Conceptually, a limit captures the spirit of scientific measurement.

In physical sciences, we had conceded long ago that perfect measurements are not
possible. Every ruler has some defect. But given any ruler, we can always make a
more accurate one.

Equality in mathematics is an extremely rigid condition. And because of what we

said just above, we can't possibly hope to make good use of equality in physical
contexts.

Limits give us the next best thing.

We might set out, not to measure something exactly, but to measure it to a certain
degree of accuracy. We give ourselves a certain error tolerance (the ε).

If our error tolerance gives us a very slim margin of error (for very small ε), we
can't measure with just any old ruler; we need a very good ruler. So we design a
ruler with a certain level of precision (the δ). We also have the luxury, as
experimenters, that if we are asked by our peers to measure within a certain margin
of error, we may custom-build the ruler for this purpose. (That is δ may be defined
in terms of ε).

Using this accurate ruler, we are able to take measurements accurate within the
desired margin of error. And the notion of a limit is that we are always able to do
this, no matter how small our margin.

This gives us the idea behind the so-called ε-δ definitions of limits, continuity,
and derivatives. It is also related to the limit of a sequence or a series (these
are discrete cases, where δ is a positive integer instead of a positive real).