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The Law, by which we understand here the Ten Commandments, is indispensable to Reformed worship. For God’s covenant people, it constitutes the beginning and foundation of worship. We worship God because he has commanded us to worship him. The first four of the Ten Commandments contain a perfect and complete rule for all true worship of his majesty: We are to worship God alone; we are not to use images or idols in our worship. We are not to misuse his name. And we are to honor him by keeping the sabbath. These commandments comprise the first table. They are the very soul that animates the six commandments that comprise the second table: We are to honor our father and mother; we are not to murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, or covet anyone or anything that belongs to another. The two tables of the Law must be observed together and cannot be separated. For apart from the fear of God, we do not maintain justice and love among ourselves.[i] The unity of the two tables of the Law is expressed in the double love commandment proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37-39; cf. Mark 12:29–31; Luke 10:27–28).
In the Reformed tradition, however, the Ten Commandments not only serve as the foundation and rule of worship; they also supply some of its content. When we survey the classic orders of worship from the Reformation era, we see that the public recitation of the Ten Commandments played an important part in the ordinary service on the Lord’s Day. Their principled use in public worship is a distinguishing feature of Reformed liturgy, evident at its very origins in the publications of Martin Bucer (1491–1551) and John Calvin (1509-1564). But why did these Reformers and their successors see fit to include them in their orders of worship? What considerations guided them? What theo-logical rationale did they provide? And finally, if we are convinced by the choices they made, how might we creatively utilize their insights concerning their place in our own worship, if we are not including them already?
The Ten Commandments in Reformed Liturgy: Historical Antecedents
No doubt an important consideration that guided the decision of the Reformers to incorporate the Ten Commandments into their orders of worship was precedent. The public reading of the Law is attested before they began to draft their own orders of worship. It is evident first in a medieval preaching service in the vernacular called “prone” or “pronaus.” The provenance of the term remains shrouded in obscurity. It may have referred either to the screen between the choir and the nave or to the pulpit itself. Some have even speculated that it comes from the Latin word praeconium (“public address”). Whatever the case may be, preaching outside the Mass seems to have been a practice in certain regions of continental Europe on the eve of the Reformation.
How widespread the practice was cannot be determined with precision. But it most certainly enjoyed popularity in the territories of southern Germany and the Swiss states in the fifteenth century. In 1502 Johann Ulrich Surgant (1450–1503) parish priest of the Church of Saint Theodore in Basel, published a handbook for preachers which bears the title Manuale curatorum predicandi prebens modum. In this work we find a sample order of the preaching service. From the pulpit, the priest recited the Lord’s Prayer, the Ave Maria, the Apostles’ Creed and the Ten Commandments. At the time of the sermon, he offered a general confession of sins, absolution, and the intercessions. To the last of these, he added announcements pertinent to the life of the parish, including notices about feast and fast days, marriage banns and deaths.[ii]
These elements in the prone were not fixed; the priest was free to use them at his own discretion. Ideally, he would have been guided in their use by the needs of his people for instruction in the faith. Surgant informs his readers of an ecclesial mandate according to which priests in all parishes of the dioceses must preach sermons that explain the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments.[iii] Thus the service was didactic in intent, serving as a vehicle for teaching the people the sum of Christian truth, about which they could hardly learn anything through an official Mass said in a language largely unintelligible to them.
Liturgical historians have shown the dependence of several of the early Reformed orders of worship on the preaching service as we have outlined it here.[iv] It is apparent, then, that in this regard the Reformers were no liturgical innovators. Rather, they arranged (and rearranged) the elements they found in existing rites to express their understanding of how God’s boundless grace in Christ is communicated and received in worship. For they appreciated the formative role that liturgy plays in the lives of worshippers in establishing and reinforcing theological convictions. If the order in which elements unfolded reflected doctrinal confusion or outright error, then it would undermine the theological truths the Reformers sought to propagate through public worship. On the other hand, if the pattern of the elements aligned with these truths, then it would serve their cause of reforming the churches on the basis of the Word of God.[v]
The position of the Ten Commandments in the liturgy that John Calvin adopted during his sojourn in Bucer’s Strasbourg provides a signal case here. They do not appear haphazardly; it cannot be regarded as one element arbitrarily juxtaposed to another. Rather, the position in which it appears is determined by definite theological concerns, to which he wanted to give liturgical expression. We will turn to this liturgy in due course. But for now it is necessary to explain what exactly these concerns were.
