Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.—Romans 7:12

Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.—Romans 7:7

The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.—1 Corinthians 15:56

Whence knowest thou thy misery? Out of the law of God.—Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 2

In the same light are we to consider the law of the decalogue, delivered by God to His peculiar people, the Jews, by the hand of Moses. For though it discovers the greatness of sin, and more and more convinces man thereof, yet as it neither points out a remedy nor imparts strength to extricate him from misery, and thus, being weak through the flesh, leaves the transgressor under the curse, man cannot by this law obtain saving grace.—Canons of Dordt 3.4–5

Introduction

As seen in previous articles, the necessity of faith and repentance is the necessity of the grace of God.¹ That necessity is rooted in the counsel of God. From eternity God determined both the end of his elect people in the eternal life of heaven and all their way to that end. According to that way determined in his counsel, God determined his gifts to his people, including faith and repentance, worked by his sovereign grace in them. That necessity is also the necessity of the death of Christ, their mediator and head, on the cross. His blood was the price of their redemption from the dominion of sin. His blood purchased the breaking of the power of sin; their repentance; and the gift of faith to redeem them from their unbelief, in which they were conceived and born. The necessity of faith and repentance is also the necessity of the operation of the Holy Spirit. Working according to the will of God and according to the redemption that belongs to his people in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit works all things in all, including repentance and faith, both as the will and the acts of repenting and believing.

This necessity extends fully to the believer’s entire life of repentance and faith. This necessity extends also to all the believer’s fruits of his repentance and his faith. The believer’s entire salvation—both his justification and sanctification; his regeneration and conversion; his beginning, his way, and his end—is entirely of God’s grace alone. Salvation is entirely without works and entirely without merit. All grace is sovereign, particular, unconditional, and irresistible. The working of God’s grace is never subject to the will of man.

This sovereign, irresistible, particular, and unconditional grace must be seen as one unbroken stream that runs through the regenerated child of God. This stream runs from the throne of God through the mercies of Christ and is applied by the Holy Spirit to the whole nature of the child of God. This stream runs through his whole nature into his whole life as a child of God. The stream of grace controls him in his worship of God and his whole life of gratitude to God. Grace governs him in his whole pilgrim’s way and leads him all the way into the eternal glory appointed to him from the foundation of the world. That stream may not be broken or divided.

Grace by Man’s Will

There are two ways in which this stream of grace is being broken and divided.

The first way is obvious. That way is dividing grace according to its fruits and effects. There are some fruits and effects of grace that are made to be contingent upon what man does. The grace of forgiveness is made contingent upon repentance or upon repentance and faith. Continued forgiveness is made contingent upon the willingness of the forgiven sinner to forgive others. Blessings of communion and fellowship with God are made contingent upon acts of worship and devotion, such as prayer, reading of scripture, and attendance upon the means of grace.

Although this first way is ground well-trodden in the recent controversy, it is worth noting some reasons for this division. The first is the alleged biblical ground for such a division, namely the promises of God in their grammatical form, which is often conditional. Put generally, if God’s people seek him, they shall find him. The argument follows: since this promise of God must be true, then finding God is contingent or dependent on his people’s activity of seeking him. Whether the relationship is expressed by time before and time after or cause and effect or merit and reward, God’s grace is brought under man’s control. A second reason for this division is to make room for man as a creature and for man as having significance and importance as a creature. Because man is important as a creature, his will and behavior are important. God’s grace recognizes the importance of man’s will and behavior. To ensure the integrity of man’s will and behavior, that is, his creatureliness from God, grace must take into consideration who and what man is. If grace does not properly recognize man’s importance as a creature, then man is said to become a stock and a block or a wooden puppet controlled by strings.

The second way of breaking the stream of grace is less obvious but is just as detrimental to the truth of God’s abounding grace. This way is to distinguish between salvation and assurance of salvation or between justification and assurance of justification. To be more specific, the division is between salvation as objective and salvation as subjective.

The second way breaks the stream of God’s grace in Christ into two streams: an objective stream and a subjective stream. The objective stream is God’s grace for man’s salvation apart from all his conscious experience of salvation. This stream includes the grace of election. As election is eternal and unconditional, set in God’s counsel from before the foundation of the world, election is above time and history. In that election, or predestination, man is appointed to salvation and the way of salvation. In this objective stream is also the death of Christ according to God’s sovereign and particular decree. At the cross the elect were made acceptable by Christ’s atonement. The death of the Son of God was the payment for all their sins. Their guilt was removed. Their standing before God as acceptable was fully accomplished in Christ. Both election and the death of Christ on the cross were accomplished away from and apart from the involvement of the elect. The elect were not personally present in eternity or at the cross. They were not conscious of those acts of God and of the Son of God incarnate.

