This is what Paul says.....
Romans 6:1-4What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Romans 6:12-18 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
Romans 6:19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
Romans 7:1-6 Or do you not know, brothersfor I am speaking to those who know the lawthat the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
we are NOT under the law. We have died to it in Christ Jesus and have been given a new nature, being new creatures in Christ.
We have the fruit of the Spirit that develops in our lives and that righteousness is imparted from God, not a result of obeying the law.
We end up keeping the law because it's now our nature to do so.
Of course the teaching of the Christian faith should include how we live in holiness and obedience, showing by our lives the faith we have. We love Him, Scripture says, because He first loved us. That's what the book of James addresses. It is what Paul taught for example in his epistles to the Corinthians:
What people should be careful of, though, is going to the other extreme where our works stop being an evidence of a changed heart and a new birth through faith, and go into making our works and deeds necessary to meriting eternal life. Paul dealt with that heresy repeatedly. We see him addressing it throughout his writings. He had to deal constantly with those called the Judaizers, who insisted Gentiles must be converted to Judaism and be subject to the Law of Moses in order to be saved. We read again and again where Paul admonishes believers to not be taken in by that error. For example, he said:
Salvation is the gift of God that we receive by faith. HE sees our hearts and we cannot fool Him by words we may say. Genuine faith WILL show in the life of the Holy Spirit indwelt child of God. Will we sometimes stray, mess up, commit sin? Yes, we are STILL in the flesh. But there is a difference now - there is a repentance, a sorrow when we sin against God, we feel shame over the wrongs in our life and we strive to live for God's glory. That's how we know the Spirit of God is working in us. I love what the following has to say about born again children of God: