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• We regard change as a commentary on the past: We've been doing it "wrong."

• For 1500 years, God's people tried to live by the law, but Paul said live by grace.
• For 2000 years, we've struggled with the change Paul suggested.

• In our attempts to keep the law, we will fail and find we can't be holy.
• Paul says that if it weren't for the law, he wouldn't have known what sin was.
  - Illustration: A child get his first teeth, and puts them to use. He chews his food—and bites the neighbor child. His mom says one is acceptable, the other isn't. The child, learning a "law" he hadn't previously known, thus learns he has sinned.

• Paul says the law caused his sin to "spring to life"—makes him want to sin.
  - Illustration: A new employee is confronted with a situation. Rather than bother his boss, he figures out a way to solve it—and continues solving it in this manner for months. Then the manager says, "The way you're doing it is against company policy." The employee thinks, What's wrong with my way? It's effective? And he's tempted to keep doing it his way—because we tend to rebel against law.

• "For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."
• The minute we try to live holy lives, we go exactly the opposite way.

• Paul says the only way to break free is by being a slave to Christ.
• We all live by some laws, whether God's, government's, church's, or our own.