“Instead of dwelling on our past sins and failures, we ought to treat them as a signpost. Failure shows us where we are lacking and motivates us to look to God.”  Nobody likes to fall short of the mark.

Yet when it comes to the Old Testament law, failure seems to have been God’s plan all along. The law was designed to help us understand the nature of righteousness, but it was never meant to make us righteous. The primary function of the law was to convict and condemn. Romans 3:20 explains, “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.” The way God makes us righteous is “apart from the law” (v. 21). The righteousness of God comes to us through faith in Jesus Christ (v. 22).

Now the Apostle Paul was one of the most devote disciples and he writes of his problems with following the law; Romans 7:15-20, 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[a] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

God uses our inability to live up to the righteous standard of the law as an instrument of grace. Through it, we are made aware of the need for our righteousness to come from another source. We cannot earn it for ourselves, so Christ must earn it for us. The only way we can obtain a righteous standing in God’s sight is by receiving it as a gift. Elsewhere Paul compares the law to a guardian or tutor which had “locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe” (Gal. 3:22).

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.