On February 19, the Unity Dialogue met at Avent Ferry United Methodist Church in Raleigh. The Unity Dialogue is a continuing conversation of more than ten (10) years, in the North Carolina Conference, centering on the Church and homosexuality. "The Unity Dialogue aims to preserve and advance the unity of the North Carolina Conference, as we seek to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ -- even as we might disagree (and seek to clarify our disagreements) about the matters of homosexual orientation and practice." In other words, the Dialogue is a forum for speaking the truth in love to one another. The following was offered, by this pastor, as the meeting's devotional.

Last week The Reverend Dr. Leceister Longden, of Dubuque Theological Seminary, spoke with the pastors of the New Bern District and with an ecumenical audience at St. Peter's United Methodist Church in Morehead City. A long-time friend, Les stayed at the parsonage. A snow-canceled flight back to Iowa had Les stay an extra night with the Stallsworth's. That evening we watched a DVD of Dr. Carl E. Braaten's September 16, 2008 presentation entitled "Theological Issues Troubling the ELCA." In his presentation, Dr. Braaten, a Lutheran theologian, spoke about God's uses of the law. Hence, this little devotional on the three uses of the law, according to Church teaching.

In our day the word law makes many Christians uneasy. Many care for neither the sound of the word nor what the word represents. What matters to many is gospel, not law. For many, unity in the gospel is all that matters; unity in the law is not important.

However, Church teachers through the ages -- including Augustine, Luther, Wesley, and even Braaten -- have had a more positive, robust view of law in the Church's faith. According to the Church's teachers, God works through the law, for the good of humanity, in three (3) ways.

First, law has a civil or political use. God uses civil law to promote the common good of a community. Drivers, stop at red lights! Income-generating citizens, pay your taxes! "Let every person [interestingly, not just Christians!] be subject to the governing authorities," St. Paul writes in Romans 13 (RSV). You do not need to be justified by grace through faith to understand such civil laws. You do not have to be baptized to understand civil laws. You do not have to know Jesus Christ or say Yes! to the gospel to understand civil laws. (Though a law degree would not hurt...!) God uses civil law for the common good.

Second, law has an evangelical use. God uses law evangelically to point out sins, so that sinners might then turn to God's forgiveness. Law, used for evangelical purposes, includes: the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the Great Two-fold Commandment. On December 20, 1751, John Wesley wrote in a letter to a friend that "'gospel preachers'...[who preach the gospel without the law]...corrupt their hearers... They...feed them with sweetmeats till the genuine wine of the kingdom seems quite insipid to them. They give them cordial upon cordial...but meantime their appetite is destroyed, so that they can neither retain nor digest the pure milk of the Word.

"Hence it is that preachers of this kind...spread death, not life, among their hearers..."

Earlier in the same letter, Wesley wrote: "I think the right method of preaching is this. At our first beginning to preach at any place -- after a general declaration of the love of God to sinners and his willingness that they should be saved -- to preach the law in the strongest, the closest, the most searching manner possible, only intermixing the gospel here and there..." (John Wesley, edited by Albert C. Outler, pp. 236-7) This is the evangelical use of the law, according to Wesley.

God uses law for civil purposes, and God uses the law for evangelical purposes. But there is a third use of the law: sanctification. God uses law to guide and to sanctify believers in Christ.

In "The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law," John Wesley writes: "But when it [the law] has brought us to him [God] it has yet a farther office, namely, to keep us with him [God]. For it [the law] is continually exciting all believers, the more they see of its [the law's] height and depth and length and breadth, to exhort one another so much the more...

"To explain this by a single instance. The law says, 'Thou shalt not kill,' and hereby (as our Lord teaches) forbids not only outward acts but every unkind word or thought. Now the more I look into this perfect law, the more I feel how far I come short of it; and the more I feel this, the more I feel my need of his blood to atone for all my sin, and of his Spirit to purify my heart, and make me 'perfect and entire, lacking nothing.'" (The Works of John Wesley, vol. 2, edited by Albert C. Outler, pp. 16-18, emphases added) According to Wesley, God uses the law to guide and sanctify Christians.

Within the Church's faith, God has three (3) uses for the law: civil, evangelical, and sanctifying. It is our privilege to know, receive, and give thanks for God's uses of the law.

In conclusion, a word from Psalm 1: "Blessed is the man...[whose] delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night." (1:1-2, RSV) Amen.