We need to talk about your salvation experience.
Jesus told the Pharisees in John 39 “You search the scriptures thinking that through them you have eternal life, but the scriptures point to Me. Yet you won’t come to Me…”
That was the most important declaration about the Torah to the Pharisees (like yourself) that Jesus made reference to.
In Romans 10:5-8, it references Deuteronomy 30:11-16 as the world of faith that we proclaim in regard to saying the Torah is not too difficult for us to obey and that obedience to it brings life. In Deuteronomy 32:46-47, the Torah is our very life. In Revelation 22:14, those who obeyed God's commandments are given the right to eat from the Tree of Life. In Proverbs 3:18, it is a Tree of Life for all who take hold of it. In Proverbs 6:23, for the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life. In Luke 10:25-28, Jesus said the way to inherit eternal life is by obeying the greatest two commandment. In Matthew 19:17, Jesus said that the way to enter eternal life is by obeying God's commandments. In Hebrews 5:9, Jesus has become a source of eternal salvation for those who obey him. In Romans 2:6-7, eternal life is given to those who persist in doing good. In Romans 6:19-23, we are no longer to present ourselves as slaves to impurity, lawlessness, and sin, but are now to present ourselves as slaves to God and to righteousness leading to sanctification, and the goal of sanctification is eternal life in Christ, which is the gift of God, so having the experience of living in obedience to God's law is the content of His gift of eternal life.
God's way is the way to express aspects of His character, such as righteousness and justice (Genesis 18:19), which is the way to know God. In Exodus 33:13, Moses wanted God to be gracious to him by teaching him to walk in His way that he and Israel might know Him, in 1 Kings 2:1-3, God taught how to walk in His way through His law, and in Matthew 7:23, Jesus said that he would tell those who are worker of lawlessness to depart from him because he never knew them, so the goal of the law is to know God and Jesus (Romans 10:2-4), which is eternal life (John 17:3). The Bible also repeatedly connects knowing God by walking in His way with life, such as with Jesus saying that narrow is the way that leads to life (Matthew 7:14), and that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and the way to see and know the Father (John 14:6-7).
So in regard to John 5:39-40, it is abundantly clear that eternal life can be found in the Scriptures and that the Pharisees were correct to search for it there, but they needed to recognize that the goal of everything in Scripture is to testify about how to know Jesus and how to come into a relationship with him for eternal life.
In Jeremiah 9:3 and 9:6, they did not know God and refused to know Him, because in 9:13, they had forsaken God's law, while in 9:24, those who know God know that he delights in practicing steadfast love, righteousness, and justice in all of the earth, so delighting in practicing those and other aspects of God's character is the way to know Him, and the way to know the Son who is the exact image of God's character (Hebrews 1:3). Likewise, in 1 John 2:4, those who say that they know Jesus, but don't obey his commands are liars, and in 1 John 3:4-6, those who continue to practice sin in transgression of God's law have never seen nor known him.
The problem is that people can go through the motions of obeying God's law while neglecting to express aspects of God's character that God's law was given to teach us how to express. For example, in Matthew 23:23, Jesus said that tithing was something that they ought to be doing while not neglecting weightier matters of the law of justice, mercy, and faithfulness. In Romans 9:30-10:4, the Israelites had a zeal for God, but it was not based on knowing Him, so they failed to attain righteousness because they pursued the law as through righteousness were earned as the result of their works in order to establish their own rather than pursing the law as though righteousness were by faith in Christ, for knowing Christ is the goal of the law for righteousness for everyone who has faith. In John 5:39-40, they were in the same situation, and well as Paul in Philippians 3:8, where he had been keeping the law, but not while being focused on knowing Christ, so he had been missing the whole goal of the law, and that is what he counted as dung.
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