"Can I Get to Heaven By Being Good?"

Most people are confident they will get to heaven by doing good.
    “I'm trying to be good.”
    “I'm not a bad person.”
    “There are certainly worse people than me out there.”

    The hardest question then becomes: How do you know when you've been good enough?

    The answer is: no one is ever good enough. The Bible clearly teaches that no one gets to heaven by being good. The reality is that it's impossible to earn our way in -- we'd have to be perfect to qualify! It's not that God is setting us up for failure by requiring perfection. It's because God is perfect and without even any hint of sin or evil. In heaven there cannot be even a trace of wrong – that's why it's so wonderful!

    Sin is any bad, selfish, or wrong thing that we are or do. It includes everything from lying, hating, stealing, cheating – all the way to murder and worse!

    God gave us each the choice to sin or not to sin. The first time we ever did anything wrong, we gave up our place with him in heaven based on our perfection and our own goodness. And each time we sin, even if it's not very often, we recurrently give up our place with God in heaven, choosing by our behavior to be separated from him forever. There's no middle ground.

     To make things worse, we have never not sinned. We can never go a full hour, let alone a full day or a full life, without some kind of sin: pride, anger, selfishness, whatever. But let's say that you actually could live a life in which you averaged only one sin a day. Shall we do the math? An average life span of 72 years would mean 26,298 sins.

     Now envision the moment you stand before God. Remember he is a perfect God and heaven is a perfect place. And you? You would be perfect too, except for those 26,000 or so failures on record. Separating you and God is an insurmountable wall of imperfection and sin, even if you've been really good.

     But there is good news! The reality is even better than earning your way into heaven by being good. The truth is that even though we all have done things wrong, and we all chose to give up our place in heaven when we first sinned, God gave us a substitute. This substitute would take on the punishment for anything we have ever done wrong and give us the chance to be able to go to heaven even though we haven't been perfect. The substitute was Jesus, God's own son. Jesus was the only one to ever live a perfect life, and he died to make it possible for us to have a way to get to heaven and spend eternity with God. This was God's gift to us, even though we didn't deserve it. But death couldn't hold Jesus, the son of God! Jesus rose from the dead and is alive in heaven right now.

     Picture this – you are born in a dark prison cell, where your hands and feet are chained to the wall. Everyone else around you is in the same situation, and you grow up thinking this is normal. One day a guy comes into your cell with a key. He says that he can undo your chains, but then you have to follow him closely to get out because you don't know the way. You've never seen the outside, so it's hard to let go of what you've always known. But what is waiting for you outside this prison cell is so much greater than you could ever know. All you have to do is trust him and follow.

      In the same way, the only thing you need to do to get to heaven is accept this gift, this substitute that God gave us, and to trust and follow. It is so simple. Even so, it can be very hard to admit that there is something you can't do alone; to give up control and to follow. To find out how to do this, follow this link.

     Going to church every week and doing good things will not help you get to heaven. But once you know the amazing things God has done for you, you will want to worship him at church and you will want to do the things the Bible says, and to help other people. It's not a chore, like earning an allowance. It's a joy to know that you are free from the “chains” of sin in your life, and you will want to help others to see what God has done!