The present use of the law.

Stephen H. Tyng on how the law drives us to Jesus’s feet.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

One of the prevailing miscalculations within the broader evangelical sphere is the impression that Christianity is a religion built on the law. The preponderance of law-centered language, especially in the Old Testament, often conveys the colloquial understanding that those who belong to Jesus are nothing but a bunch of rule-followers who are bent on inculcating more adherents to their system of regulatory spirituality. This, however, misses the mark on many fronts, not the least of which is the fact that in the midst of this rhetoric, the law’s purpose is lost. In short, God’s law cannot offer salvation to anyone, it can only expose one’s desperation and need for a Savior. The dramatic scene in Chapter 6 of Isaiah’s prophecy gives us a glimpse of God’s holy law at work. When confronted with a vision of the staggering holiness of Jehovah, Isaiah despairingly declares, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips” (Isa. 6:5). This is the primary function of the law — namely, showing sinners the depths of their sin in the blinding light of God’s righteousness.

Consequently, the misguided accent on law-driven Christianity stems from a failure to properly distinguish between God’s law and God’s gospel as revealed in Scripture. To assume that the precepts of the law were given as a means by which God’s people could save themselves ignores why the law was given in the first place. Its purpose was to prepare the way for a Savior by dispensing a ministry of condemnation. In his Lectures on the Law and the Gospel, nineteenth-century Episcopal minister Stephen H. Tyng, who pastored St. George’s Episcopal Church in Lower Manhattan for over three decades, offers a bevy of insights into the law-gospel paradigm. The law, properly understood, he writes, “prepares the way for the promised seed, and makes an entrance to the heart, for the grace of God, and opens the mind to hear and learn of God, as the exalter of the humble, the comforter of the afflicted, the lifter up of the despairing, and the giver of life to the dead” (65). In effect, then, the law is God’s tiller that prepares the fallow ground of mankind’s hearts to receive his gospel. Tyng continues:

As the pelting storm drives the little chickens under the sheltering wing, do the terrors of the law drive home the pardoned sinner, to realize more completely the entire protection of that righteousness which the Lord Jesus illustrates by this very image. He sees more clearly that he has nothing of his own, and can never meet from any source within himself the demands which are made upon him. He must have a righteousness which is not in himself, and cannot be found, except in the obedience of the Saviour for him. The more loudly the law threatens, the more closely and earnestly does he cling to this provision; as the more fiercely the storm rages, does the bird fold herself more closely in her nest, and the dove fly the more swiftly to her window. To break up all self-righteousness, to bind sinful man merely in his own nakedness fast to Jesus, that he may be clothed from his fulness alone, is the great purpose of the Gospel, and the great work of the Spirit, with him. (70)

Recognizing the work of the law and the relief of the gospel throughout God’s Word brings enormous clarity and certainty to the foundation on which the Christian faith is built. As the apostle Paul says in his first letter to Timothy, “We know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully” (1 Tim. 1:8). While the law ought not to be ignored, it also shouldn’t be regarded as the quintessential hope for those needing salvation. “It is Christ, and Christ alone that can save us,” Tyng attests. “As the worst of our sins are pardonable by Christ, so the best of our duties are damnable without him” (72). To return to the scene in Isaiah 6, the prophet’s despair over his unrighteousness is resolved by the divine offer of atonement (Isa. 6:6–7), which prefigures precisely what is afforded to wretched sinners in the gospel. Therefore, to propose a religion of law misses the part where sinners despair of their inability to save themselves. Accordingly, while the law cannot heal or engender hope, its primary function is to drive us to our knees, which is when Christ stoops to the ground with us to supply a word of everlasting pardon.

Grace and peace to you.

Works cited:

Stephen Tyng, Lectures on the Law and the Gospel (New York: Robert Carter & Bros., 1849).