World Communion Sunday is a day, on which we seek to give expression to our unity in Jesus Christ. Christians from many traditions participate in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper today, remembering that we are one people because we are bound to Christ like branches on a vine. Our diverse traditions all take their nurture from the same source, who is Jesus Christ.

The passages for today offer us a reminder of how we, all of whom are members of the one universal church, can practice the law of God in three distinct, but interconnected ways in order to give witness to the world that we truly are all united in the same Lord.

They begin, "You shall not...." The catechisms of the Presbyterian Church go to great lengths to

explain how each of the commandments can be stated in positive terms. For example, instead of "You shall not bear false witness," we would state, "You shall do all in your power to honor the good names of others."

The negative statement of the Law of God, however, indicates one of the primary uses of the law, from which all Christian traditions benefit. This use of the law is that it constrains us. That is, it indicates behavior, which we are commanded not to choose. The negative statement of the law of God is necessary because it acknowledges that we are fallible human beings, who need boundaries in order to live with each other in peace and justice.

It is true that moral philosophers and educational psychologists would advise us that constraint in human decision making is the lowest level of moral reasoning. That is, when we constrain ourselves from some behaviors because we understand that we shall be held accountable and will pay a price, we are hardly more advanced in our moral development than a child who understands that he or she will be punished, when they hit their younger sibling. But, please do not take this lightly. Nations invade other nations, on the accusation that the other nations are preparing to violate international law. Adults, even persons who act as heads of state, use this very form of moral reasoning.

How, then, might such a use of God’s law be a means to promote unity in the church the world over? Simply put, the universal church must begin at this level of moral practice in order to develop higher uses of the law of God. After all, would not the universal church be a stronger voice for good in the world, were we to refuse to speak disparagingly of those in other church traditions. Even, when we do so with tongue in cheek, we give evidence that we have not yet been willing to honor the good names of others. That is a minimum level of morality, according to the law of God. Further, there are ways to express our honest disagreements with other traditions that actually promote unity, rather than destroy it by name calling.

And so, while we might presume that we are sophisticated enough to pass quickly over this elementary use of God’s law, we do so at our peril. The unity of Christ church is at stake.

What is significant about this use of the law is that it points to our common humanity before God. It was the great Reformer, Martin Luther, who called the universal church back to the basics of Christian teaching, when he reminded us of this use of the law. Luther was a deeply conscientious young priest of the church, and precisely because of his conscience he was overcome with his inability to obey the law of God perfectly. He spent hours in confession, sorrowful that he was incapable of doing the very thing he desired to do more than anything else, that is, to obey the letter of God’s law.

Luther was given by God the vision to see in his study of Paul’s epistle to the Romans that the law of God is useful to all people because it convicts every man, woman and youth. He was given to understand the ancient teaching of the people of Israel, "No one is without sin, no not one." What was so compelling in this revelation for Luther was that the law is our friend because it does convict us of our dependence on God’s grace. Without God’s grace, revealed in Jesus, we will remain incapable of being in a relationship with our Creator and Redeemer.

Luther accented this use of the law, calling it the greatest use of the law. He hearkened back to the words of Paul, "We are saved not by the works of the law, but only by the grace of God in Jesus Christ."

The universal church would do well to meditate, without interruption, on this use of God’s law because so much of our division results from our forgetting that we are all sinners. Yes, by grace Jesus calls us into a whole relationship with God and with one another, but this is not something that happens on a single date of the calendar, after which we can presume to have arrived at a new level of moral purity. Rather, this is something that is a matter of lifestyle. We recall with the coming of each new day that we have failed to give credible expression to our oneness in Jesus Christ. Our divisions shout to the world that we do not practice what we preach. Jesus prayed fervently to God that God would make his followers one, "so that the world might believe." The use of the law called conviction is one a young German priest rediscovered in the pages of the Bible in the sixteenth century. The universal church would do well to rediscover it again today, so that we might more practically giver expression to our unity in Christ.

If the primary use of the law of God for Martin Luther was conviction, for John Calvin it was counsel. Presbyterians, who have followed the influence of Calvin, have accented this third use of the law as the primary use of the law.

This use of the law invites us to receive the law as a gift of God, which can and does guide us in living out the grace of God in Christ in the various spheres of activity in our daily lives. Once we have acknowledged that we need the law as a constraining influence in our lives, and once we have given thanks that the law of God convicts us that we desperately need grace because we are incapable of fulfilling the requirements of the law, then, we are in a position to accept with open arms the gift of the law to counsel us in the day in and day out ethical challenges of living.

When I teach the "Ten Commandments" to the members of the Confirmation Class in a few weeks, I will begin with the preface to the commandments. We read it this morning. Do you remember it? "Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery...." Don’t ever forget the preface to the "Ten Commandments," because the preface sets the context for the commandments. It is the context of God’s salvation of us. God asks us to obey the commandments, as people who know profoundly that their God is a gracious Lord, who delivers people from their most vexing problems.

The third use of the law, counsel, invites us into growth as people of faith because it connects our commitment to the law of God with our appreciation for the mercy of God. This use of the law makes it plain that we are asked to obey the law, not in order to earn God’s favor, but instead to demonstrate our gratitude for the mercy of God that has already saved us.

It is this use of the law that the universal church must access in order to expand its story of the saving God we know in Jesus Christ. There are new challenges, presented by the new world of the twenty-first century that are unlike challenges in any of the twenty preceding centuries. God’s love is new with the dawn of every morning, and God’s counsel is indispensable for us in addressing these challenges.

The three uses of God’s law are constraint, lovingly setting boundaries by which we can practice justice as the universal church; conviction, by which we are impressed in every encounter of daily living with our dependence on God’s grace for our relationship with God (and one another) and not with our ability to impress God (or one another) with how well we fulfill God’s hopes and expectations for us in the law; and, counsel, by which we are invited to grow up into mature Christian people, assertively responding to the needs of the people in the world in a new day, which is both exciting and terribly frightening, for the spread of the message of God’s sovereign plan to bless all humankind.

The universal church will more nearly achieve the unity that our Lord prayed God to give us, when we honor all three uses of the law of God. We cannot leave any of the three out, because each is like a leg on a stool. The only way the church can strain and reach the unity in Christ, for which we have been called into being, is to pay careful and consistent attention to all three, the uses of God’s law as constraint, as conviction, and as counsel.

To God alone be the glory, now and forever. Amen.