Q39. What is the duty which God requireth of man?

A. The duty which God requireth of man, is obedience to his revealed will.

It is fair to say that Evangelicalism today is both doctrinally and functionally antinomian. Not only are Paul’s words in Romans 6:14 taken out of context, that “We are not under the law, but under grace,” but it is also very often alleged that the very form of the Sermon on the Mount makes plain the annulment of the old law. To this the reply of Turretin is sufficient,

“It is one thing to correct the law itself; another to clear it of the false interpretation of the scribes and Pharisees. One thing to introduce an entirely new sense into the law; another to introduce only a new light by unfolding what lay concealed in the law and was not attended to by teachers (and so by explaining, to declare; and by vindicating, to restore). Christ did the latter, not the former.”1

The honest reader of that greatest sermon will find the assessment of Turretin to be accurate, especially in the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:17, ““Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

And other times the confusion will be based on a wrong view of how salvation being “by faith” and “not works” factors in. We will recall from Question 33: 

“Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.”

However, we must note that this contrast between “works of the law” and “faith alone” as to the methods of justification does not make the law irrelevant to everything else. But we have some real “ABCs” of law to set down before we can see some of these finer distinctions.

The Nature of God’s Requirement

This answer uses the language of DUTY or REQUIREMENT. But what is that? In the first place, moral duty or requirement  or obligation is a rational thing. If we say it is a moral thing, then we had better mean something above how other creatures, like animals or plants, are said to “obey certain laws.” Those would be “laws of nature” in a very different sense: some principle that moves them—but not by reason in them. This may seem pedantic, but bear with me. In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas wrote that, 

“law is a rule and measure of acts, according to which someone is led to act or to refrain from acting: law [lex] comes from ‘binding’ [ligando], because it obligates to act.”2

Rational creatures are moral creatures just insofar as they see the reason why they ought to be or to do some thing. This was not exactly a revolutionary idea. It was consistent with the early church fathers and, we will argue, with Scripture itself. All it means is that law has a rational cause, a rational end, and therefore a rational character through and through. Many examples could be given, but let me offer just one that has the exodus from Egypt as their backdrop.

“You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God” (Lev. 19:34; cf. Ex. 22:21).

The same rationale is given about a Hebrew that falls into slavery: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today” (Deut. 15:15).

Notice the connective words FOR and THEREFORE. God is telling His people that there is a reason for the command. He does not always do so. In fact, in most cases, you have to search the Scriptures and do some systematic theology to discern the rationale. But there always is reason in law. So if we want to define LAW as that which commands what we ought and forbids its opposite, that is all very well. But these words — “command” and “forbid” — are not simply blind forces of material nature acting upon animals. They are not just stimuli that cause fear or occasionally an impulse to reward. Law and the duty it creates is rational.

But secondly, when we’re talking about God’s law, we are talking about something clear. If there is a clarity of Scripture, then there is a clarity of law.

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”(Mic. 6:8) 

Just as biblical clarity does not imply that all parts of Scripture are equally clear (WCF, I.), so the clarity of God’s law does not imply that all parts of the law are equally clear or equally attainable. However, if we flip that same coin over, God gives us commands that are “near us.” They are suitable to the kind of beings we are. So God prioritizes simple obedience. 

“And Samuel said, ‘Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams’” (1 Sam. 15:22).

God instituted sacrifices for His own purposes; and He has priests do that and kings fight battles; but Saul thought, “Why shouldn’t I?” 

The third thing to see is that this duty or obligation is ongoing. The simple truth that God “still” requires things of man may be undermined in two basic ways. The first is the more common and we have already talked about it. That is the typical antinomianism that pits the New against the Old, grace against law, and the gospel against morality. But there is another way to go even further back to the fall and the casting of Adam and Eve out of Eden.

Some may not take the immediate road to antinomianism, but the more distant road to reject the original law God gave to Adam has no bearing on us. I call this soteriological Gnosticism, and it’s always plagued the Reformed. It isn’t a total Gnosticism. The full Gnostic says that nature is bad per se. All nature. Any nature. Anything in the world that was made is a prison compared to the immaterial which is good. Soteriological Gnosticism doesn’t go that far, but it is so fixed on the soteriological question, that it reduces every other question on this side of the fall to whether or not the thing can ascend to God. If it can’t, then it’s bad, or it fell out when Adam fell.

Since none can “do good,” in the sense of ascending to God, in the covenant of works, well then the reaons for the law given to Adam as an image of God—to fill the earth, have dominion, work the ground, and all the other things that the Ten Commandments woud eventually cofidy to Israel—that good is cast to the ground. But, as we will see, the reason for the law (the mandate to man and woman to be images of God) hasn’t changed.  

