Most people who say they believe in God also believe that heaven exists. Sadly, many of these people believe that they are probably going to heaven after they die because they are basically good people. And I say sadly, because the clear teachings of the Bible tell us that the requirement to getting into heaven isn’t goodness, but forgiveness. Pastor Greg Laurie sums it up very clearly when he shared: “Heaven is not for good people, it’s for forgiven people.”1
The Bible is the only book that states that man is spiritually dead because of sin and that a holy God can never tolerate our lifetime of sins living in His presence. Fortunately, the Bible is also the only book that has a remedy for our sin problem. And that remedy is Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to forgive all of our sins.
God was faced with a dilemma. His supreme holiness demands payment for sin. And the idea that if we can do enough good works, that these good works would somehow offset our sins, is totally unscriptural. Fortunately for the world while God’s holiness demands payment for sin, His love offers us pardon. You see Christ, because He was sinless, was able to take our sins on His own body and act as a substitutionary payment on our behalf to the Father. And in turn Jesus imputed to us His righteousness so that when God looks at us He no longer sees a sinner but a saint filled with the righteousness of Christ.
As a result of this amazing exchange we as Christians now satisfy heaven’s entrance requirement of being sinless and forgiven by virtue of Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross.
All other belief systems in God are works based. And the problem is that no amount of good works are able to address the sin issue that all of us are faced with. Only Jesus is able to bridge the gap between an infinitely holy God and a world full of spiritually dead sinners.
My friends heaven has an entrance requirement and only Christianity offers a solution and a way into its perfect confines – Jesus!
1 TOP 25 QUOTES BY GREG LAURIE (of 96) | A-Z Quotes (azquotes.com)