The Christian faith isn’t just another religion wherein one must try to earn enough brownie points to get to heaven. Every religion on the face of the planet operates in this paradigm, but not so with Christianity. Rather, our faith is based on a living, vital relationship with our Creator Himself. He understands us, and has made provision for our sin.

But the nature of this provision is difficult to comprehend—and sometimes even harder to accept—because it flies in the face of what we typically learn about religion through our life experience (what Paul calls the “elementary principles of the world”).(Colossians 2:8, 20-21)

Being inbred in man’s psyche, these “elementary principles” intuitively serve as the foundation of our efforts to please God. But He has provided something better than a host of rules and regulations to deal with our sinful nature. It is the Spirit who gives the kind of life the law never could!(2 Corinthians 3:6) Still, there exists within each of us a basic instinct to rely on law in our attempt to live for God. And a better understanding of the nature of law sheds great light on why we behave this way.