Thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Today we have with us Joel Beeke, president of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary and pastor at the Reform Congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan. But we're gonna talk about the applicability of the law of God. How do you apply God's laws? That's what we're gonna talk about.

Hope you enjoy the discussion. ["The Law of God"] David said, Oh, how I love your law. It's my meditation all the day. That's what we really hope people will think after we finish this podcast. Yeah, that's true.

But the view is spreading that the law no longer applies to the Christian, doesn't have value for the Christian. We want to counteract that and say nothing can be further from the truth. Right, Joel, your thoughts. Absolutely, well, it depends what you mean by the law, of course, but if you're talking about the Ten Commandments, the moral law of God, it's got very, very much to do with how you live the Christian life. And of course, we would all immediately say no one can be justified by the keeping of the law.

That's so clear. And, you know, in the confession that we subscribe to, you know, the Westminster Confession, the Baptist Confession of 1689, he just makes it very, very clear that God gave man a law that must be perfectly obeyed, and yet it really has only been perfectly obeyed by the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our righteousness. So I think we don't want to imply in any way that the law of God, keeping the law of God can save anyone or increase their favor necessarily toward God in terms of salvation. But that's usually not the problem in our culture. We live in what's called an antinomian culture.

Let's talk about that. What is an antinomian culture and what does it look like? Jill, what are your thoughts about that? Well, anti means against and nomas is the Latin word for law, so against the law, you have two kinds of an antinomians. You have the doctrinal antinomians who say, we're saved by grace and so we don't need to fulfill the law anymore.

Some of those say, well, the law just demands love, so that's all we gotta do is just love God above all other neighbors, that's it. We don't need the specifics of the moral law. And then there's the practical antinomance, which is even worse, And they just abandon the law principally in the Christian life. If they sin, they say, oh well, we're saved by grace, no worries, just go to God and forgive me. And so Paul, of course, both in the Galatians and the Romans, really condemns these people and says, what?

Shall we sin that grace, the more that grace will abound? Well, yes, grace does abound when a true believer confesses his sin, but this is not an attitude of a Christian. A Christian wants to obey the law. You know, Luther got it so well, so right, even though he didn't get the emphasis quite right, and I'd love to talk about that with you a minute, But Luther said this, the law is like a stick. Speaking of the moral law, God first uses it to beat us to Christ.

And once we're in Christ, He then sends us back to the law to use that stick as a cane to help us navigate and walk the path of life to the celestial city. So the view that all three of us espouse is a confessional view, the 1689 Baptist confession of faith is chapter 19. And to me, this is one of the most practical and one of most helpful because it's really clear on the law. And one of the things, Joel, you just said is based on what the Confession is teaching, which is there's a three-fold division of the law, the moral law of God, which is just the Ten Commandments and the other laws that really just flesh out and explain the Ten Commandments, and then the ceremonial law, which existed to point forward to Jesus Christ, who he is and the work that he would do. And then the judicial laws, which is Israel was a nation, and it had national laws, often based on the moral.

And that really what is in effect today is the moral law of God. So the Ten Commandments still delineate what is sinful and not sinful and is a reflection of the character of God. So we actually learn who God is by the law because it reflects perfect righteousness, which is God. So we definitely want to be very careful in taking a position against the law because the law is a reflection of who this God is. Yes, well, you know, Romans 7, Paul makes it plain, you know, as the law then void, but by no means, you know, and Jesus said himself, I came to establish the law.

So what you find not only in the 1689 Confession, Jason, as you well know, but in the Westminster standards, in the three forms of unity, from the continental tradition, there was really no disagreement among our forefathers about the use of the law. And so they divided it in three categories, the civil use, as you said, to restrain sin, to have order in society, and that's also through the judicial court system. So the law has a forensic aspect to it, societally. And because of that, you know, we're living in a day today where people can do that, which is right in their own eyes, like the book of Judges, and there's an impugning of the civil law of God and that brings chaos in society. That's what we see going on actually this very day in front of our eyes in all kinds of ways.

