To a degree it does not matter, because for many walking in righteousness is impossible, a dream too far off, they are lost forever. God has always been interested in those who have seen the possibility in life of walking truly yet failing to achieve it. So I speak to those who see the dream Jesus offers, and want to answer His question, Do you love me?
If you listen to His words, in your heart, at night, in the day, make them your guide, your truth, your reality, then you will know the Kingdom of the Most High.
I think you really need to start asking yourself the right questions. Or hear the Lord, one or the other.
If you ask yourself, everyday, if you love the Lord Jesus Christ, and are of the "what have you done for me lately?" mentality, then you are constantly trying to prove, by your works, that you love Christ.
Is that really the way the Lord Jesus wants us to follow Him? By some guilty aspiration of loving Him the way He Loves You? Will you ever be able to rise to the bar that the Lord Jesus Christ has set?
The question a believer must ask him/her self everyday is "Don't you know that the Lord Jesus Christ loves YOU?" "Don't you know that God gave His Son for YOU?".
1 John 4:10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
One question puts a person into bondage.
Another sets them free.
Romans 8:20-25
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20 [/SUP]For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,
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21 [/SUP]Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
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22 [/SUP]For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
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23 [/SUP]And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
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24 [/SUP]For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?
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25 [/SUP]But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.