The historic, confessional, Reformed understanding of Scripture is that it contains two kinds of words, law and gospel. The law promised eternal life to Adam on condition of perfect obedience on behalf of all humanity. Adam sinned, transgressed God’s holy law, and thus plunged himself and all humanity in him into death and condemnation. The gospel promises eternal life freely to all who believe in Jesus, the Last Adam (1 Cor 15:45; Rom 5:12–21). The moral law has three uses:

1. It teaches us the greatness of our sin and misery;
2. The second table of the moral law norms civil life;
3. It norms the Christian life.

Christians have made two great mistakes about the moral law. First, they have tried to get to heaven on the basis of their law-keeping. Paul condemns this abuse of the law: “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Rom 3:28). The second abuse is to try to make law-keeping the instrument of salvation or justification but Scripture says that justification and salvation are “through faith” (Rom 3:22) and “through grace” (Acts 15:11). The second great error regarding the law is to utterly identify it with the Mosaic covenant (the “old covenant” in 2 Cor 3:14). When Christians have so identified the law with Moses, they tend to think that, when Moses is fulfilled, the moral law goes away too. Such a misreading of redemptive history leads to antinomianism, the denial of the abiding validity of the moral law. This contradicts the clear teaching of our Lord Jesus, who proclaimed that he came not to “abolish” the moral law but to “fulfill” it (Matt 5:17). He explained the moral law in the Sermon on the Mount. The Apostle Paul applied it to the New Covenant church. They wrote and spoke this way because the moral law is grounded in the character of God and was revealed in the beginning, in the garden. Paul says that it is revealed in nature (Romans 1:18–2:15). So, the Reformed churches confess that we are not saved (justified, sanctified, or glorified) through law-keeping but we who are saved seek to keep the law out of gratitude, in union with Christ, by the grace and Christ.