The Theology of the Ten Commandments: Calvin on the Threefold Use of the Law
Calvin develops his theology of the Ten Commandments on the basis of their threefold use or function (triplex usus legis). Although first expounded by Philip Melanchthon in his Loci communes (1521) and thus not unique to Calvin, the “threefold use of the Law” has been linked with him and subsequently became a distinguishing feature of Reformed theology.
The first use of the Law is designated by the phrase usus theologicus (theological use) or usus paidogogicus (pedagogical use). The demand of the Law is absolute, claiming the whole person. That is to say, it requires perfect and wholehearted obedience. But both experience and the witness of scripture prove that the observance of the Law in this unconditional sense is impossible for us. For this reason, the Law necessarily shows us at which points we have failed to meet God’s standard for holiness of life and righteousness of conduct. In this regard, Calvin compares the Law to a mirror. In the commandments of the Law we have a “mirror of perfect righteousness,” in which, “we contemplate our weakness…, just as a mirror shows us the spots on our face.”[vi]
The Law thus reveals to us our sin. Calvin cites in this connection the Apostle Paul, who declared that he would not have known what sin was if it had not been for the Law (Romans 7:7). For “through the Law comes a knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20). In making us aware of our sin, the Law at the same time condemns us. “After the sin comes the curse” (cf. Deuteronomy 27:26; Gal. 3:10).[vii] The Law brings wrath (Rom. 4:15) and becomes for us the “dispensation of death” (II Cor. 3:7), insofar as “the letter kills” (2 Cor. 3:6).
This is not to say that the Law in itself is injurious to us. On the contrary, if “our will were completely conformed and composed to obedience to the Law, this knowledge alone would suffice to gain salvation.”[viii] For, as the Apostle Paul observes, the “Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (Rom. 7:12). Since, however, our nature is corrupted due to sin, we are inclined to violently resist God’s Law, refusing to submit to its discipline. It follows that the Law, although intended to bring life, serves as an occasion for sin and death. As the Apostle Paul observed in himself: “I was once alive apart from the Law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me” (Rom. 7: 9–10).[ix]
The death to which the Law sentences us ought to reduce us to grief and despair. But for the children of God, the knowledge of sin that the Law gives us has a salutary purpose. For it moves us to plead with God to show mercy, which he freely grants to us in Jesus Christ. By the grace that comes to us through Christ, God transforms that which brings condemnation and death into the very way by which he leads us to forgiveness of sins and new life. Precisely in this sense, the Law is our disciplinarian (pedagogus), that we might be justified by faith in Christ (Gal. 3:24). In sum, “the function of the Law is to uncover the disease; it gives no hope of its cure.” But for this very reason it points out our need for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which “brings healing to those who are without hope.”[x]
It is evident, however, that the Law does not have this effect on all. Nevertheless, it still serves in the broader public to restrain evil due to the threats that hang over those who violate it. This effect is necessary for the preservation of civil order, on which human society depends. Accordingly, the second use of the Law is its usus politicus (political use) or usus civilis (civil use). In Calvin’s view, those who otherwise would give free reign to their aggressive drives and antisocial impulses submit to the Law due to fear of punishment or shame. The obedience they grudgingly render to the Law is itself a manifestation of God’s grace, because apart from the restraining effect that the Law exercises, the civil order would disintegrate.
