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***I give away my belongings easily, too easily according to my family. You picked the wrong guy to try to shame with that one!***

Well I can give you a couple of more commandments of Jesus written in red letters in this bible.

Mat 5:20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed [the righteousness] of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Mat 23:1 Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples,
Mat 23:2 Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat:
Mat 23:3 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, [that] observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.

And as for the rich young ruler, he asked..(short verison)

Mat 19:16 And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing SHALL I DO, that I may have eternal life?

Mat 19:17 ....... but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

Mat 19:20 The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?

Mat 19:21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go [and] sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come [and] follow me.

I don’t see anything about the steps the CoC requires. No baptism mentioned at all!

The rich ruler wanted to EARN his salvation so Jesus gave him impossible things to do.

As you know it is impossible to keep the law even if you tried, so Jesus just made his request harder. “Sell all that you have...”

Do you know that the Northern Irish Restorationist movement preached exactly that and their preachers do exactly that because it is scriptural, and in their eye, any group that does not do that is unsaved.

What the young ruler failed to see in Jesus’ teaching was that ETERNAL LIFE CAN NOT BE EARNED! it is the free gift of God, and Jesus was trying to teach this.

Even St Paul said that salvation could not be earned.

Eph 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of God:
Eph 2:9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

The CoCs remind me of another group here on Fr (we just had a 300 post thread a few weeks ago) that try to keep the commandments and the words of Christ. It appears they are not sure what all needs to be done so they try to cover all bases by doing it all.

Even Martin Luther wrote of the fear of failing to come up to God’s standards by your own effort in THE BONDAGE OF THE WILL.

“If I lived and worked for all eternity, my conscience would never reach comfortable certainty as to how much I must do to satisfy God. Whatever work I had done, there would still be a nagging doubt as to whether it pleased God, or whether He required something more.”

I have that certainty. I have never seen a CoC or an Irish Restorationist who did.

By the way, those Irish reatorationists are also called COONEYITES, from a preacher William Cooney.