 One of the axioms of Christianity is that we are not able to keep the Torah. We're not able to live according to the law. Why is this important to them? We see in the book of relations chapter 2 verse 21 that Paul says, if we could be righteous according to the Torah, then Jesus died in vain. And so Christianity makes the observation that human beings simply are incapable of living righteously. They look at a world where people sin and they say, obviously people are not righteous, people sin. The problem here is that they assume that once you sin, you are no longer righteous. The truth is that the word sin in Hebrew is chet. And chet really is more appropriately translated as error or mistake, missing the mark. The truth is that only God never makes mistakes. Only God is perfect. Human beings by our very nature are prone to making mistakes. The book of Eov, the book of Job says that everyone that's born to a woman sins. It's just part of the human condition. Since we are not God, we are not capable of being perfect. We make mistakes. We will fall short of the mark. And the reality is that being imperfect does not mean that we cannot be righteous. Solomon teaches in the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 20 that there isn't a righteous person on the earth who only does good and never sins. What he's teaching us here is that even righteous people sometimes sin. Because we are not God, we will make mistakes. But what is it that makes this righteous person righteous even though they're sinning? It's because they repent of their sin. Part of the system that God gave us, part of the Torah itself, part of the law is that if you make a mistake, you are to repent. You are to turn away from your mistake, turn away from your sin and return to God. And so Solomon himself writes in the 24th chapter of Proverbs verse 16, that seven times a righteous person may fall down, but they will get up. And there are two ways of understanding this verse. One possibility is that the nature, the definition of a righteous person is that when they fall, when they sin, when they make a mistake, they will correct their ways. They will get up. Another way of looking at though, however, is that Solomon is teaching us that how does a person become righteous? It's through the process of falling down and learning from their mistakes, correcting their mistakes and getting up. And so therefore being someone who makes a mistake who sins is not antithetical to being righteous. We see that righteous people do sin. But what makes them righteous is the fact that they will learn from their mistake. They will correct their mistake and they will pick themselves up. They will repent and they'll grow. We have as human beings the ability to do this. God spoke to Cain after the events in the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve disobeyed God and sinned. Adam says to Cain, the fourth chapter of Genesis, verse 7, that sin will always tempt you. That part of being a human being is that you will always be tempted to sin. But God says to Cain, but you can rule over it. You're able to master sin. And so we see in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 30 which directly addresses the assumption that Paul and Christianity makes. The assumption that we are not able to keep the Torah. We're not able to live according to the law. We're not able to fulfill the Torah. The book of Deuteronomy specifically raises this question and says the Torah is not too difficult for you. It's not up in the heavens that you have to go up to heaven to bring it down and to keep the Torah. It's not beyond the seas that you have to travel to the ends of the earth to keep the Torah. God says to us, no, the Torah is near to you in your heart and in your mouth that you can do it. God says to us, yes, you can do it. Quite in contradiction to the assertion of Paul and Christianity that we are incapable of keeping the Torah and being righteous.