If it were not for reading the ten commandments...and the clincher was the following verse.... “any who sin in the least of these commandments is guilty of them all.”....I would surely have believed on a scale of one to ten I was doing pretty good. But of course there is the clincher...I knew at that point I was past any hope of meeting those “conditions”.
I agree. But when you and I saw what our true condition was before God and fell upon his throne of grace through faith in Jesus Christ, it is important to also note that we did not stop trying to live a good, obedient life but that the MOTIVE changed. I think what has prevented people in the past and even today from accepting this truth is they think if you tell someone nothing they do other than believe and trust in Jesus can save them, they fear it is essentially telling them they can go live as they please since only grace saves us. Like giving someone a "license to sin".
Paul address this very same way of thinking when he said:
Romans 6:1-4
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
Not only are we created anew unto a life of good deeds, but we also now have the power through the indwelling Holy Spirit to resist sin and live according to the way that brings glory to God.
A false Gospel that teaches man must earn eternal life through deeds fails for two reasons. First we cannot be saved by any works because sin is only paid for by death - our own or Christ for us, in our place. And secondly, we are helpless against the old nature without the new birth and the Holy Spirit. We can see from history how many people struggled against sin their entire lives even resorting to horrible self-mutilations and dire penances in hopes of quelling the evil within. How much more fruitful could their lives have been if only they understood the truth?