Thinking recently about the law as a schoolmaster and these verses from Hebrews came to mind:

Hebrews 10:1  For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.

Hebrews 10:10 But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.

Those sacrifices demanded by the law were in themselves, a continual reminder of sin. This was no accident or mistake on God’s part, but God’s way of showing us our need for a Savior. Through his law God gives us every building block we need to come to faith in Christ (like a good schoolmaster would).  

What is it that shows each and every one of us our need for a Savior? The knowledge that we have sinned and that even when we try our best, we cannot keep God’s law perfectly or atone for our own sin. This is exactly the lesson pictured by the continual sacrifices of the law.

The law pictures sin/separation, repentance, sacrifice/covering of sin, repeat: sin/separation, repentance, sacrifice/covering of sin…

It is a continual reminder of our sin and separation from God, as well as the cost of sin: a blood sacrifice-a life for a life.

-The law teaches us what sin is-
Romans 7:7  What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by  the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.

-The law is a continual reminder of our separation from God and need for reconciliation

-The repetitive nature of the sacrifices was a lesson of not only the cost of sin, but also inability to atone for our own sin.

-Our repeated failure to keep the law teaches us our inability to conquer our own sin and thus our need for a Savior

-The insufficiency of the animal sacrifices offered (as a temporary covering of sins) shows us our need for a perfect sinless sacrifice.

What an amazing lesson to bring us to faith in Christ. God truly knows best how to teach us our need for a Savior. Sadly, many today have tossed aside the use of the law as unnecessary in Evangelism of adults and children. Often our lessons begin instead with the death burial and resurrection of Christ- the answer to sin’s problem, rather than teaching as God does, the problem of sin first.

Mark 2:17  When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Only they that know their sinful condition and their need for a Savior can truly embrace the glorious gospel of Christ, how that he suffered and died, shedding his own precious blood to pay, once for all the debt of sin we owed, was buried, and how he rose again.

1 Timothy 1:8  But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully;
9  Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,
10  For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;
11  According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.
 
Deuteronomy 6:7  And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
8  And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.
9  And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.