Rosangela: If our efforts to obey are imperfect, how can our obedience be perfect?

We can't save ourselves.

Rosangela: If we have already sinned, how can our obedience be perfect?

Of ourselves, we can do nothing. The goal of the plan of redemption is to bring people back into harmony with the law. Salvation = healing. As for past sins, they are not the issue. The question to be asked, is a person safe to save? Have they been transformed? Have they been healed?

Rosangela: Or do you think that the law can be fooled?

The law demands perfect obedience. Do you agree? (that is a question) Declaring a sinner to be pardoned without a transformation only fools ourselves. Please re-read the quote from the Bible Echo above. A restored person WILL keep the law. See 1 John 3:9; 1 John 5:18.

Rosangela: If someone accepts Christ in his last minutes of life, how can he be saved by his perfect obedience?

Many have died not completely changed. Do you agree? Fortunately, the story of Job tells us that God can call a character. There is the investigative judgment where God will show who is and who is not safe to save. Who will and who will not respond to God's healing. There is the millennium, with restoration to the Tree of Life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

Rosangela: Is your obedience perfect?

I'm sure glad that no human is my judge!

I was attending a meeting, and a large congregation were present. In my dream you were presenting the subject of faith and the imputed righteousness of Christ by faith. You repeated several times that works amounted to nothing, that there were no conditions. The matter was presented in that light that I knew minds would be confused, and would not receive the correct impression in reference to faith and works, and I decided to write to you. You state this matter too strongly. There are conditions to our receiving justification and sanctification, and the righteousness of Christ. I know your meaning, but you leave a wrong impression upon many minds. While good works will not save even one soul, yet it is impossible for even one soul to be saved without good works. God saves us under a law, that we must ask if we would receive, seek if we would find, and knock if we would have the door opened unto us. {1SM 377.1}

Many commit the error of trying to define minutely the fine points of distinction between justification and sanctification. Into the definitions of these two terms they often bring their own ideas and speculations. Why try to be more minute than is Inspiration on the vital question of righteousness by faith? Why try to work out every minute point, as if the salvation of the soul depended upon all having exactly your understanding of this matter? All cannot see in the same line of vision. You are in danger of making a world of an atom, and an atom of a world. {9MR 300.4}

As the penitent sinner, contrite before God, discerns Christ's atonement in his behalf, and accepts this atonement as his only hope in this life and the future life, his sins are pardoned. This is justification by faith. Every believing soul is to conform his will entirely to God's will, and keep in a state of repentance and contrition, exercising faith in the atoning merits of the Redeemer, and advancing from strength to strength, from glory to glory. {9MR 301.1}

A little girl once asked me, "Are you going to speak this afternoon?" "No, not this afternoon," I replied. "I am very sorry," she said. "I thought you were going to speak, and I asked several of my companions to come. Will you please ask the minister to speak easy words, that we can understand. Please tell him that we do not understand big words, like 'justification' and 'sanctification.' We do not know what they mean." {RH, September 9, 1902 par. 4}

The little girl's complaint contains a lesson worthy of consideration by teachers and ministers. Are there not many who would do well to heed the request, "Speak easy words, that we may know what you mean"? {RH, September 9, 1902 par. 5}

Make your explanations clear. I know that there are many who do not understand much of what is said to them. Let the light flowing from the great Teacher flood your mind. Let his Spirit mold and fashion your speech, cleansing it from all dross. Speak as to little children, remembering that there are many well advanced in years who are but little children in understanding. {RH, September 9, 1902 par. 6}

The only way in which he could set and keep men right was to make himself visible and familiar to their eyes. That men might have salvation he came directly to man, and became a partaker of his nature. {ST, January 20, 1890 par. 6}

APL, does imputed righteousness play a role in our salvation?

asygo - I would repeat the quote I presented above to answer your question
What do you think?

Well I would say we are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit, that is what Christ explained in being born again, and grace is sufficient for our past sins even at the last minute and Christ righteousness covers us when we are judged before God.

The law demands perfect obedience. Do you agree? (that is a question)

Declaring a sinner to be pardoned without a transformation only fools ourselves.

Justified by faith
MR No. 629 (8MR 355.1 to 357.1)

Justification by faith is to many a mystery. A sinner is justified by God when he repents of his sins. He sees Jesus upon the cross of Calvary. Why all this suffering? The law of Jehovah has been broken. The law of God’s government in heaven and earth has been transgressed, and the penalty of sin is pronounced to be death. But “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Oh what love, what matchless love! Christ, the Son of God, dying for guilty man! {8MR 355.1}

The sinner views the spirituality of the law of God and its eternal obligations. He sees the love of God in providing a substitute and surety for guilty man, and that substitute is One equal with God. This display of grace in the gift of salvation to the world fills the sinner with amazement. This love of God to man breaks every barrier down. He comes to the cross, which has been placed midway between Divinity and humanity, and repents of his sins of transgression, because Christ has been drawing him to Himself. He does not expect the law to cleanse him from sin, for there is no pardoning quality in the law to save the transgressors of the law. He looks to the atoning Sacrifice as his only hope, through repentance toward God—because the laws of His government have been broken—and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ as the One who can save and cleanse the sinner from every transgression. {8MR 355.2}

The mediatorial work of Christ commenced with the commencement of human guilt and suffering and misery, as soon as man became a transgressor. The law was not abolished to save man and bring him into union with God. But Christ assumed the office of his surety and deliverer in becoming sin for man, that man might become the righteousness of God in and through Him who was one with the Father. Sinners can be justified by God only when He pardons their sins, remits the punishment they deserve, and treats them as though they were really just and had not sinned, receiving them into divine favor and treating them as if they were righteous. They are justified alone through the imputed righteousness of Christ. The Father accepts the Son, and through the atoning sacrifice of His Son accepts the sinner. {8MR 355.3}

A general faith is entertained by many, and their assent is given that Christianity is the only hope for perishing souls. But to believe this intellectually is not sufficient to the saving of the soul. James tells us in his epistle that the devils believe and tremble, but this is not a saving faith that will justify them. There are thousands who believe in the gospel and in Jesus Christ as the world’s Redeemer, but they are not saved by that faith. This is only an assent of their judgment to that which is a fact, but it does not transform the character. They do not repent and have that faith that lays hold upon Christ as their sin-pardoning Saviour; their belief is not unto repentance. There must be a faith that accomplishes its work for the receiver, a faith in the atoning sacrifice, a faith that works by love and purifies the soul. {8MR 356.1}

There will be need not only of faith but of a trust in God. This is the true faith of Abraham, a faith which produced fruits. “Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness.” James 2:23. When God told him to offer his son as a sacrifice it was the same voice that had spoken telling him to leave his country and go into a land which God would show him. Abraham was saved by faith in Christ as verily as the sinner is saved by faith in Christ today. {8MR 356.2}

The faith that justifies always produces first true repentance, and then good works, which are the fruit of that faith. There is no saving faith that does not produce good fruit. God gave Christ to our world to become the sinner’s substitute. The moment true faith in the merits of the costly atoning sacrifice is exercised, claiming Christ as a personal Saviour, that moment the sinner is justified before God, because he is pardoned.—Manuscript 46, 1891. (“Justified by Faith,” January 6, 1891.) {8MR 357.1}
Released June 21, 1978.

The leprous person was banned from society. In order to be allowed back in to society, the sickness needed to be healed, removed.