Slojodan

Hi guys,

One thing I was wondering about. The raison de’tre of the urgency to spread the gospel seems to be that all men are too sinless to be with G-d. Perfection is required. Or is it?

Psalm 15 seems to say so:

“ 1 LORD, who may dwell in your sanctuary?
Who may live on your holy hill?
2 He whose walk is blameless
and who does what is righteous,
who speaks the truth from his heart
3 and has no slander on his tongue,
who does his neighbor no wrong
and casts no slur on his fellowman, “

That definitely seems like a demand for perfection. Who can say they have no slander on their tongue, or is blameless? Also the Torah makes it very clear that you must follow all of the commandments or be severely punished. The thing I noticed though, with further research, is that the standards for “blamelessness” and “following all the commandments” are a lot lower than we think, and actually achievable.

Taking “blameless” for example, if you do a search for the word in biblegateway.com under the NIV translation, Job and Noah are blameless, and David even describes himself as blameless years after his adultery/murder history. There are also psalms where the speaker describes himself as blameless, and enough psalms and proverbs describing blameless people in general that we can be confident they exist.

In Luke, both of John the Baptist’s parents are described as following the commandments blamelessly. Then in 1 Thessalonians 2:10 Paul claims that HE and his contemporaries were blameless with their example of behavior.
As for following all the commandments, Joshua 22:1-5 has the entire tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh championed for “obeying everything” that Moses and Joshua commanded in their giving of the law. Certainly they were not perfect! However in order to receive this praise they must have been good enough for G-d’s standards to fulfill the operational definition of “following ALL the commandments.” It must mean that ‘following all the commandments,” means doing a good job in general, and most of all, staying true to G-d and not committing idolatry, which is the main concern.

Even before that, in Deut. 30:11, G-d lets the Jewish people know that it IS possible for them to reach his standards. “Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you, or beyond your reach.” Is it that hard to believe that G-d would not command a law his people couldn’t follow?
So looking at this evidence, I’m wondering how any good people, especially good Jews, could warrant eternal destruction if they are capable of meeting the standards of “blamelessness” and “following all the commandments” according to the given examples of the Bible. If their reason for getting eternal destruction is just from not believing in Jesus period, that would mean that Jesus’s sacrifice actually PREVENTS good people from getting into heaven that would have without him. Your thoughts?

--Daniel