God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
It is not easy to get the law killed. Something of a legal disposition remains even in the believer while he is in this world. Many a stroke does self and self-righteousness get, but still it revives again. If he were wholly dead to the law, he would be wholly dead to sin. But so far as the law lives, sin lives. They that think they know the gospel well enough betray their ignorance. No man can be too evangelical [gospel-centered]. It will take all his life-time to get a legal temper destroyed.
There still remains the powerful, active, influence of sin within us. It is presented as a “law” [Rom. 7:23] because that is how it operates within us - it seeks to command and subdue us; it insists upon adherence; it targets our desires to do anything holy.