"Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed" (Galatians 3:23).
Living under God's grace means we do not have to work for our salvation. We don't have to follow an exhaustive (and exhausting) list of rules in order to prove ourselves worthy of the kingdom of God. Grace means that God has chosen to forgive us, even though we don't deserve it.
Yet for some reason, we still tend towards the desire to earn favor with God by doing good. The thought of unearned blessing is somehow still foreign to us, despite the fact that we were saved by it, and we feel that we must do something to keep it.
Or perhaps it's arrogance that drives us--a desire to show everyone just how good we are, so of course God chose to save us. We can keep His difficult laws, after all; why wouldn't He want us?
But this is dangerous. Any attempt to prove ourselves worthy of grace just shows how little we truly understand grace. The law was never meant to be a means of salvation, or even a method of demonstrating our worth to God.
In Galatians, Paul compares the law to a strict guardian, even a captor. The law does not permit freedom; it commands perfect obedience. The sentence for breaking even one part of it is death.
But grace--grace shows us what freedom really is! Under the law, we strive to do good but fall short every time. Under grace, we still fall short, but we find it doesn't matter. We are still loved by the God who holds us up and gives us His own goodness.
We cannot save ourselves--and that's a beautiful thing.
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