And then there's a second use of the law, which the old divines and the confessions call the evangelical use that convicts me of sin and drives me to the Lord Jesus Christ, who's the end of the law. And then there is what John Calvin called the third use of the law, which is didactic, that is, teaching use as a rule of life. And I think what we need to focus on there, and the articles of the 1689 will flesh that out for us in a moment, I'm sure, but generically and globally what we need to focus on there is that each commandment covers an entire range of our lives, a certain chunk of our lives, and that commandment, therefore, has an implied flip side. So say this commandment is the commandment for marriage. Thou shalt not commit adultery, so thou shalt not be unfaithful to thy wife.

But the flip side is, thou shalt love thy wife and be a one woman man and be totally dedicated to her and love her as Christ loves the church. And so the beautiful thing is if you flesh out each one of the 10 commandments and all of its implications both in prohibitions and in positive imperatives, you have really a map for how to live the entire Christian life. So the law, we live the law now not to merit anything, but we live out the law in our Christian lives just out of sheer gratitude to God because we want to please him and we want to do his will. And his law is a reflection of his own holiness. And so we want to be holy as he is holy.

You know, I was preaching through Deuteronomy a few years ago, and it was remarkable to notice. You have the Ten Commandments given, and then you have various case laws. The case laws just explain this range of application of the law. And I think you can make an argument that Moses moves, it seems like he almost moves systematically from one law to another and gives various case laws, you know, underneath the, the, the, one of the commandments. And in other words, the law, you know, a law of God, thou shalt not commit adultery, as you mentioned, actually applies across a range of things.

And of course, the catechisms pick this up, you know, what are the violations of the seventh commandment? And there's a long list. And, you know, so what God has done in the law of God is to give us various case law examples. And the question always is, how do you apply those? They were given to Israel and integrated in society.

You know, how do we make sense of those laws? And that's where I, you know, I think that the confessions are so helpful because they speak of the applicability of the law. We discern the general equity of that law. The law is spiritual, it's not wooden. It's not just don't sleep with somebody else.

It actually applies to a whole range of emotions and activities and things like that. So I want to pick up on a phrase you just used, general equity, and I want to take us to one really valuable place I think that the Apostle Paul uses the law. It's 1 Corinthians 9, 9 and 10. I'll just read it. Paul writes, For it is written in the law of Moses, You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.

Is it oxing God is concerned about, or does he say it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written that he who plows should plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope should be partaker of his hope. So this is an example of general equity, which just means that the civil laws, Paul quotes it here, you shouldn't muzzle the ox while it treads out the grain, that is a national law of Israel. We don't live in Israel, so we wouldn't be subject to that law, but it has a general equity, meaning it has a timeless underlying truth that is true in every generation, and it actually speaks to things and governs things like, should you pay your pastor for his labor? Yeah, that's a good point, Jason.

And there's all kinds of applications you can make this way. And theologically, what the confessions are saying is Because God gave all these civil laws to Israel as a theocratic nation, it's a theocracy. It doesn't mean that in our day and age there's a one-to-one correlation. For example, you don't, no one that I know of puts a fence around the roof of their home. But we're told in the Old Testament, you're to do that.

Why are you to do that? This is the general equity principle to keep your neighbors safe because they used to gather, not on the front porch, but they gathered on their roof and keep kids from falling off. They put a fence around it, right? So what's the principle today? Well, if I've got a backyard swimming pool that's dangerous for kids to come in and fall into, I better put a fence around that because I want safety.

I just came from home and met and go just playing with four of our grandchildren. One of the last things my wife said, make sure the door is closed to the basement because that, you know, Sophia might, she doesn't know how to handle it yet, she might fall down. So this is just the principle that you apply to every day of life. We're responsible to protect people from great danger, from falling, that type of thing. So you gather principles from the civil law, but it's no longer law by law to be enforced Exactly because we're no longer a theocracy and we live in a different time and age but as Scott just said all of those laws are indicative of Bigger principles that are embedded in in the moral law, right?

And I you know when I was preaching through Deuteronomy, I would continue to repeat particular questions to help our congregation understand how to apply the law of God. I'm going to give you some of them now. What does this law reveal about the heart and the character and the nature of God? Because every law is a manifestation of its character. All of the laws were good.

So what good does it reveal? The second question is, we already mentioned this, is it moral law, is it ceremonial law, Or is it civil law? You have to ask yourself, what kind of law is it? And then you should ask who's given responsibility to carry it out? Is it given to the individual?

