According to the Bible, good people don’t go to heaven and bad
people don’t go to heaven, only forgiven people go to heaven.
For this discussion I’m using ‘heaven’ and ‘living with God
forever’ as the same idea.
The title assumes going to heaven is a good idea. Let me
share my experience. When I was young, I chose to go to heaven mostly because I
didn’t want to go to hell. However, growing up with youth’s short sighted view,
it seemed the people going to hell were having more fun than the people going
to heaven. I didn’t want to miss out so
I joined them whenever I could. That turned out to be not too
smart, because that ‘fun’ my myopic youthful aspirations found desirable was the tip of a deceiving iceberg which, I found out, could be really ugly below the waterline. It took me many years to grasp what Job knew when he said, “Honoring the Lord is true wisdom; forsaking evil is real understanding.” (Job 28:28 NLT Adapted)
smart, because that ‘fun’ my myopic youthful aspirations found desirable was the tip of a deceiving iceberg which, I found out, could be really ugly below the waterline. It took me many years to grasp what Job knew when he said, “Honoring the Lord is true wisdom; forsaking evil is real understanding.” (Job 28:28 NLT Adapted)
Young like I was, I thought going to heaven was about me and
what I wanted. Later I understood that heaven, and going there, was not about
me at all. God made both heaven and me and he made the rules, I didn’t. Heaven
was his idea, not mine. (Whoa. Stop. Think about that for a moment. ---- God
created the very best place, thing, and events in the entire universe and he
wants us to come enjoy it with him forever. That’s incredible!)
I don’t remember when, in my maturing process, I discovered
what choosing heaven means. The choice between heaven and hell was really easy,
but then I realized that if the choice was between heaven and the next best
thing, I’d still choose heaven because that is where the action really is –
nothing else compares! Only God can fill all five of our senses to
overcapacity, all at the same time. The Apostle Paul had a peek into heaven, and
he said, "No one has seen, heard, nor imagined what God has prepared for
those who love him." (1 Cor 2.9 ERV Adapted)
Heaven is God’s and he sets the rules about how to get
there. God is complete and perfect in every way, and heaven is complete and
perfect in every way. He cannot allow any imperfection to enter heaven, because
it would destroy the ambience.
Therefore, with “complete-and-perfect” as the standard, how
good do people have to be to go to heaven – “complete-and-perfect”! There is no
way anyone can live up to a “complete-and-perfect” standard, so we can say with
confidence, “Good people don’t go to heaven!” or to put it another way, “People
don’t go to heaven because they’re good!”
The Bible’s Good News about heaven could be the daily
headline, the highlight of nightly news, and the hot topic for every talk show:
At just the right time, God sent
Jesus to live among us, demonstrate God to us, and then die on a cross for us –
his death canceled all of our push-back against God. God raised Jesus on the
third day proving that his death canceled all of mankind’s push-back. Push-back
is paid for!
If we accept Jesus’s payment, God
accepts us! Simple as that! Anyone and everyone can go to heaven! We don’t go
to heaven because of what we have done, we go to heaven because of what Jesus
has done!
God forgives us because Jesus paid
for our push-back!
There you have it, we don’t have to be perfect, we only need
to recognize and accept that Jesus was perfect. Thereafter, God forgives us and
accepts us on Jesus’s terms, as perfect.
Heaven is God’s idea, Good people don’t go to heaven and bad
people don’t go to heaven, only forgiven people go to heaven!
No comments:
Post a Comment