His standard of goodness is not your standard of goodness. Even in your best moments you can’t win over God with your good behavior. We are all sinners in need of a Savior. Jesus is that Savior, and Christmas celebrates his entry into his creation.(emphasis added)
This rather bland restatement of St. Paul's dictum "for all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God", in this context negates not only any discussion of "morality", universal or otherwise, but indeed even the claim made in point (1) that God is real. In fact, it negates not only Christianity itself, but the need not only for Christianity, but any religion whatsoever. If, in fact nothing we do can earn God's love (which, I have to admit, I accept as part of the doctrine of grace), then we are either condemned whether we believe or not, or saved whether we believe or not. In this case, even "spreading the Gospel" is meaningless, not only steeped in sin, but irrelevant to God. Ditto "universal morality". Since there is nothing that can place us righteously before the throne of God, it seems to me that claiming there is a morality that applies that is a necessary follow-on to believing in God (itself irrelevant, since believing is something we do, and therefore something God cares about not at all) is not only meaningless logically, but practically irrelevant.
Is my reasoning correct here?