Is it given to the family? Or is it given to the state? Because you need to understand who has authority and also what are the remedies? Are there punishments? Some of the laws have punishments and some of them don't.

How is it fulfilled in Christ? That's another question that you should ask. How does it explain love? Because every law of God is a law of love. The New Testament makes that very, very plain.

You know, How does it reveal sin in mankind? What happens if it's ignored in the family, in the church, or in the state? How does the general equity of this law transform my life to be like Christ? Those are questions that I think we should ask whenever we encounter a law of God. That's a great series of questions, Scott.

You ought to put that in an article and publish it. Okay, I'll do it. That's good. No, that's really good. Yeah.

Now, Joel, you mentioned that the applicability of the law was universally accepted a couple of hundred years ago, and it's reflected in the confessions and the catechisms. What happened? What happened? How did we get, what forces, what maybe perhaps personalities that brought us to this, what we'll just call an antinomian age. Well, you know, people often ask the question, you know, why did Puritanism come to an end?

Puritans, of course, were a movement from the back half of the 16th century all the way through the 17th century and spill over a bit into the 18th century, and they were very zealous to apply the law in all areas of life, not legalistically, but gratuitously, so they could live most for the glory of God. The real question is, how in the world did they maintain a religion for 150 years of such zeal and such love for the law of God, rather than how did it come to an end, because no other movement in church history lasted so long that was so full of zeal and passion for God. But to answer your question directly, the winds of the Enlightenment that managed the measure of all things began to blow in Europe and then came over to New England and to America and did a lot of damage. Unitarianism was part of that wave and that result. If you don't believe in Christ as being a God man, savior, everything else is going to go to and and and thirdly, when man becomes a measure of all things, ultimately what you're going to have is one government versus another government making laws, or worse, one family making laws vis-a-vis another family.

And then, After a while, a man does that which is right in his own eyes, all the laws go out the window altogether and you just do what you feel like doing and you become a god to yourself. So it gets reduced from government to family and then to the individual and the individual becomes the be-all. And that's the ultimate result of the Enlightenment. So here's a really fascinating story I want to tell really quickly. At Harvard in the 1700s, when Enlightenment had just come over, the president of Harvard had entirely switched over from John Harvard's idea that the bottom of the gospel and the law was Jesus Christ, and all things were to be done to him, of him, for him, through him, in him, unto him.

And the president said to a Mason that was on campus when he left for the summer break, I want you on the side of this brand new building, which by the way is still standing there, I want you to carve into the wall of this building in big capital letters, man the measure of all things." And when he came back in September to see what the Mason had done, in the wall was carved these words because the Mason was a Christian and as he started the first letter he just couldn't go on with his conscience so he thought he'd do something similar so he carved this, Lord what is man that thou art mindful of him." Needless to say, he got fired. But the point is, you see, there's two different world philosophies right there. Man the measure of all things, then you throw out the law of God. And Lord, what is man that thou art mindful of him?" You know, we need God to be mindful of us and to be mindful of him in return. We need his law.

We need to know how to live. So being against law is perfectly consistent with human nature. So being against law will always have momentum and always have a following. It doesn't begin in modern times at all. It begins in the garden with the serpent saying, did God really say this?

You will not surely die. Yeah, you know, and I guess that is the drift of the Enlightenment. Interesting story, you know, Cotton and Increase Mather began to see the slide in the younger generation and They brought families together to preach to the younger generation and Increase and Cotton put it into a book called Early Piety. But they were sermons to the younger generation to really help them understand Assurance of Salvation and things like that. But they saw the drift there in New England even that early.

Increase Mather is like 85 years old, something like that. And of course, Cotton is probably in his 50s or something like that. And they saw the drift. We republished that book under the title, Early Piety, but it's a thrilling book because you really, you have these men who are really appealing for conversion, which is the heart of the matter. When a person's heart is converted, they begin to love the law of God.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, and that's another reason why it kind of died out and into known as some came in his place or just abandonment of the law together was because in 1662, the 2000 of the leading Puritan ministers were silenced by the infamous Act of Bartholomew. The end result was that the leadership of the Puritan movement never really gained much more traction after that. And Increase Mather and Cotton Mather and those guys, they were on the far end of Puritanism.