Calvin also sees this second use to apply to another group. He refers here to those who have not yet come to know the grace of Christ. In their case, fear of divine retribution for violating the commandments keeps their wanton desires in check. This fear serves them until they are regenerated by the Spirit of God. For to have known the discipline of self-restraint before the time of God’s visitation is good training for the rigors of the new life in Christ.[xi]
The third use of the Law applies only to those in whom the Spirit of God is already present and active. The Holy Spirit has already inscribed the Law in the hearts of those who believe in Christ, so that they desire to obey God. But in the Law they have the “best instrument to learn more thoroughly each day the Lord’s will to which they aspire, and to confirm them in the understanding of it.”[xii] By their reading of it, “the Lord instructs [them] in whom he inwardly instills with a readiness to obey.”[xiii] Thus the third––and for Calvin and the Reformed tradition––the principal use of the Law is denoted by the term usus didacticus (teaching use) or usus in renatis (use for the regenerate). It is important to add here that Calvin does not teach that the regenerate ever fulfill the Law. In this life they always only make a beginning, in dependence on Christ and through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. That is why the Law accompanies them throughout their lives, exhorting and correcting them as they press forward in their pursuit of the perfect righteousness set forth in the Law.
The Ten Commandments in Reformed Liturgy: Calvin’s Strasbourg Liturgy
Early in 1538 Calvin was banished from Geneva for his strict views on church discipline. Later that year Bucer, with the consent of the town council, invited him to Strasbourg to pastor a small congregation of French refugees in the city. Calvin evidently had no objections to the order of worship that Bucer himself had been using for the German congregation, for he had it translated into French with very few alterations.[xiv] For our purposes, the most outstanding one among them is the substitution of the Ten Commandments for the gloria or Psalm that Bucer’s German order prescribes as a response to the absolution. It is not entirely clear why Calvin did not find them in the German rite in this place, since Bucer himself recommended its reading in his treatise on the reform of worship, Grund und Ursach.[xv] Whatever the case might have been, Calvin’s French rite opens in the following way:
Votum
Confession of sins
Words of Assurance/Absolution
Ten Commandments
The votum consists in the words from Psalms 124:8: “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” The prayer of confession follows as a corporate act of the assembled people. In his version, Bucer offers three alternatives, the last of which is a long paraphrase of the Ten Commandments. In this prayer the people in the first person elaborate on how they have violated each of them. Calvin adopted the second of the three as his own, in which the people confess generally that they “unceasingly transgress [God’s] holy commandments”[xvi] Over the kneeling congregation, the minister then pronounces the absolution, introduced by an appropriate text in the New Testament. Bucer used 1 Timothy 1:15:
This is certainly true and a very precious word: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Let everyone truly confess with St. Paul in his heart and believe in Christ. Thus, I promise you in his name the forgiveness of all your sins and I declare you to be loosed your sins on earth, and that you are loosed of them also in heaven, forever. Amen.[xvii]
In Calvin’s rite, the people then stand to sing the Ten Commandments, which are set to music in French quatrains, with the Kyrie (“Lord, have mercy upon us”) as a prayer following each quatrain.[xviii]
Calvin’s division of the Ten Commandments into two tables follows the Jewish and Christian traditions: the first table is concerned with the worship of God, concluding with the fourth commandment to rest on the sabbath. The second is concerned with our duties of love toward our neighbor, as we have already mentioned, above. Between the two tables Calvin inserted a brief collect for grace to keep God’s Law.
The Lord be with you. Let us pray to the Lord.
Heavenly Father, full of goodness and grace, as you are pleased to declare your holy will to your poor servants, and to instruct them in the righteousness of you Law, so write and engrave it on our hearts, that we would seek to serve and obey you alone in our whole life. Do not impute to us the transgressions that we have committed against your Law, so that as we sense your grace being multiplied upon us in such abun-dance, we would have cause to praise and glorify you, through Jesus Christ your Son, our Lord. So let it be.[xix]
The language of the collect reveals how Calvin sees the Law to function in the liturgy. It is the third use (usus didacticus) that is reflected here. But the order in which the rite unfolds reveals it as clearly. In worship, God approaches the people as God is—their only comfort. This they acknowledge in the votum. In the confession of sins, the people approach God as they are––sinners. In the absolution, the assurance of God’s forgiveness is impressed on them. They respond by singing the Ten Commandments: it is as forgiven sinners that the people express their desire to conform their lives to God’s will, which is embodied in the Law.