The Senses of God’s Will

As something of a review, we need to consider what is meant by the “divine will.” Not all uses are the same, and several are legitimate. Here we make a distinction between the 1. decretive will, 2. prescriptive will, and 3. permissive will of God. In the essence of God the decree is one, eternal, and immutable. All that God decrees will come to pass (Psa. 33:11, 115:3, Isa. 46:9-10, Dan. 4:35, Eph. 1:11, Rom. 11:36). So God’s decretive will is that will in God himself. Now the prescriptive (or perceptive) will of God is what we see in his commands (or precepts), or what he “prescribes” of human behavior. 

“I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart” (Ps. 40:8).

“Bless the LORD, all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will!” (Ps. 103:21)

And David was called “a man after my heart, who will do all my will’” (Acts 13:22). We call this his “will” because it is what he demands of us, and so in that sense it is what he desires of moral creatures. Finally there is God’s permissive will, so named because it encompasses all those things that violate God’s prescriptive will and yet he “permits” to go on, at least for a time. This too belongs to God’s causation. After all, who would deny that God could stop any amount of evil that he wanted to? Now there is more to the permissive will than that. For our purposes we are simply relating God’s causality to God’s commands. Both are referred to as God’s “will,” but they are obviously speaking of different things. 

Understanding this will prevent us from making a mistake that is more common than we may think. The thinking goes like this: “How can we call obedience to God’s law ‘doing His will’ since His will is going to be done in either case—whether I obey or disobey?” We can see now how this conflates the different senses of God’s will into one. 

Here the answer speaks of God’s REVEALED WILL. So we must make one more distinction. There is God’s hidden will and God’s revealed will. Now there is overlap here with what we have already covered. As the names suggest, the hidden will of God is that which God has not seen fit to tell us, and the revealed will is simply that which He has. So,

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29).

Notice the purpose clause here. It is not simply about what we can know, but what we are bound to do; and so much our vain curiosities and demands from God’s revelation are really nothing but pretensions to avoid that clear demand that flows the other way in

The Uses of God’s Law

The first use of the law is to show us our need for Christ. This is often called the evangelical use of the law because it is the “gospel driven” use. Paul said that “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:4). The word τέλος there is less like the “end” of a book and more like the bullseye of a target. Synonyms include aim, design, goal, and motive. What exactly is meant by this? Paul gives us a very clear glimpse of this use operating on his own soul.

“What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me” (Rom. 7:7-11).

Other verses in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans clearly depict this purpose of the law which is to expose our sin: Romans 3:20, 4:15, and 5:13. Now if this is true, then surely this purpose of the law was not done away with by Christ coming. For all sinners in the ages beyond the first century need to have their sin exposed in order to turn to Christ. Arguably Galatians 3:19 is doing this, but in the wide-angle lens of redemptive history. Here God was showing His chosen people the depth of their sin and so leading them to the real One to whom the promise had been made.

The second use of the law is its civil dimension. “By me kings reign, and princes decree justice” (Prov. 8:15). There are many passages that could speak to this, but one in the New Testament comes from Peter’s first epistle.

“Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God” (1 Pet. 2:13-15).

We have all heard the expression that, “You can’t legislate morality.” Of course such a statement is rather oblivious. All law is legislated morality. No law would ever be passed unless a group of people got together and decreed that a thing ought to be made a rule, and that violation of such ought to be punished. When people say such things, they are not thinking very deeply about what morality is. Now it may be that in many cases what the person means is that law cannot change the heart. And if this is what is meant, that civil legislation will not “make men moral,” well that is something I think most of us can agree upon. But this is very different from supposing that one could ever divorce the morality of a people from their civil legislation. Keep this in mind when we get to the three forms of the law—specifically how moral law relates to the civil sphere.

The third use of the law has been called its directive use, or sometimes its “normative” use. This is the law for the Christian life. In other words, as we grow in our sanctification it will be God’s word that informs how our lives are to glorify God (1 Cor. 10:31). And of course much of that word comes in the imperative form. Think for a moment of this simple fact. 

The New Testament is filled with imperatives to predominantly Christian audiences.

Just to give a few examples, Paul charges the Corinthians to financially support ministers of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:8-14; cf. Deut. 25:4; Matt. 10:10). The commandments for children to obey parents (Eph. 6:1-2) and for husbands and wives to be faithful to each other (1 Cor. 6:9-10; Heb. 13:4) are reaffirmed in the New Covenant community. Jesus repeats the entire second table to the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:18, and he does so precisely in the imperative (v. 17). The New Testament even commands our internal habits, affections and attitudes: thinking (2 Tim. 2:7), loving (Eph. 5:25; 1 Jn. 3:11), zeal (Rom. 12:11), humility (Phi. 2:5; 1 Pet. 5:6), rejoicing (Rom. 12:15; Phi. 4:4). What this law does for the already-justified-by-faith-alone Christian is to inform our pursuit of sanctification. How does a Christian man or woman conform to the image of Christ? 

As plainly as we can put it, while we are not justified by the works of the law, the graciously justified Christian is never a lawless person.

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1. Turretin, Institutes, II.11.3.9

2. Aquinas, Selected Writings (New York: Penguin, 1998), 613.