Law and Grace

I seem to be having a lot of conversations lately about the law and gospel.  We understand that the law cannot save us.  The law has no power.  What is the point of the law then?    Check out these verses:

For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:3-4)
 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)
 My understanding is the law points out of our sin and points us to Jesus. Grace is where the power is.  Grace brings about the change in our lives.

Here are a few quotes from Judah Smith on this topic:

"Bottom line: they had missed the point of the law.  They thought the point was being good and doing good. But it wasn't. The point was Jesus."
"It's amazing to me that sometimes we leave church more obsessed with self than when we came in. That should never be the result of the gospel. When you've heard the gospel, you get obsessed with Jesus, because it points to him."
"God doesn't want us to just try harder, work harder, and get busier. He appreciates our efforts, but when we make life about doing good and being better, when we make holiness an end it itself, we miss the point."
"So any attempt to make ourselves more righteous by our good deeds would be like trying to one-up infinity."
Let's not confuse the law and the gospel.  Once we are saved, we should avoid trying to add the law to grace.  We should instead be led by the Holy Spirit.

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