Many Christians labor under the impression that, with enough effort, they can keep the law and thereby please God. This is not a minor misunderstanding—it is a fundamental error that strikes at the heart of the gospel and the believer’s assurance. The root of this error is a failure to grasp the true purpose of the law and the devastating reality of sin in the flesh.
The Law: God’s Diagnosis, Not Our Prescription
The law was never given as a guidebook for Christian living or as a ladder by which we might ascend to God. To treat it as such is to water down its demands and nullify its terror. Sinai was shrouded in gloom for a reason: the law is a ministration of death and condemnation (2 Cor. 3:7, 9). Even Moses, who spoke with God as a friend, trembled with fear at its giving. The law does not offer a cure; it exposes the incurable disease of sin in the flesh.
Paul is explicit: “By the law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20). The law functions as God’s diagnostic tool, revealing the ruin of the fall and proving that no one can qualify for God’s blessing by human effort. This exposure is not a negative outcome. On the contrary, it is a mercy—God uses the law to strip us of every illusion of self-righteousness and to drive us to Christ. Until the law has done its work, the sinner will not see his need for redemption.
The Fatal Error of Mixing Law and Grace
Legalistic teaching, which mingles law and grace, is not a harmless theological quirk. It is, as Scofield noted, “an incoherent system” that leaves neither law nor grace in their God-ordained places. When the law is presented as something Christians can keep—especially with “divine help”—its true function as a ministry of death and cursing is obscured (Gal. 3:10; Rom. 3:19). The result is bondage and the false hope that God’s favor can be earned by law-keeping.
This is not a secondary issue. If you attempt to live by the law, you are not simply misunderstanding a point of doctrine—you are placing yourself under a curse and forfeiting the liberty Christ purchased. You cannot rest in Christ while clinging to the law as your rule of life. The law was designed to shut every mouth and leave the whole world guilty before God, so that the only hope left is the free gift of righteousness through faith in Christ.
What Is Lost If This Error Is Accepted?
If you accept the premise that you can, in any measure, keep the law and please God by it, you lose everything that makes the gospel good news. You forfeit the clear conscience that comes from knowing your standing is based solely on Christ’s finished work. You exchange the certainty of sonship and inheritance for the uncertainty and fear of a servant who never knows if he has done enough. Most tragically, you undermine justification itself—making Christ of no effect to you (Gal. 5:4). The inheritance, the Spirit, and the enjoyment of God as your reward are all lost when you return to law.
Christ: Our Righteousness, Sanctification, and Reward
The only way to stand before God with a clean conscience and to enjoy the blessings reserved for justified and regenerated sons and heirs is to maintain faith in Christ alone. Christ is not your helper in law-keeping—He is your righteousness, your sanctification, your very life, and your eternal reward (1 Cor. 1:30; Gal. 3:13-14). Everything you need is found in Him, received freely by faith, and supplied by the Spirit—not by works of the law (Gal. 3:1-6).
To look to the law for assurance or qualification is to reject the sufficiency of Christ. To look to Christ is to be set free from the law’s condemnation and to live as a true heir, empowered by the Spirit. This is not a negotiable point. The distinction between law and grace, between human performance and covenantal promise, is the difference between bondage and liberty, between death and life.
Stop measuring yourself by the law. Fix your eyes on Christ, and live as one who has died to the law and now lives unto God—not as a servant earning wages, but as a son and heir, secure in the finished work of Christ.
