I am sure you have heard people say, “I’m a good person won’t that get me to heaven?” Others say, “But look at all the good works they have done, isn’t that enough to get them to heaven?” Being good and doing good works is great but getting into heaven is not a matter of good works but of being perfectly righteous.
You see the problem is not doing enough good works to outweigh the bad, but one of sin. And it’s because we are all sinners that none of us are able to stand before a perfectly holy God on our own merits. Charles Spurgeon said it well when he shared: “One might better try to sail the Atlantic in a paper boat than try to get to Heaven on good works.”1 (Isaiah 64:6) states the universal condition of mankind for we read: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”
Since as (Romans 3:23) says: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” we see that none of us are able to stand before a holy God on our own merits. No matter how many good works we do they can never erase the fact that we are sinners and that as sinners we can never have access to heaven.
But praise God that His love for us is so great that He took it upon Himself to solve this problem by sending His own Son, Jesus Christ, to bear the punishment for all of our sins. Through Christ’s death on the cross He took our sins and gave us His righteousness and forgiveness. Not only does God’s forgiveness remove our sins, but Christ’s death imputes His perfect righteousness to us, thus allowing us our passports into heaven.
While we see that so-called “good people” can’t enter heaven on their own merits, because they are still sinners, they can enter heaven by accepting God’s gracious offer of forgiveness through Christ. And my friends this is what makes Christianity so unique in that all other religions teach doing good works can earn favor with their gods, while the Christian faith says we are hopelessly lost in our own attempts to please God by our good works. But what we could never do on our own Christ did for us by His substitutionary death at Calvary. At the cross the great exchange took place – our sins for His righteousness. Thus, when we die, if we have accepted Christ as our Savior, we can freely enter heaven because we are now clothed with His perfect righteousness!