Even if the law is completed (fulfilled), is it all right to at least use it as a guide to correct our behaviors? Sure! It’s up to you if you want to put yourself under the law again. But realize that it’s not consistent with what God states in His word. Remember, the law was only intended to bring you to Christ by showing your sinfulness. That’s all the law can do –condemn you!
There are times I think that I’m doing good and other times I’m not. But my opinion is based on how I judge my own actions and thoughts. Those actions and thoughts are either righteous or fall short of what the law demands. And if I really want to judge those actions and attitudes accurately, then I’ll have to use God’s scale to measure how I’m doing. He says that “Everything that does not come from faith is sin.”
Is God still be counting our sins against us (those things we think and do that do not come from faith)? Does He still see them or remember them? If God hasn’t dealt with my sins and your sins once and for all, then we are still dead and we don’t have eternal life –because the wages of sin is death!
The good news is that God did deal with our sins once and for all through the death of His Son on the cross. He then followed that up with making you and me into new creations! We are now “clothed in Christ” (Galatians 3:27); “our sins are behind His back to never to be seen again” (Isaiah 38:17); and those sins “are as far from us as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12)!
The penalty of sin was death (not an animal sacrifice or a measly prayer asking for His forgiveness) and Jesus took that penalty on Himself. At the time He came to live in you, you were joined with Him in His death so that you now have also joined in His eternal life –not life that only lasts until you sin again, but eternal life. Again, let’s look into the Scriptures to see what God has to say about the law in a Christian’s life.
The law is like the slave woman –cast her out of your life! And her son is like the works done under the law –cast him out too!
These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. . . But what does the Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.” Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman. (Galatians 4:24, 30-31)
Die to the law in order to be fruitful and serve God!
So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. (Romans 7:4)
But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:6)
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. (Matthew 16:24-25)
The law is contrary to faith –so die to it!
For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. (Galatians 2:19)
The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, “The man who does these things will live by them.” (Galatians 3:12)
Trying to keep the law alienates us from Jesus.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1b)
You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5:4)
Now we are led by Spirit; we are no longer under the law.
Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law. (Galatians 3:25)
But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. (Galatians 5:18)
For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law. (Romans 3:28)
For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. (Romans 6:14)
Do you see the choice? It’s one or the other; there isn’t a mixing of the two. Either live with your life’s choices based on the law or based on faith. Which is it you are choosing to do? By the way, if it’s not living by faith –apart from the law– this it’s a life of sin!