Thus, in the position in which the Ten Commandments appear in his Strasbourg liturgy, Calvin meant to instan-tiate the third use of the Law. They come in the context of the grace in which those who have heard and accepted the words of assurance and absolution are standing.
Nevertheless, there is still some ambivalence here. The use of the Kyrie after each quatrain perhaps points to the first use—the Law as a catalyst to repentance. In this connection, we may recall that Calvin alludes to God’s “holy commandments” in his prayer of confession. The long paraphrase of them that Bucer provides as an alternative prayer of confession gives us good reason to suppose that the Strasbourg Reformer perhaps preferred the first use (usus paidogogicus) in worship. But even if we are inclined to find fault with Calvin for lack of consistency in his liturgical decision concerning the Law, we at least can see that there is more than one possibility from which to choose. This will become clear as we move next to consider how Calvin’s successors used the Ten Commandments in their liturgies.
Calvin’s Liturgical Successors: John á Lasco, Marten Micron, and Vallerand Pollain
Reformers John á Lasco (1499–1560), Marten Micron (1523–1559), and Vallerand Pollain (1520–1557) imported the Ten Commandments into their liturgies, but by no means did they slavishly follow Calvin’s Strasbourg rite in this regard. These figures are associated with the “Stranger Churches” in London, to which congregations of continental Protestants fled during the reign of Edward VI (r. 1447–1453) and after 1559 in order to escape Catholic persecution and civil conflict on the European continent.[xx] The Polish Reformer á Lasco collaborated with the Dutch Micron to produce a church order for the “Stranger Churches,” which the two formally organized in 1550. It was published under the title Forma ac Ratio in 1555, and contains an order of worship.[xxi] In á Lasco’s scheme, the Ten Commandments come after the sermon. It is preceded by a prayer in which the minister asks God to “keep Satan from the [people], lest he should in any way snatch from [them] the doctrine of [his] divine Word.” In language that is replete with imagery from the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1–20 and par.), the minister continues by asking God to grant that the word “bring forth seed, fruits, worthy of [God].”[xxii] A rubric then instructs that the minister read the Ten Commandments from Exodus 20.
This position suggests that the Law functions to give the people a concrete image of the life that produces “seeds, fruits worthy of [God].” In other words, if God answers the prayer, and the divine word takes root in the “good and fertile land” of hearts moistened with “the rain of the Holy Spirit,”[xxiii] the expected harvest will be sincere obedience of God’s Law. The third use of the Law is clearly envisaged here. That is why it is remarkable to read after the commandments a rubric directing the minister to remind the people of their sins in the following words: “We see in this divine Law the horrible corruption of our nature placed before our eyes, as if a mirror of ourselves has been put before us [emphasis added].”[xxiv] The minister then leads the people in an extended prayer of confession.[xxv]The Law is doing double duty here!
Similarly, in Pollain’s Liturgia Sacra we find an elaborate structure in which the first and third uses of the Law come to expression.[xxvi] A cantor opens the service by leading the people in a rhyming version of the Ten Commandments set to a hymn. The people sing the first five verses, which correspond to the first table of the Law. The minister then steps into the pulpit and intones the votum. There follows the confession of sins, in which the people acknowledge that they have transgressed God’s commandments and depend on his mercy in the face of his judgment. The minister reads a scripture verse that assures the people of God’s forgiveness and pronounces absolution over the repentant in the triune name. The people respond by singing the next three verses of the hymn, which correspond to the second table of the Law. This is followed by yet another prayer in which the minister asks the God who gave the commandments through Moses to inscribe the Law on the hearts of his people through the Holy Spirit, so that they may obey God and live holy and just lives. The people then sing the last verse of the hymn, which consists in a petition to God for the strength needed to obey his will. This deft interweaving of the sung Law and prayer ensures that the “pedagogical” and “teaching” uses of the Law are accorded equal weight.
