One cannot trust or hope or love simply by virtue of trying to obey the command to do so-those things come from the inside as a result of grace, or they do not come at all. And yet, they are an obligation for man- because they're simply the right thing to do-and that which we were created to do- and we have the choice as to whether we'll do the right thing or not, to choose good over evil or not. So, how to we acquire these virtues? By taking the first right step of faith, in response to grace, of acknowledging our dependency on God in order to have them. We have no righteousness on our own, apart from Him. Anyway, I like the way a 4th century bishop, Basil of Caesarea, summed up right relationship with God:
“If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages, . . . we resemble mercenaries. Finally if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for him who commands . . . we are in the position of children.”
The essence of what you like telling me here I usually hear from my Muslim friends after I replace the word God (of Christians) with the word Allah (of Muslims) and I replace the name of Jesus (of the Gospel) with the name of Mohammad (of the Quran). If they do good to someone they do it just because their Allah says to do it. Also they were told that by grace of Allah, all their sins will be forgiven if they have observed all what they are supposed to do to please Allah.
I wrote many posts here to show, briefly, what I learnt from Jesus (not from anyone else). Naturally, I have no more reason to accept Jesus in my life by faith after He helped me discover the logical answers of 'all' important questions about life which I was looking for. In other words, Jesus came to save me from my greatest weakness 'ignorance' which every human baby is born with. Naturally, as I mentioned earlier, Jesus is indeed my 'Light of knowledge' under which I was able to walk, without confusion and fear, on the Path that leads to God’s Realm of Love.
As you see, I can't call myself a Christian because a Christian in any formal Christian Church or Denomination around the world (with no exception) is not supposed to see in Jesus the Divine Perfect Teacher (the all-knowledge God). So I am just an independent student of Jesus taking advantage of what I learnt from Him to feed my soul with the growing joy of God's Love while I live God's Unconditional Love towards all others {Matthew 5:44-45}.
Real teachers don't command (don't need to impose their knowledge on their students).
For instance, imposing rules (said social, religious or political) on the multitudes is necessary in the material world only. And these rules are based always on the human instincts (actually of the rulers). These instincts are simply God's instructions embedded in every living thing (including the human flesh) for the survival of its species so they have nothing to do with God's Unconditional Love.
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