Good morning.

As you all know, my name is Lucy Anne Arce, and Im pleased to talk
to you about my religion. Let me ask you this: On a scale of 1 to 10, how sure are
you that you will be saved? Ive been a Roman Catholic since I was an infant. I was
baptized by the Catholic Church, and I was able to receive other succeeding
sacraments. I helped out a lot of people by being a volunteer in relief operations.
For the next few minutes, Id like to share with you about a little about religion and
self-righteousness.
Religion will not save you. Faith will. The variance is that all religion is synthetic - but
faith is a personal relationship between you and God. Only through Jesus you get
deliverance. Religion is man speaking to God who He is - (man-made God devotion).
This will not bring us into Heaven or save us. Religion is just a name hung on a
church door. The only way to God and to Heaven is Jesus Christ. The only way to be
protected and go to Heaven is by accepting Him into our hearts as our Lord and
Savior. This is never religion; this is a relationship with God.
In the bible, Matthew 5:20 states, "for I say to you, that unless your righteousness
exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will, by no means,
enter the kingdom of heaven". How moral does God want us to be? There is a big
dissimilarity between candid righteousness and self-righteousness.
When Jesus told this to the disciples, it certainly would have had a bombshell result.
After all, who could extent up to a standard like that? The scribes had committed
their lives to the study and understanding of Scripture. Many of the transcripts we
have to this day can be outlined back to those scribes who devotedly guarded the
Word that was given to them. These were faithful men. They knew the Bible.
The Pharisees were set-apart individuals. They would go yonder the requirements of
the law and add more to it. They would quibble over the least legalistic opinion.
Then along came Jesus. Unlike these religious front-runners, His authority did not
originate from some leading rabbi. Jesus did not have to quote another authority
because He is the authority. He is His Father in mortal form.
Ironically, Jesus was accused a number of times of violating the Law of Moses, and
precisely of breaking the Sabbath. The truth is, Jesus was the only one who retained
the law perfectly. He never ruined a single commandment during His entire life. He
never stepped out of agreement with His Father, not even for a moment. Yet the
spiritual leaders suspected Him, of all men, of breaking the law. It was because they
had warped, misunderstood, and depraved the real message the law had come to
give.
Jesus uttered, I did not come to eradicate the Law of Moses or the writings of the
prophets. No, I came to fulfill them. The word "fulfill" used in this verse could be
interpreted as "to carry it out, to make it full, and to get to the heart of it." He lived

by the law. As I mentioned, He obeyed it clearly. He did everything the law pointed
to.
Therefore, Jesus was revealing the synthetic righteousness of the religious leaders.
Their righteousness was a peripheral concealment. Their religion was a lifeless
ritual, not an existing relationship. It never hit their hearts. The irony is that it made
them full of pride instead of being modest. That is why Jesus saved His most
scornful words not for tax collectors or prostitutes, but for Pharisees. They were
interested in actions instead of motives, in doing rather than being, and in details
rather than principles.
In Jeremiah 17:10, God said, "I, the Lord, search the heart; I test the mind, even to
give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings". God is
still regarding on the heart nowadays.
But instead of trying by our individual labors to somehow be righteous, we need to
concede that we are sinners separated from God. God loved us so much that He
sent His Son to die in our place and now has credited the righteousness of Christ to
our spiritual account. As an outcome, we have a righteousness that surpasses that
of the scribes and Pharisees, not because of what we have done, but because of
what God has done for us.
If we know anything of that righteousness, it should work its way through our lives,
and we should seek to be godly people. We can't do it on our own, but as Philippians
4:13 reminds us, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.