Note 14 at 1 Tim. 1:7: Those who don't aim at God's kind of love as the goal of all their instruction (see note 13 at v. 6) always digress into teaching the Old Testament law. That's because the natural mind understands and relates to the punishment of the Old Testament law.

The law is an external or carnal way of motivating people toward right actions. It's simple, if you do wrong, God will punish you. On the contrary, the love of God as revealed through grace, takes a revelation of the Holy Spirit to understand (1 Cor. 2:14). Therefore, carnal people use carnal methods to control people.

Note 15 at 1 Tim. 1:7: This is a very important statement. Those who preach relationship with the Lord through adherence to the law don't understand what they are saying. They preach that you have to keep the law in order to be accepted by God and yet they themself don't keep it. Everyone of us have sinned and fallen short of keeping the law (Rom. 3:23). If they understood what they were saying, they would quit saying it.

No one can keep the law (see note 15 at Gal. 3:10, p. 1066). Therefore, it wasn't given for us to keep but to show us how impossible it was for us to ever live up to God's standard of perfection (see note 4 at Rom. 3:19, p. 757). This was intended to drive us from self righteousness to depending on God for the gift of righteousness. Those who still teach that we must keep the law to be in right standing with God have totally missed this point.