, it is within this unconditional context created by the gospel, the reality he called \u201cliving by faith,\u201d that the Law understood as God\u2019s good commands can be returned to its proper place. Freed from the burden and bondage of attempting to use the Law to establish our righteousness before God, Christians are free to look to commandments, not as conditions, but as descriptions and directions as they seek to serve their neighbor. In other words, once a person is liberated from the commonsense delusion that acting righteously makes us righteous before God, and in faith believes the counterintuitive reality that being made righteous by God\u2019s forgiving and resurrecting word precedes<\/em> and produces<\/em> righteous action, then the justified person is unlocked to love.<\/p>\n

For this reason, Luther would insist that the Law only applies to the second question of Christian living: what shall we do? It helps to answer the \u201cwhat\u201d question, the question about the content of good works. The Law, however, does not answer the more basic question, the question far too few people ask: How <\/em>do good works occur? What fuels works of love? While the Law demands and directs, what delivers and drives? For Luther, the answer to this question always follows the pattern of 1 John 4.19: \u201cWe love because he first loved us.\u201d Works of love flow from and follow prior belovedness. Thus, as Lutheran theologian Oswald Bayer has said, the essential question of theological ethics is this: \u201cWhat has been given?\u201d The answer: \u201cGod shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us\u201d (Rom 5.8). . . .<\/p>\n

Recognizing this distinction between the conditional and condemning function of the Law and the descriptive and directive statement of God\u2019s will addressed to the unconditional context of faith in the God who justifies the ungodly is essential for understanding the purpose and place of New Testament imperatives, not to mention the Ten Commandments. The proper pattern is always \u201cin view of God\u2019s mercies\u2026\u201d (Rom 12.1), or as Luther pointed out with respect to the Decalogue, the pattern is the opening promise: \u201cI am the Lord your God\u2026\u201d (Exod 20.2). In other words, the ears of faith are free to hear a commandment without a condition because the Christian conscience listens not to the condition and curse of the Law, but to the Christ in whom there is no condemnation (Rom 8.1).<\/p>\n

This is why, for Luther, the phrase \u201cthe third use of the Law\u201d (i.e. a use of the Law after the gospel and thus unique to Christians) is a category mistake. For him, as suggested above, Law names the divine speech that accuses and kills. Cut off from its conditionality and kicked out of the Christian\u2019s conscience, a commandment is not Law in the theological sense. This does not mean that Luther didn\u2019t think those portions of scripture that we think of as Law should be preached to Christians; he emphatically did (as his disputations against the Antinomians and his expositions of the Ten Commandments in the Catechisms demonstrate). But it does mean that \u201cLaw\u201d is a slightly misleading term in this context because Law, for Luther, is defined by its \u201cchief and proper use\u201d which is \u201cto reveal sin\u201d and function as a \u201cHercules to attack and subdue the monster\u201d of self-righteousness (Galatians 1535). Defined this way, Law only applies to the Christian insofar as they are still sinful. (For Luther, a third use of the Law \u2013 a phrase his younger colleague Melanchthon coined in 1534 and which Luther never adopted \u2013 can only mean that the first two uses [ordering creation and accusing sinners] still apply to the Christian because while they are righteous they are simultaneously sinful). \u00a0Insofar as the Christian is justified by faith, however, the Law has ended \u2013 and precisely because the Law has ended as a voice of condemnation, because it has been divested of its saving significance, a commandment can be heard by the ears of faith without a condition. Passive and receptive before God, the justified person is free to be active and giving toward the neighbor.<\/p>\n

The end of the Law (Rom 10.4), understood by Luther as Christ kicking the Law out of the conscience and rejecting its role as the regulator of the divine-human relationship, is thus the end of the \u201cifs\u201d that interpose themselves between God and his creatures. In place of the \u201cifs\u201d Christ has uttered a final cry: \u201cIt is finished.\u201d These three words are the unconditional guarantee of the three words God speaks to sinners in the Gospel: \u201cI love you.\u201d In this unconditional context the justified person is freed from <\/em>the inhuman quest to secure a standing before God and freed for <\/em>the human task of serving one\u2019s neighbor. In Luther\u2019s memorable words: \u201cA Christian is a perfectly free Lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all\u201d (Freedom of a Christian 1520).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

via LIBERATE \u00bb Luther on the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

HT:\u00a0 Daniel Siedell<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As promised yesterday, here is Jono Linebaugh discussing the role of the Law in the life of someone who has faith in the Gospel of Christ.\u00a0 I know the Third Use of the Law is a big controversy in Lutheranism.\u00a0 Paul McCain, for example, has been warning Lutherans\u2013including some theologians\u00a0 in the ELCA\u2013of forgetting that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10,47],"tags":[1263,1350,1855,2203],"class_list":["post-11920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-christ","category-theology","tag-law-gospel","tag-lutheranism","tag-reformed","tag-third-use-of-the-law"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Law in the life of Christians<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As promised yesterday, here is Jono Linebaugh discussing the role of the Law in the life of 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