Please read Romans 1:18 thru Romans 3:20. Paul is showing us that it is impossible to keep the commandments until we are justified by Christ. Until we receive the Holy Spirit we cannot begin to keep them. Because prior to having Christ's righteousness imputed to us we only glorify ourselves and not God. The epistle to the Romans amply supports my belief that God requires obedience to his commandments. Nowhere does Paul rescind the commandment of Jesus, "Be ye therefore perfect, even your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). Nor does Paul teach that obedience to God's other commandments is unnecessary. Quite the contrary. He warns the saints, "that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are." (Romans 6:16). Those who yield to sin, receive the wages of sin, which is death, not eternal life (Romans 6:23).
"The epistle to the Romans amply supports my belief that God requires obedience to his commandments."
Exactly correct but your standing before God is the result of Christ's perfect obedience. You can do nothing to give yourself standing before God. As long as we are "in the flesh" we do not have the ability to be perfect and have to rely on the perfection of Christ.
Paul's mission was to bring about the obedience of faith among the gentiles, for the sake of His name. There should be fruits of our obedience if we are truly justified or else we are deceiving ourselves. But you are misreading Paul if you are suggesting that we can be perfect while in the flesh.
We are in danger of doing what the Jews did (that he addresses in Romans 2) if we believe that we can be somehow perfect. We are completely dependent on Christ and have no merit before God other than Him.
I apologize if I am misreading your comments.
blake