The Third Use of the Moral Law
Does the moral law remain the rule of life for the regenerate?
Settled clearly
Background
Calvin in *Institutes* II.7.6-12 had taught three uses of the moral law: civil (restraining sin in society), pedagogical (driving sinners to Christ), and normative (instructing the regenerate as the rule of life). The antinomians of the 1640s — Crisp, Saltmarsh, Eaton, Dell — denied the third use: the regenerate believer is no longer 'under the law' in any normative sense, and Christ's righteousness is the believer's only standard. The pastoral consequence was a Christian life without a rule, which the Assembly's drafters saw as collapsing into license. The Reformed (Calvin, Ursinus, the Heidelberg Catechism Q. 92-115) had always taught the third use; Westminster had to restate it confessionally.
The Assembly’s handling
WCF XIX.5-6 secures the third use with great care. XIX.5 affirms that the moral law 'doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof.' XIX.6 — the chapter's longest paragraph — distinguishes the law as covenant of works (from which the believer is free) from the law as rule of life (to which the believer is bound): 'although true believers be not under the law as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified or condemned, yet is it of great use to them, as well as to others; in that, as a rule of life, informing them of the will of God and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly.' Anthony Burgess's *Vindiciae Legis* (1646) is the canonical Reformed companion treatment.
Parties
The Westminster anti-antinomian consensus
The moral law has three uses, including a third (normative) use for the regenerate. The believer is free from the law as a covenant of works but bound to the law as a rule of life.
- Anthony Burgess (d. 1664)
- George Walker (1581–1651)
- Edmund Calamy the Elder (1600–1666)
- Anthony Tuckney (1599–1670)
- Samuel Rutherford (c. 1600–1661)
- Edward Reynolds (1599–1676)
The antinomian denial (rejected)
The regenerate are not under the moral law in any sense; Christ has fulfilled the law for them, and the Christian life proceeds by indwelling Spirit rather than external rule. Crisp, Saltmarsh, Eaton.
Confessional language
WCF XIX.5: 'The moral law doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof; and that, not only in regard of the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God the Creator, who gave it. Neither doth Christ, in the gospel, any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation.' WCF XIX.6: 'Although true believers be not under the law as a covenant of works…yet is it of great use to them…as a rule of life, informing them of the will of God and their duty…'
Ontology placement
This crux bears on the following attribute of the Westminster ontology. The Westminster baseline value is marked WCF.
VI · Law & Sanctification · Uses of the Law
Legacy
The third use of the law has remained the Reformed pastoral norm. Wesley's distinction between law and gospel in 1740s evangelical preaching, the Marrow controversy's handling of the law-gospel distinction, and modern Reformed engagements with the 'sanctification debates' of the 2010s all play out on the ground WCF XIX laid down. The Lutheran 'law and gospel' tradition (the Formula of Concord Article VI) shares the third use in principle but applies it more cautiously than Westminster.