Eccl,
There was a time before the Torah, which is what most people refer to when they talk about The Law of God. Part of your problem may be a failure to adequately define terms.
Mark,
The Law brings conviction, conviction brings condemnation, commendation brings death. But conviction brings repentance which leads us to Christ. The Law is Holy, and part of the path too salvation... How about instead of excerpts we look at sections of scripture?
Rom 7:9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
Rom 7:10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.
Rom 7:11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.
Rom 7:12 Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.
Rom 7:13 Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.
Rom 7:14 For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.
The Life without the Law is a life full of enmity with God. It is the carnal life, it is the life we do not want. When we know our sin our old life dies. You must have seen 100 conversions or more even in our time that go exactly like that? The commandments exist to protect our lives and our relationship with God, and once we understand that our sin, our opposition to that Law, is like death to the sinner. That is not a bad death, that is a vital death, a crucial death.
This is how one is 'dead to the law' they are more aptly 'dead through the law'. Being dead to the law does not mean that now that I am Christian I may go steal and fornicate and murder because I am free from the law, it means the law killed the part of me that would want to do such things, and killed my old nature.
Galatians is exactly the same. To say that we are no longer under a schoolmaster is not to say that we now ignore that which we where taught. How fruitless would that be? How foolish?
Rom 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Rom 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
Now faith has come to us, and grace. The law should be in our spirit, our very essence. As we have more faith sin has less appeal to us. The law is no longer the bondage to our flesh but freedom to our spirit. It showed us that we needed Christ! It shows us our sin! What greater freedom is there than to have Christ? The law no longer condemns us. We will come to a point when breaking it holds no appeal or temptation to us.
Rom 8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
We know the law does not forgive, and because our flesh transgresses the law and the law cannot forgive in and of itself. But it did not exist to save, but to lead us to salvation and forgiveness.
Rom 8:4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
The law is evil to those it condemns, but it is righteous to those that walk after the spirit of God. This is vital, to remember, and said plainly in scripture. When you walk in the Spirit of God you will understand that His ways are right, He is right, His law is good.
Look through scripture, there are not two laws, but one law and one lawgiver. But the law to the carnal man is a totally different thing than the law to the spiritual man. To the carnal man the law is condemnation and bondage and to the spiritual it is freedom and righousness.