Did Zacharias Keep the Law?

In this regular feature Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.  Here is this week’s question.  Dear T. A. and Dave, “In the gospel of Luke we are told that Zacharias and Elizabeth were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless.  Yet, in (Romans:3:10As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
See All...), it says that there is none righteous, no not one.  How do you explain this inconsistency?”

Tom:

Dave, before you start to answer this, I am thinking back about a debate that you had with Robert Sungenis.  Robert Sungenis is an apologist for the Roman Catholic Church and he was, or claimed to be formerly an evangelical.  As a matter of fact he had his own radio program.  In this debate as you guys were going at it, this was an issue that he brought up, that you could be saved by your works, that it’s possible to live the law, it’s possible to do good works and Zacharias and Elizabeth were his examples and this was the verse: “Walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless.”  Was that an inconsistency?

Dave:

No. Paul said the same thing.  He said I have lived in all good conscience before God unto this day. Remember in Acts [23] and the high priest commanded him to be smitten across the mouth because you supposedly, couldn’t.  But the law included, not only “thou shalt not steal, kill, lie, cheat” and so forth, but it also included provisions for those who did and that was the sacrifices.  So, these people are not saying they have never sinned because the Bible very clearly says, There is not a just man upon the earth who doeth good and sinneth not.  And, that would include Mary as well, the mother of Jesus. 

Tom:

Well then, Paul did say, called himself the chief of sinners, so he had a problem.

Dave:

That’s right, exactly.  And yet, he lived in all good conscience before God, he kept the commandments.  So, included in those commandments, obviously, is what you are to do when you sin and that is you take the sacrifice for this sin you know, go back and read Leviticus and you have various sacrifices for various sins.  So, it is not saying that they were sinless.  And, Jesus, of course, He raised the bar a little bit, didn’t He?

Tom:

Right.  Dave, let me go back to something you mentioned—Mary.  We are talking about the reference I made was to Robert Sungenis, Catholic apologist, him holding Zacharais and Elizabeth up as blameless before the Lord.

Dave:

It doesn’t say, sinless.

Tom:

No, but that was the implication that he gave and then you would have to press him on that.  Not that you have time in the debate because it is fairly well structured but that begs the question, if they were sinless and Mary sinless, it seems that we have a kind of an outworking here or that you can be sinless and not just be Mary, or not just be Jesus.  But that’s not true.

Dave:

Of course it contradicts the Bible.  I quoted it—there is no one that is without sin, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.  In fact sin is defined as coming short of the glory of God.  What does that mean?Well, God created man in His image.  Man was to reflect, not His physical image, God is not a physical being. God is a Spirit, but the moral spiritual image of God.  He was to reflect the love, the holiness, the purity, the character of God was to be expressed through Adam and Eve.  They sinned, and sin is coming short of God’s glory.  Now, would you say anyone on this earth reflects God’s glory to such an extent that they are blameless?  No, that’s not possible for a human being and this is what sin is.  But, they were blameless in that they followed the provisions of the law for their sin.

Tom:

Dave, let me go before the law, before the law was instituted.  Let’s go to Job.  This is Job:1:8And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?
See All..., “And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?”  This is before the law, so there was something that was keeping Job righteous before God, not that he didn’t sin but—

Dave:

Again, the word “perfect” there, God said to Abraham walk before me and be thou perfect.  He said that David had walked with a perfect heart although David committed adultery and murder.

Tom:

Grievous sin.

Dave Hunt:

But the thing about David was he repented.  When Nathan the prophet confronted him and said you are the man, then David repented.  Saul, the king before him, Israel’s first king, when he was confronted with his sin by Samuel he rationalized it.  He tried to explain it away, tried to justify himself.

Tom:

Well, let’s add Job to that.  At the beginning God talks about him being an upright man, one that feareth God but he, after his problems began, he began to look to himself and his own self righteousness.  But it’s the end of Job where we find I think, the same heart that you are talking about the heart that David had because Job cried out before my ears had heard.

Dave:

“I’ve heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, now mine eyes seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself and repent...."  He didn’t get a good self image, did he from this encounter with God.

Tom:

No, but he was consistent with everything that we are saying here.  He had a heart for God.  He wanted to do right.  Even prior to that he was making sacrifices out of concern for his own children.

Dave:

Exactly.  So, a perfect heart is one that wants to do God’s will.  Paul says it in Romans 7, “The good that I would, the good that I want to do I can’t do it.  The evil that I don’t want to do, that’s what I find myself doing.  Wretched man, who will deliver me from the body of this death?”  So, a person who really desires in his heart to please God, when he fails his conscience will tell him and he will repent.  This is what it is talking about.