So they saw a few faithful ministers that were really preaching how to live the Christian life. And that just made it easier for Enlightenment principles to make their way into the churches. So Chapter 19 of the 1689 Confession on the Law has seven paragraphs or seven articles. Let me read the seventh article. This is the closing article of the chapter.

Neither are the four mentioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of the gospel, but do sweetly comply with it, the Spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that freely and cheerfully which the will of God revealed in the law requires to be done." So what this article is saying is we should never pit law against gospel. They're actually not enemies. One sweetly complies with the other, and the gospel actually puts us in a position where we can obey the law at least sometimes in ways that we never could before regeneration. So the law has, yeah, the law has nothing to do with are we righteous or not righteous. Jesus's keeping of the law actually settles that matter, but the gospel actually puts us in a position where we have a new heart and a new disposition to the law and a new ability to keep it.

You know, Joel is probably, Joel is probably hoping that I will remind everyone that paragraph seven in the Baptist confession was copied from the Westminster. Completely. Happily. Happily. I thought that, but I wasn't.

But the point here is just from seven alone, you know that this is actually a Calvinist document, not a Lutheran one. Because Luther tended to do just what you said, Jason, tend to put the law over against the gospel because for Luther, that second use of the law, that convicting evangelical use to drive me to Christ because of his own angst in trying to find a way to be righteous in God's sight, he always said that needs to be the primary use of the law. It's not that he rejected the law as a rule of life completely, I used the example of a stick already, but he was so afraid that if Christians stressed living by the law as a rule of life, that they would end up in some kind of legalism. Calvin came along and said, yes, the evangelical use of the law is very important that God drives us to Christ. That's only the very, very beginning of the Christian life.

And of course, again and again, we'll get convicted of saying it drives us to Christ in the way of sanctification. But the main use of the law is to teach us to walk the Christian life in every area of life throughout our entire Christian lives from the moment we're born again. And that's what this is saying, you see, God subdues and enables the will of man to do this freely and cheerfully. What requires to be done, God's will requires to be done in the law. So that's why Luther's question was just, how can a man be just with God?

And once you're just with God, he didn't emphasize quite so much sanctification. He had some emphasis on it. But Calvin was much more concerned, how can I live my entire life, every area of my life, my leisure time, my friendships, my Sabbath keeping, my daily work, how can I do it all to the glory of God? How can I do it all consistent with God, God's will? And he says the only way you can do that is if you love God's law and you want to obey him in every area of your life, then you want to walk in his precepts and fear him.

And so this is where the law comes in. Every day I must say to myself, like Paul said in Romans 6-11, I'm dead to sin that I might live into God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, doesn't mean we don't sin still, but to say to myself, I've got no business sinning, I'm a Christian, and God has given me this blueprint of the law to teach me how to walk out of gospel liberty, to be sure. But what direction should I go in? How should I treat my wife?

How should I treat property? Thou shalt not steal. How should I teach, treat truth? Thou shalt not bear false witness. How should I treat possessions?

Thou shalt not covet. So the law guides me in every area of life, And for that we thank God, and that makes us say with David, oh, how love I thy law. I've got a blueprint for how to live out of the gospel, by the law. Joel, you'll love this quote from Thomas Watson. So the Church of Fame and Life copy of the 1689 Confession has this Thomas Watson quote, just at the heading of chapter 19.

Thomas Watson says this, A Christian takes a sweet complacent delight in the law. I delight in the law of God after the inward man. Romans 7 22. Oh, how I love thy law. Psalm 1, 1997.

Though a Christian cannot keep God's law, yet he loves his law. Though he cannot serve God perfectly, yet he serves him willingly. It is his cordial desire to walk in all God's commands. Oh, that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes." Psalm 119.5. Though his strength fails, yet his pulse beats.

He really endeavors to obey God's law perfectly, and wherein he comes short, he runs to Christ's blood to supply his defects. Amen. Perfect. Amen. There you go.

That's all we need to say. We got a podcast, man. That's it. Joe, thank you for joining us. Thrilling conversation, we really, really appreciate it.

And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. I hope you can join us next time. Church and Family Life is proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture by helping build strong families and strong churches. If you found this resource helpful, we encourage you to check out ChurchandFamilyLife.com.