How many times have you said that, or heard it said? It is usually said when someone has done something harmful or disgusting. The hope is that such a law, if enacted, would prevent a repetition of the act or exact a penalty for the deed. That is the way laws work.
However, the deed is not a crime or sin until a law says that it is. It is not illegal to drive 90 mph in a school zone until the law demands no more than 20 mph. Without the law, you are not a transgressor no matter how fast you drive. The law makes you a speeder.
There is another thing about laws that we often overlook. Laws are not designed to reward you for keeping them. You just avoid punishment you if you keep them. There is no special profit to be earned by obeying the law; there is just punishment to avoid.
These principles carry over into our relationship with God. We don't have to wish for laws, there are some. They were given, not to show us how good we are, but rather to show us that we were bound to do something harmful of disgusting. And we all have. So what has the Law done to us?
Let the apostle Paul give us the answer: "For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death" (Romans 7:9, 10). Rather than offering life for good behavior, the law brought death (punishment) for transgression and proved me to be a sinner. If the law does not reward good behavior, why do so many people depend upon their "good works" or keeping the Ten Commandments to make them right with God? Listen again to the apostle Paul: "Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:19, 20). We cannot be rewarded by the law, for it has proven us sinners.
What, then, is the solution? Again Paul speaks, "But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, . . . Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all . . .them that believe: . . . Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood . . . for the remission of sins . . . that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Romans 3:21-26). If the law of God has condemned you, you need Christ to justify you. Trust Him today and be saved from sin and the penalty of the law of God.