Because the elect were not present and personally conscious of their election and the death of Christ on the cross, those acts are said to be objective. In them salvation is certain. It is guaranteed and sealed. This salvation needs only to be applied to the elect.

The application of salvation to the elect in time, when they are personally present to receive this salvation, is declared to be an entirely different matter. This application is still gracious. It still entirely depends on the grace of election and the grace of the cross of Christ. But this grace flows in a separate stream. While the objective stream of grace flows around, over, and under the elect, the subjective stream of grace flows into the elect. As it flows into the elect, this stream reveals a different character. It might flow much or little. It might flow not at all into some areas. It has limitations.

What are these limitations? What are the controlling factors that are present? Why is the first, objective stream of grace so full and free but the second, subjective stream is so narrow and controlled?

Because this second stream of grace is said to be adapted to man as a creature. This is grace that must be able to fit into him as a creature who has a limited mind and will. Because he can think and will in a certain direction or pathway that he determines, grace must be adapted to the operation of his mind and will. He can only receive as much grace as he himself determines. What about his assurance of justification? It depends on whether and how much he forgives one who has sinned against him. What about his communion and fellowship with God? If man consecrates himself much, he will have much communion and fellowship. If he consecrates himself little, he will have little communion and fellowship.

The amount of grace, little or much, that flows into the heart and soul of a man and gives to him the consciousness of his salvation and fellowship with God depends on how the man conducts himself. The stream of grace may flow widely and abundantly into his soul, if he thinks and lives according to the will of God in all good works. But if that man is spiritually lazy and works not at all in the things of God’s word or kingdom, then grace will only trickle into him. His conscious experience of assurance may be very little or not present at all.

It is here that grace becomes subject to the will of man. How much grace will he receive? It depends on what he does. Where is the grace for that man to do more than he has been doing? He is sent back to himself. Do more. Believe more. Think more. Read more. Pray more. Study more.

Two great difficulties manifest themselves with this approach.

The first great difficulty is that this approach must always work backward to destroy the truth about grace. It is truly impossible to draw limits to the subjective stream of grace that are under the control of the elect and not have those limits apply to the objective stream of grace. The apprehension of grace in one stream must and will effect the apprehension of grace in the other stream. For grace is ultimately one. Its unity is in its head, Jesus Christ.

The second great difficulty with the notion of two streams of grace is that it does not hold for all Christians. On one side are elect who do not struggle with respect to their assurance of salvation. From observing them outwardly, one might conclude that they ought to struggle. They appear to be weak, yet they seem to have no struggle with assurance. On the other side are elect who are diligent in their use of the means of grace. They know and love the word of God. Their prayers reflect both a sense of God’s majesty and glory and childlike devotion and rest in him. Their speech reflects a deep spirituality. They demonstrate a devotion to God that endures in spite of hardship. But they do not convey a deep sense of assurance. They can speak of deep doubts and fears, deep struggles of faith.

Scripture also addresses these differences. Hannah, the mother of Samuel, is identified in holy scripture as a woman who feared the Lord. Scripture places her in stark contrast to her adversary, Elkanah’s other wife, Peninnah. Yet Hannah was greatly distressed by the opposition of her adversary, leading Hannah to pour out her soul before the Lord in his temple. On the other side of the spectrum was Samson, who was often led alternatively by his lusts and by his personal seeking of revenge against his enemies. Nevertheless, he is listed in Hebrews 11 as a hero of faith.

How must these differences be appreciated? What do they truly signify? What is the difference between Hannah and Samson? What is the difference between the deeply religious and the superficial and shallow? What is the difference between those who possess deep, unbroken assurance and those who struggle to have any assurance at all?

Comparing persons to persons must end in complete confusion and the heresy of merit. In that confusion man will seek what is pleasing to his flesh. He will devise his own way. He will make the objective into the subjective to gain power. He will labor to put grace under his control. He will indeed pay homage to free grace, as required by scripture and the Reformed creeds. But he will split off another stream of grace in order to have it under his control. Scripture becomes a collection of examples. Be like these. Do not be like those others. Be like these by having a strong faith. Be like these who show great holiness. Follow the plan because the results must certainly follow. Such an approach must yield a system of merit and deny grace as grace.

God’s Word the Only Standard

Only one comparison is proper: the comparison of God’s word between law and gospel. The authoritative standard before man is the word of God. It is that perfection of the word of God that is represented by the law on the one side and the gospel on the other side. Who was Hannah before the law? Who was she before the gospel? Who was Samson before the law? Who was he before the gospel? Who is the child of God before the law? Who is he before the gospel?

What a difference this only correct comparison makes!

Whence knowest thou thy misery?

Out of the law of God.

