Imagine a boss or supervisor at work who simply cannot be satisfied with anything you do. Each time you discover a new way to fulfill his wishes, you discover ten new things that you’re not even coming close to getting right. When you finally rectify those things, you discover ten more you’re missing completely. This is the law.

No matter how much you seek to follow it, satisfying it will always be out of reach. The law is intended for one main purpose: to drive us to repentance by showing us the destitution of our plight.

That is why Paul writes in Romans 3:20:

“For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

We cannot be justified by something that is endlessly revealing how short we’re falling of success. The concept of being justified, heck, even having any hope for this life, by our works—by the things we say and do and feel—is simply unreasonable. What human being can say with honesty that they’ve even been honest their whole life? No one. And before a righteous God, that has rendered their works null.

Even quantum traces of logic and reason will say that if there is a just and righteous God, grace is our only hope.