Whenever we talk about God’s law we have to keep in mind that the nature of the law has not changed regardless if we consider it under the covenant of works or the covenant of grace. It’s not the law that changes, it is us. 

Today in our catechism lesson we’ll be doing something a little different, and you’ll see why in a minute. One of the connections between the Shorter and Larger Catechism is that they both follow a similar pattern of getting to know God, clarifying what God has done for us in redemption, and then helpfully explaining the manner and way of sanctification so that the Believer can place the law in its proper place and duty. If there was any one issue that got the early church excited, and still provides fodder for journal articles, books, and blog posts it is how to deal with the law, especially the moral law, as justified men and women. Are we still to keep it? Do we use it merely as a guide and not as a rule of life? Is the keeping of the law tied into our remaining in the good graces of our Lord or does it really not matter how we observe His commandments?
These and many other questions will hopefully be helpfully answered in the words that follow.
Let’s go ahead and get to the Q/A’s for this morning:
Q. 98: Where is the moral law summarily comprehended?A. The moral law is summarily comprehended in the ten commandments, which were delivered by the voice of God upon Mount Sinai, and written by him in two tables of stone; and are recorded in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. The four first commandments containing our duty to God, and the other six our duty to man.
Q. 100: What special things are we to consider in the ten commandments?A. We are to consider, in the ten commandments, the preface, the substance of the commandments themselves, and several reasons annexed to some of them, the more to enforce themselves.
No, we aren’t skipping #99. We’ll take that one up by itself next week. In the meantime as you meditate on what the Divines are saying at the moment you’ll notice that there are a couple of features of the moral law that are worth exploring first. Whenever we talk about God’s law we have to keep in mind that the nature of the law has not changed regardless if we consider it under the covenant of works or the covenant of grace. It’s not the law that changes, it is us. As it is under the covenant of works it is a taskmaster that requires of us complete and full obedience for our obtaining eternal life. As it is under the covenant of grace it is a blessed tutor helping to learn us up in the school of Christ in and through His marvelous love. Rather than having an antagonistic, almost Sisyphus relationship with the commandments, those bought with a price now read and apply the law as we hear David describe in Psalm 119:1-2:
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Through most of Reformed history, the spirituality of the church has not entailed a silence on all political matters but rather a commitment to the uniqueness of the church’s mission and a principled conviction that the eternal concerns of the church should not be swallowed up by the temporal concerns of the state. For all these reasons—and many others you will read about in the pages ahead—I am thankful for this book. Alan Strange has marshaled his considerable expertise in this area to write an accessible introduction to the spirituality of the church. 

In the summer of 2023, at the General Assembly in Memphis, Tennessee, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. As a part of the commemoration, commissioners were given a professionally produced replica of a document titled A Message to All Churches of Jesus Christ throughout the World from the General Assembly of the National Presbyterian Church. The document dates from 1973 and was issued at the founding of the PCA (then called the National Presbyterian Church). The Message to All Churches was named and written as a conscious echo of a previous document. In 1861, James Henley Thornwell issued his Address to All Churches of Christ at the founding of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America (PCCSA). In fact, the PCA deliberately began as a denomination (in Birmingham, Alabama) on December 4, 1973, because the PCCSA had its beginning (in Augusta, Georgia) on December 4, 1861. 
These origins continue to be a source of celebration for some and a source of embarrassment for others. The fact is that the PCA saw itself at its founding—and still sees itself today, in some respects—as a continuing church, as the faithful and orthodox branch of the Southern Presbyterian denomination. And make no mistake, the legacy of Southern Presbyterianism is complex. Take Thornwell, for example. Should he be remembered as a gifted educator, preacher, and writer, as the most influential theologian and churchman of his era? Or should he be remembered as a man who defended slavery and helped give birth to the Confederacy? Undoubtedly, he was all the above. 
Because of Thornwell’s complicated personal history, Christians in recent decades have been largely dismissive of one of his most strongly held convictions. The first point in Thornwell’s inaugural address from 1861 was to explain and defend the spirituality of the church. For most hearers today—including Bible-believing Presbyterians and other conservative Christians—the spirituality of the church means one thing: a wrongheaded and shameful defense of slavery. And it’s true, Thornwell and other Presbyterians used the doctrine to support the “peculiar institution” in the South.
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Those Christians in the generation leading up to Constantine’s ascent appear not to have been strictly pacificist or “Anabaptist” (for lack of a more convenient term) in their politics. At risk of beating the same old drum, bits of information like this consistently underscore for me the value in studying the history of Christianity between the New Testament and, say, Augustine. Especially for modern Christians who feel alarm or simply aporia at the prospect of de-Christianization, there are helpful and sometimes surprising models to be considered in this era.

On a recent re-reading of Eusebius’ writings about the Great Persecution and the subsequent rule of Constantine, I was struck by how he records quite a few Christians working in the army and imperial administration decades before Constantine was running the show. Sometimes, for instance, it is alleged that the pre-Constantinian church flatly opposed participation in the military. That claim (or versions of it) was always oversimplifying matters, and one can spot it right in the sources themselves.
Take Ecclesiastical History 8.4 (and I shall describe, paraphrase, quote lightly from sources in rather than en bloc for brevity in this post). Eusebius suggests that “he who has taken power”—which I take to be the devil rather than the emperor—thought the best starting place to begin an attack on the church would be the army itself, which itself is a telling remark about where Christians were known to exist in the public sphere. “Very many” faithful Christian soldiers lost their status in the process, claims Eusebius, though here and there some were also killed for their constancy. When telling the stories of the martyrs he knew most personally, Eusebius marks out one such soldier named Seleucus, in the Martyrs of Palestine 11.26. Having already accepted punishment and discharge from the army, Seleucus then faced danger again by associating with the Christians of Caesarea, which led to his death. In general, however, this particular stroke against the Christian soldiery was moderate and not especially violent, comments Eusebius dryly.
In Ecclesiastical History 8.6, Eusebius also mentions one Dorotheus and others working in the imperial palace of Nicomedia, who were probably slaves. Further down, in 8.9, he notes the hitherto respected Philoromos, who sat as an imperial judge “with status and Roman honor” in Alexandria daily escorted by soldiers. In recompense for his unyielding Christianity, the empire had Philoromos condemned and beheaded. Likewise in 8.11, Eusebius goes so far as to claim that the complete population of an entire small town in Phrygia suffered burning en masse, including the imperial accountant on site and the local town officials, all of whom were Christians. Here too Eusebius mentions Adauktos, who came from a notable Italian family and had achieved status and served in imperial magistracies; at the time of his martyrdom, he was currently serving as a financial officer or comptroller general.
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