The law must reduce everyone to the same level. The law must reduce the strongest and the weakest children of God to nothing but miserable sinners, lost in sin and under the wrath and curse of God. The law must make clear that the need of grace is total. It must also make clear that grace simply cannot at all be under the control of the miserable sinner. By all that he is and all that he does, he constantly makes himself unworthy of any blessing or benefit of God. He deserves only God’s wrath. Grace must truly be gracious through and through.

This reduction of man by the law constantly applies to the child of God throughout his entire life in this world. The doctrine of the law, God’s perfect word, is always applying its force to man, always showing him his true misery apart from Christ. The law of God, explained and applied according to scripture in Lord’s Days 2–4 of the Heidelberg Catechism, does not last only until salvation by faith in Christ as explained in Lord’s Day 7. The law of God does not only come to the believer in Lord’s Days 34–44 as the knowledge of how he is to show his gratitude for his salvation.

Throughout the entire life of the child of God, the law applies its force. Such is the teaching of the Heidelberg Catechism in Lord’s Day 33. In teaching the doctrine of the mortification of the old man, the application of the law to the believer’s heartfelt sorrow over his sin is his during his whole life. Repentance must be the character of the life of the Christian. Such is also the teaching of Lord’s Day 44. One of the reasons for the strict preaching of the law of God is the knowledge of how far short the people of God fall, to make them all the more earnest in seeking the remission of their sins in the blood of Christ. Another reason is that they must learn to know more and more the depths of their depravity.

The power of the law is to show the power of sin. The strength of sin is the law. The law gives the knowledge of sin: “I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet” (Rom. 7:7).

For the sake of true repentance, the mortification of the old man, the law of God’s word must be the law that is certainly and truly applied to the child of God throughout his whole life. The law must be taken up in its normative force. It must be applied as the law, that is, as that which requires and demands, which threatens and judges as guilty and unworthy of God’s fellowship. The law must be so applied that the elect child of God brings before God the confession of his sins in deep humility of heart. His confession must be out of the depths of his heart: God be merciful to me, a sinner.

The law cannot be a mere abstraction. It cannot be observed merely from a safe distance. The law cannot be just an idea that contributes to another idea, that one is a sinner, who has the following idea that he somehow, some way needs the savior, Jesus Christ, to save him from an abstract condition or distant idea.

Scripture demonstrates that the law has a powerful effect when it is applied by itself alone. It stimulates sin. Although the law in itself is righteous and good, when it comes to the sinner who is dead in his trespasses and sins, it rouses and stimulates sin. The entire history of the nation of Israel can be summarized as both the Israelites’ failure to obey God’s law and their perversion of that law in order to provoke God to anger, which anger brought about their judgment.

Another, similar effect of applying the law without Christ and the gospel is that the law of God is abused in order to establish self-righteousness. Scripture shows this most clearly in the sect of the Pharisees. Scripture also shows that self-righteousness in the outward observances of the law, which were condemned by the prophets as abominable in the sight of God, incurred his wrath. Malachi 2:2 is but one example.

If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the Lord of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.

The reason that the effect of self-righteousness is similar to the arousal of sin is that both are sinful rebellion against God’s law. The most powerful demonstration of this is hatred of Christ, the true fulfillment of the law of God, which hatred followed through to the crucifixion of the righteous Son of God on the cross.

But the most important effect of the law of God is that which is categorically denied by the Canons of Dordt in the third and fourth heads of doctrine. In speaking of the law of God, given by Moses in the form of the ten commandments, Canons 3–4.5 proceeds with a contrast. These effects of the law are identified: “It discovers the greatness of sin, and more and more convinces man thereof.” Immediately after that, the article denies any power with respect to grace. “Man cannot by this law obtain saving grace” (Confessions and Church Order, 167). No grace is obtained. No kind of grace. No aspect of grace. No form of grace.

The same article of the Canons explains why saving grace cannot be obtained by this law: “Yet as it neither points out a remedy nor imparts strength to extricate him from misery, and thus, being weak through the flesh, leaves the sinner under the curse…” There is no remedy pointed out by the law. It only grips with its demands, holding its hearers accountable. The law imparts no strength. Contrary to Pelagius, the law never says, “You can do it.” As vast and weighty as the law’s threatenings and judgments are, shown also in their execution (for example, Sodom and Gomorrah), there is no strength in the law to obey the law, no matter how strong the deterrents are spoken or shown. The sinner is simply left under the curse.

The weakness of this law means that the law itself cannot work the grace of repentance. According to the depravity of man, the law will work rebellion. It will work self-righteousness. It will even work self-despondency. But it cannot work true repentance. It will not work a sorrow that is holy and Godward.

True repentance can only be worked through the holy gospel, the gospel that shows the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. True repentance is worked only by the grace of God in Christ accompanying that gospel. Only the gospel proclaims the true repentance that truly abhors sin and self as sinful for the sake of God’s mercy. Only by the gospel is true turning from sin for the sake of turning to God to seek his mercy in the forgiveness of sins.