I forget where it is written (I’m sure some FReeper will tell me), but there is a passage that says (paraphrasing) “If a heathen does according to the Law, is it not accorded to him as righteousness?”..........
—from ¨The Pentateuch and Haftorahs¨, Dr JH Hertz, CH, Late Chief Rabbi Of The British Empire....
¨God had suffered the heathens to worship the sun,moon and stars as a stepping stone to a higher stage of religious belief. That worship of the heathen nations thus forms part of God´s guidance for humanity.
But as for the Israelites, God had given them first hand knowledge of Him through the medium of Revelation. It is for this reason that idolatry was for them an unpardonable offence; and everything that might seduce them from that Divine Revelation was to be ruthlessly destroyed.
Hence the amazing tolerance shown by Judaism of all ages towards the followers of other cults, so long as these were not steeped in immorality and crime. Thus the prophet Malachi declares even the sacrificial offering of heathens to be a glorification of God (Mal 1:11).
Equally striking is the attitude of the Rabbis toward the heathen world. War had been declared against the Canaanites not because of matters of dogma or ritual, but because of the savage cruelty and foul licentiousness of their lives and cult.
But the Rabbis never regarded the heathens of their own day as on the same moral level with the Canaanites. Their contemporary heathens in the Roman and Persian Empires obeyed the laws of conduct which the Rabbis deemed vital to the existence of human society, the so-called ´seven commandments given to the children of Noah´. They wisely held that in their religious life these heathens merely followed the traditional worship which they had inherited from their fathers before them, and they could not therefore be held responsible for failure to reach a true notion of the Unity of God. Such followers of other faiths they taught were judged by God purely by their moral life. ´The righteous of all nations have a share in the world to come,´ and are heirs of immortality, alongside the righteous in Israel.
A later midrash proclaimed: ´I call heaven and earth to witness that, whether it be Jew or heathen, man or woman, freeman or bondman only according to their acts does the Divine spirit rest upon them. And in the darkest days of the Middle Ages, Solomon ibn Gabirol, the great philosopher and Synagogue hymn writer, sang
´Thou art the Lord,
And all beings are thy servants, Thy domain;
And through those who serve idols vain
Thine honor is not detracted from,
For they all aim to Thee to come.´
This is probably the earliest enunciation of religious tolerance in Western Europe.¨
It's important to remember that scripture repeatedly says "None are righteous". If a heathen does according to the law, it would indeed be accorded to him as righteousness. But to be righteous under the law, you have to keep ALL of the law, ALL of the time.
To be righteous is to be perfect. "Be ye perfect, for I am perfect." "Be ye holy, for I am holy.". There are two ways to be perfect. Keep the law, which scripture says, nobody except Jesus has done or be forgiven.
Three times Jesus was asked how to have eternal life. The first two times, when asked by the lawyer and the rich young ruler, Jesus answered keep the law, but he did it in such a way, that it became apparent to the person that they had failed to keep the law. The third time to Nicodemus, he said you "must be born again." (John 3).