New.Demonstration

For the law indeed says that it is God’s will and command that we walk in new life. However, it does not give the power and ability to begin or to carry out this command. Instead, the Holy Spirit, who is given and received not through the law but through the proclamation of the gospel (Gal. 3:2, 14), renews the heart.

Thereafter, the Holy Spirit uses the law to instruct the reborn and to show and demonstrate to them in the Ten Commandments what is the “acceptable will of God” (Rom. 12:2) and in which good works, “which God prepared beforehand,” they are “supposed to walk” (Eph 2:10). The Holy Spirit admonishes them to do these works, and where because of the flesh they are lazy, indolent, and recalcitrant, he reproves them through the law.

Thus, he combines both functions: he “kills and makes alive, he brings down to hell and raises up” (1 Sam. 2:6). In this he functions not only to comfort but also to punish, as it is written, “When the Holy Spirit comes, he will reprove the world (including the old creature) because of sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8).

Sin, however, is everything that opposes God’s law. a St. Paul says, “All Scripture is useful for teaching, for reproof . . .” (2 Tim. 3:16), and reproof is the proper function of the law. Therefore, as often as believers stumble, they are reproved by God’s Spirit from the law, and by the same Spirit they are restored again and comforted with the proclamation of the holy gospel.

However, in order to avoid all misunderstanding as much as possible and to teach and maintain the real difference between the works of the law and the works of the Spirit, it must be most diligently noted that, when we speak of good works that are in accord with the law of God (for otherwise they are not good works), the word “law” has one single meaning, namely, the unchanging will of God, according to which human beings are to conduct themselves in this life.

The distinction between these two kinds of works is due to the difference between two different kinds of people who make an effort to keep this law and will of God. For as long as human beings are not reborn but do act according to the law and do perform its work because they are commanded, either out of fear of punishment or desire for reward, they are still under the law.

St. Paul calls the works of such people works of the law in the strict sense (Rom. 2:15; 3:20; Gal. 2:16; 3:2, 10), for they are coerced by the law as is the case of slaves, and they are saints of the stripe of Cain.

However, when people are born again through the Spirit of God and set free from the law (that is, liberated from its driving powers and driven by the Spirit of Christ), they live according to the unchanging will of God, as comprehended in the law, and do everything, insofar as they are reborn, from a free and merry spirit.

Works of this kind are not, properly speaking, works of the law but works and fruits of the Spirit, or, as Paul calls them, “the law of the mind” and “the law of Christ.” For such people are “no longer under law but under grace,” as St. Paul says in Romans 8 (7:23; 6:14).

However, since believers in this world are not perfectly renewed—the old creature clings to them down to the grave—the battle between spirit and flesh continues in them. Therefore, they indeed desire to perform the law of God according to their inner person, but the law in their members struggles against the law of their mind (Rom 7:23). To this extent they are never without the law, and at the same time they are not under the law but in the law; they live and walk in the law of the Lord and yet do nothing because of the compulsion of the law.

As far as the old creature, which still clings to them, is concerned, it must be driven not only by the law but also by tribulations, because it does everything against its own will, under compulsion, f no less than the godless are driven by the threats of the law and are thus kept obedient (1 Cor 9:27; Rom 7:18, 19).

For this reason, too, believers require the teaching of the law: so that they do not fall back on their own holiness and piety and under the appearance of God’s Spirit establish their own service to God on the basis of their own choice, without God’s Word or command. As it is written in Deuteronomy 12:8, 28, 32], “You shall not act . . . all of us according to our own desires,” but “listen to the commands and laws which I command you,” and “you shall not add to them nor take anything from them.”

Furthermore, believers also require the teaching of the law regarding their good works, for otherwise people can easily imagine that their works and life are completely pure and perfect. However, the law of God prescribes good works for believers, so that it may at the same time show and indicate, as if in a mirror, that they are still imperfect and impure in this life. For we must say with our dear Paul, “Even if I am not aware of anything against myself, I am not thereby justified” (1 Cor 4:4).

Therefore, since Paul admonishes the reborn to do good works, he expressly holds the Ten Commandments before them in Romans 13:9, and on the basis of the law he recognizes that his good works are imperfect and impure (Rom 7:7–13). David says (Ps 119:32), “I run the way of your commandments,” “but do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you” (Ps 143:2).

However, the law does not teach how and why the good works of believers are pleasing and acceptable to God, even though in this life they are in fact imperfect and impure because of the sinfulness of the flesh. The law demands total, perfect, pure obedience if it is to please God. Instead, the gospel teaches that our “spiritual sacrifices” are pleasing to God “through faith” “because of Christ” (1 Peter 2:5; Heb 11:4; cf. 13:15).

In this respect Christians are not under the law but under grace. This is so because they are personally freed from the curse and condemnation of the law through faith in Christ and because their good works, though imperfect and impure, are pleasing to God through Christ. This is also true because they act in a God-pleasing way—not because of the coercion of the law but because of the renewal of the Holy Spirit—without coercion, from a willing heart, insofar as they are reborn in their inner person. At the same time they continually do battle against the old creature.

For the old creature, like a stubborn, recalcitrant donkey, is also still a part of them, and it needs to be forced into obedience to Christ not only through the law’s teaching, admonition, compulsion, and threat but also often with the cudgel of punishments and tribulations until the sinful flesh is completely stripped away and people are perfectly renewed in the resurrection.

Then they will need neither the proclamation of the law nor its threats and punishment, just as they will no longer need the gospel, for both belong to this imperfect life. a Instead, just as they will see God face-to-face, so they will perform the will of God by the power of the indwelling Spirit of God spontaneously, without coercion, unhindered, perfectly and completely, with sheer joy, and they will delight in his will eternally.

—Formula of Concord, The Solid Declaration: VI. The Third Use of the Law