Paul said it... not me!

According to Paul there are two ways of approaching God or feeling about God.There was the Jewish way. The aim of the Jew was to set himself right with God. His view was that he could set himself right with God by strict obedience to the law. That Jew regarded a right relationship with God as something which could be earned. Now there is another  way to put that will show really what it means.Fundamentally, the Jewish idea was that a man, by strict obedience to the law could, in the end pile up a credit balance. When he had acquired this credit balance the result was that God was in his debt; God owed him salvation.Essentially, the Jew regarded the friendship of God as something which could be earned and won and achieved by human effort. It was obviously a losing battle, because man’s imperfection can never satisfy God’s perfection; man’s sin can never earn the right to meet God’s holiness; nothing that man can do can ever even begin to repay what God has done for him.That is precisely what Paul found out. As he said, the Jew spent his life searching for a law, obedience to which would put him right with God, and he never found it because there is no such law to be found.Remember the rich young ruler who asked: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He was searching for the law, the formula that would give him salvation and eternal life.On the other hand the Gentile’s never engaged upon this search for a formula to God. But when the Gentile, suddenly and unexpectedly, was confronted with the incredible love of God in Jesus Christ, he simply cast himself upon that love in total trust. It was as if the Gentile saw the Cross and said, “If God loves me like that I can trust Him with my life and with my soul.”The Jew sought to put God in his debt; the Gentile was content to be in God’s debt. The Jew believed he could win salvation by doing things for God; the Gentile was lost in amazement at what God had done for him.The Jew sought to find the way to God by works; the Gentile came by the way of trust and faith.It was Paul’s conviction that no man can win God’s favor. Rom. 9:32 Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone. Rom. 9:33 As it is written:“Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense, And whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”One way to seek God is faith in who He is and what He has done for humanity. The other is to believe that you can impress or earn God’s favor by what you do or don’t do.In other words you can either “receive” or you can attempt to “achieve” salvation. Like it or believe or reject it .... this is Paul’s perception.