Sunday School: WCF 19.5-19.7 — The Three Uses of the Law

If believers aren’t saved by keeping the law, why does Scripture spend so much time on it, and why does the longest chapter in the Bible, Psalm 119, read like a love song to it? This week we finish Westminster Confession Chapter 19 by working through the law’s three uses.

We look at the law as a mirror, exposing sin and driving us to Christ; as a restraint, curbing wickedness both in believers and in civil society; and as a guide, the use the Reformed tradition considers principal, showing redeemed people how to live in grateful response to the Father who saved them. Along the way we compare how Lutheran and Roman Catholic traditions handle these same uses differently, and talk through why “saved unto the law” is not the same thing as “saved by the law,” and why a heart with the law written on it comes to delight in it rather than resent it.

Scripture referenced: Matthew 5:17, James 2:10, Psalm 119, Jeremiah 31:33, Ezekiel 36, Isaiah 49

Silver City Church is a confessionally Reformed congregation devoted to the gospel of grace, the authority of Scripture, and the ordinary means God uses to build His church.

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