Those who are truly righteous will live, and their salvation is by their own doing. There is but one problem. No one has been truly righteous but Christ — whom the religious authorities had killed, for it was deemed expedient that one person should die for many.

We are not born innocent: we are born with the perverse within us.

It is only in Christ that we can be deemed saved: the priest said truly that it was needed to die for all.

1 John 3:4-10

Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.

John 10:7-16

So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away — and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.
I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

What the church needs to do is preach christ alone. Not some sense of unity, thinking John Lennon wrote the fifth gospel, though this is not fashionable, and the modern cleric will start preaching ein volk ein Gott ein Kaiser when the progressive cycle fails and the imperium is the fashion of the world. We need to preach Christ.

We should do good, for that pleases God, as we do that which pleases our family. We are not called to live for ourselves, but for God and those around us.

If we do not do good with those in our household how can we claim to be able to do good at a distance?

Expect, however, for Christ to always be unacceptable, out of fashion, in the corridors of power. They believe they can bring about a salvation. They are wrong. Do not be them. Do not imitate them.

Instead, look to Christ, who will make us one as we worship.