Some Contemporary Uses of the Law in Reformed Worship
Several Contemporary Reformed orders of worship bear the stamp of this early tradition. In the Book of Common Worship of the Presbyterian Church USA, meditation on the Law of God is suggested as a way to prepare for worship. Two texts are offered: the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:1–17) and the summary of the Law in the double love commandment (Matt. 22:37–40). In the course of the ordinary service for the Lord’s Day, either of these texts may be read following the confession of sins/assur-ance of forgiveness sequence as we have already seen. Otherwise, the two exhortations (Col. 3:12–14 and John 13:34) enclosed in brackets can serve in the same role as the Law and may be said alternatively.[xxvii]
In the liturgies of two Reformed churches that trace their origins from the Netherlands, we find this same pattern. In the Psalter Hymnal of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, the Law predictably comes after the confession of sins, the declaration of pardon, and the gloria. As if to remove any doubt about which use of the Law is envisaged here, the reading of the Law is prefaced by the words: “Let us, God’s forgiven people, now listen to his Law for our lives.” The following rubric instructs the minister to proclaim “God’s covenant Law as guide for our lives, as it is found in the Decalogue or some other scriptural passage.”[xxviii]
In Liturgy and Confessions of the Reformed Church in America, the tripartite scheme “guilt, grace, gratitude” recapitulates the terms of the life of God’s people. The order of worship opens with the votum, which expresses the desire of the people to be in the presence of God who has called them to worship. But the people come to the awareness that this God is holy, and thus confess their sins. With the assurance of pardon, they hear the good news of their forgiveness and restoration. Freed from their sins, they are prepared to live in gratitude, which manifests itself in renewed obedience to God through observance of the commandments.[xxix]
Conclusion
As we have seen, there is precedent in classical Reformed liturgies for some flexibility in the use of the Law in worship. In line with Calvin, the orders we examined privilege the “third use” of the Law. But this by no means exhausts the possibilities, which include the following: (1) The commandments could be read by the minister and people in unison before the confession. In this position, they are functioning in accord with the first use of the Law, according to which it makes us aware of sin. It could also be incorporated into the confession itself. In this case, it will certainly be more practical to draw on Jesus’s summary of the Law: “We have not loved you with all our heart, soul, and mind; we have not loved our neighbor as ourselves…” (2) The commandments could be read or recited responsively after the words of assurance. This most clearly reflects the third use of the Law according to which the Law serves as a guide for the lives of the forgiven and renewed children of God. (3) The commandments could be used as one of the scripture readings. (4) The commandments could be recited by the people following the sermon. In this regard, the Law takes on the role of the creed, by which the people give assent to what they have heard in the sermon. This embodies an ancient liturgical principle according to which creed follows kerygma. That is, the people indicate their acceptance of the preached word by giving a summary of what they have heard in the form of a creed.
These options will reflect the conviction that no one liturgical function of the Law we select in advance can prescribe how any one person in our congregations will hear it. The Law on any given Sunday morning will convict one worshipper of sin, invite another to renewed obedience, and inspire in another grateful praise. We will be sensitive to how the Law can impress itself on people in these manifold ways, and plan our worship accordingly.
Nevertheless, the Law has always been very precious to the Reformed tradition, above all because of its third use. God has redeemed us from the curse of the Law through Christ and gives us his Holy Spirit. Because we are no longer under law but grace, we show our gratitude to God in seeking to do what pleases him, conforming our lives to his will, which is embodied in the Ten Commandments and summarized in the double love commandment: to love God and neighbor. We are thus freed both from and for the Law. The Law represents us at full stretch before God, marking out the way in which we may stand before him and serve in his presence in the power of the Holy Spirit—to his glory and to our own good.
