Romans 10:3 – For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.
When confronted with the idea that there is indeed an after-life – that there really is such a thing as heaven, we naturally find ourselves asking the question, ‘How do we get there?’ A common idea of heaven is that it is a good, beautiful, and peaceful place – a place where “good” people go to live after they die. Therefore, in order to get into heaven, people decide the way to get there is to be as good as they possibly can be in this life. There’s a problem with this mindset, and that is nobody is good all the time. If we factor in our thought life – the things we think or say to ourselves without saying them out loud, we are “on the hook”, or accountable, for those as well. With this truth, we are then challenged with the image of a scale or a balance with one side having all the good we’ve done and the other side having all the “not good”, or evil we’ve done. We are left with a subjective hope that our good will outweigh our bad at the end of our lives, and this will get us into heaven when we die.
The Bible clearly states there is a heaven. However, Scripture does not at all offer some subjective manner or mysterious entity making the final decision on weighing out our good vs. our bad in determining whether or not we will go to heaven when we die. First of all, we need a clear measurement of what is “good”. God gave His definition of goodness to Moses with the Ten Commandments. These are often referred to in Scripture as “the Law”. Romans 7:12 confirmed the goodness of the Law, “Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.” With this definition of goodness, people tried to live exactly according to the Law as the basis of pleasing God and getting into heaven. There’s a problem, though. With one exception, nobody has ever been able to live a perfectly good life. Psalm 14:3 tells us, “There is none who does good, no not one.”
Now you might be saying, “Wait a minute, I’ve done some good things in my life. How can the Bible say no one has done good?” Yes – most everyone has done some good things in their lives, but the point the Psalm writer is making is no one can live a perfectly good life. James 2:10 clearly points out that if we commit just one sin – violate just one of the commandments – we have failed in perfectly complying with the Law. God demands perfect holiness from us. Leviticus 20:26 says, “And you shall be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be Mine.” Jesus said in Matthew 5:46, “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
With this truth of requiring perfection, we then have some problems with this idea of how to get into heaven – by our good outweighing our bad. If the Bible says we need to be perfect and holy before God – to be perfectly good, but it also says that no one is good – how do we get into heaven? We must arrive at the point where we see that all our efforts to be good are ultimately flushed down the toilet when they are counterbalanced with the evil we commit in either thought or deed. Are we all doomed?
Remember we said earlier regarding there was one exception of a person that lived a perfect life – One Who was completely good – the man Christ Jesus (Hebrews 4:15). Here is the truth, and the truth is really good news for everyone. It is not our goodness that gets us into heaven. It is our faith – our belief in the truth of Who Jesus is – God in human form carrying with Him all the perfect goodness of God – that gets us into heaven. We don’t have to rely on our good works to get us into heaven. By believing in His goodness – proven to us by dying on a Cross for the payment of the penalty for our sins – we have the assurance – not some subjective hope – of going to heaven and spending eternity at peace with God.
Jesus said in John 14:6, that no one can go to [God] the Father but through Him. That may sound narrow-minded to the average person. But think about this question – do you want to rely on your goodness or Jesus’ goodness to make sure you’ll get into heaven? The Cross should give you your answer.