Question

I just finished watching the podcast with Raz Zauber. In the last ten minutes you referred to observing commandments not out of recognition of a person's obligation to observe them before God, but rather out of fear of punishment / reward in the near or distant future / some kind of religious experience. I understood the discussion to be about people who do acknowledge the Creator and His commandments, but whose motivation comes from those factors. You argued that such commandment-observance has no religious significance at all, and although I am prepared to stretch and accept such an interpretation of the Talmudic and Mishnah statement, "from not for its own sake one comes to for its own sake"—that the "not for its own sake" in itself is devoid of significance—in Maimonides, on Shema and "And it shall come to pass, if you surely listen," it seems that service not for its own sake of this kind, for the sake of personal gain, despite its inferiority, is desirable in itself. (Mainly in the Guide for the Perplexed, but also in the Laws of Repentance and in the Commentary on the Mishnah.)
And regarding the parallel from the pious of the nations of the world, in Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 4a, the Talmud distinguishes between one who gives this sela to charity so that his son may live—between a Jew and the nations of the world. (There it is actually explained that there may be cases in which the gentile would even be considered wicked, and not only wise, as with one who keeps the seven Noahide commandments out of broad understanding, and yet a Jew would still be considered completely righteous.)