[i] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 377. [Institutes II.8.11].
[ii] Bruno Bürki, “The Reformed Tradition in Continental Europe: Switzerland, France and Germany” in The Oxford History of Christian Worship, eds. Geoffrey Wainright and Karen B. Westerfield Tucker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 437.
[iii] Hughes Oliphant Old, The Patristic Roots of Reformed Worship (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1975), 8.
[iv] See, e.g., Bryan D. Spinks, From the Lord and “the Best Reformed Churches”: a Study of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the English Puritan and Separatist Traditions 1550–1633 (Rome: C.L.V. Edizioni Liturgiche, 1984), 48–53.
[v] Mark Earngey, “Soli Deo Gloria: The Reformation of Worship,” in Reformation Worship: Liturgies from the Past for the Present, eds. Jonathan Gibson and Mark Earngey (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2018), 26.
[vi] Institutes II.7.7.
[vii] Institutes II.7.7.
[viii] Institutes II.7.7.
[ix] Institutes II.7.7.
[x] Comm. 2 Cor. 3:7 (Calvini Opera 50:42). Cited in I. John Hesselink, Calvin’s Concept of the Law (Allison Park, PA : Pickwick Publications, 1992), 221.
[xi] InstitutesII.7.10.
[xii] Institutes II.7.12.
[xiii] Institutes II.7.12.
[xiv] The German rite of 1539 bears the title Psalter mit aller Kirchenübung (“Psalter, with All Church Practices”). For English translation (ET) of the texts, see Reformation Worship: Liturgies from the Past for the Present, 282–297. According to William D. Maxwell, Calvin published his French version of Bucer’s liturgical texts in 1540. This first edition is lost, but a second edition, which appeared in 1542, is extant. A third edition was published in 1545, An Outline of Christian Worship (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 112–16). For a selection of Calvin’s liturgical texts in English translation, see Reformation Worship: Liturgies from the Past for the Present, 306–336.
[xv] Grund und Ursach ausz gotlicher schrift der newerungen an dem nachtmal des Herren (“Basis for the renewal of the Lord’s Supper from the Holy Scriptures”). Cited in Maxwell, An Outline of Christian Worship, 101.
[xvi] Reformation Worship: Liturgies from the Past for the Present, 284.
[xvii] Ibid, 286.
[xviii] James Nichols, Corporate Worship in the Reformed Tradition (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968), 40.
[xix] Reformation Worship: Liturgies from the Past for the Present, 309.
[xx] Spinks, From the Lord and “the Best Reformed Churches,” 97.
[xxi] For the texts in English translation, see Spinks, From the Lord and “the Best Reformed Churches,”157–176 and Reformation Worship: Liturgies from the Past for the Present, 458–516. Micron translated and abbreviated an earlier edition of this rite and published it under the title Christlicke Ordinancien der Nederlantser Ghemeinten te London in 1554. For English translation, see Reformation Worship: Liturgies from the Past for the Present, 517-542.
[xxii] Ibid., 463.
[xxiii] Ibid.
[xxiv] Ibid., 465.
[xxv] Ibid., 465–466.
[xxvi] For the above information, see Casper Honders, “Let us Confess our Sins …” in Liturgical Experience of Faith, eds. Herman Schmidt and David Power (New York: Herder and Herder, 1973), 89.
[xxvii] Book of Common Worship (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 28–29; 48–59.
[xxviii] Psalter Hymnal (Grand Rapids: CRC Publications, 1988), 972–73.
[xxix] Liturgy and Confessions (New York: Reformed Church Press, 1990), 1–3. Interestingly, in an alternate order of worship, which dates from 1968, the Decalogue or summary of the law comes before the prayer of confession, thus observing the first use.
