Grace, all the way

“I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” Galatians 2:21
Scripturally, there are three tenses to salvation, each given slightly different terms. First there is justification: being made right with God at the moment we choose to accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Saviour. This is ‘salvation past’. Next is the process of sanctification, the purifying of our lives from that point on. This is ‘salvation present’. Finally, there is glorification, when we arrive in heaven and receive our new bodies, perfect knowledge, forever in the presence of the Lord. This is ‘salvation future’.
There is a false doctrine out there in the church that although we are justified by the grace of God, as we go on in our Christian walk we are sanctified through keeping the law. There are variations on what ‘keeping the law’ means here; whether it is the Old Testament Law, the instructions given by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, or a combination of both. But this is not supported at all by Scripture. Paul says, decades after he was saved, he does not set aside the grace of God. Just as justification is entirely dependent on God’s grace, so too is sanctification (and glorification). Grace means getting good things we don’t deserve. If keeping the law plays any part in any step of our salvation, then we are having to work to earn it. In that case, it is no longer a free gift. And, as Paul points out, if sanctification (becoming more righteous) could be gained through keeping any law, then Christ died for nothing. If it was possible for man to be saved in this way, then God would not have allowed His Son to endure the cross.