Question: Will God Let Me Into Heaven If I'm a Good Person?

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Question: Will God Let Me Into Heaven If I’m a Good Person?

9 August 2009 No Comment

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I enjoy perusing the questions on yahoo answers and I see this question come up from time to time. Will God let me into heaven if I’m a good person? I decided to ask this question on yahoo answers to see what responses I would get. I received a lot of responses but decided to share 5 that represent the rest. Which of these responses do you think are correct according to the bible?

1. As long as you do Gods law.
Church, confession, ect……..

2. Yes, all people of good nature in every faith will reach heaven before the bad in every Faith.

3. Since I am not God I do not know. I would think it is a fair assumption.

4. I don’t believe in a god, but I believe if there is he will accept us if we are good no matter what our religion.

5. In the book of Romans, the Bible teaches us that we are all sinners and that none of us is good (by God’s comparison) enough to enter heaven. Therefore, God sent His Son Jesus Christ to cleanse us from all sin so that by trusting in His Sacrifice on the cross we will be able to go to heaven. Ephesians 2:8,9 tells us that it is by faith and not our works that we are saved. We must trust Jesus to enter in.

If you choose the last answer you would be correct. Let’s look at the above answers and compare them to what the bible says. The answer, “As long as you do God’s law, church confession, etc.”, is incorrect because in order to get to heaven you would have to obey God’s law perfectly. God’s standard is that He doesn’t allow any sin. Habakkuk 1:13 says, “Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, And You can not look on wickedness with favor”. God’s standard is high and no one is able to keep God’s law perfectly. If you disagree, then take the good person test.

Answers 2 and 4 are similar in that they both believe that it doesn’t matter what religion you belong to because if you are good you will go to heaven. But Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” We can find salvation with no other. The reason for this is that Jesus is the Son of God, the third person in the trinity. To not worship Jesus is to not worship God.

The other issue is that the bible says that there are none who are good, none who seek for God (Romans 3:10). Now someone may disagree and say, “I’m a good person because I treat others with respect, I do unto others as I would have them do unto me, and I give to charity”.

But James 2:10 says, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.”

How is this possible? How can you be guilty of all sins if you have only stumbled on one thing?

Well consider this, if you have broken the law, what does that make you? It makes you a law breaker. In God’s eyes that’s enough to send you to hell. God is Holy and He never sins. He will not tolerate or allow any sin in His presence in heaven. And of course the reality is that no one has only sinned once. If we are honest with ourselves we must admit that we have sinned countless times. No only in action or deed, but in wrong attitudes of jealousy, anger, hate, bitterness, impure thoughts, or wrong intentions. Not only are we guilty of what we HAVE done but we are also guilty of what we HAVE NOT done. That includes the many times we have overlooked doing good because of selfishness on our part.

Romans 3:20 says, “because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin”. The law actually points out our sin and shows us where we have gone wrong. Read The Old Testament Law is Our Tutor.

So, if we understand that we can’t keep God’s law perfectly, and we recognize that following the law is not enough to justify us before God….then how is it possible to get to heaven?

It is only possible because Jesus took our punishment on the cross. When Jesus was on the cross the Father poured out His wrath for all of our sin and Jesus bore that sin for us. He was the ultimate sacrifice. He paid the price for our sin so that we could be saved. But we must believe in Him and trust Him for salvation.

The bible says that we are saved by faith alone. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” No one can feel proud that they earned their way to heaven. It is only by God’s grace that we can be saved and it is only through believing in Jesus Christ that we are made right before God.

Galatians 2:16 says, “know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.”

Titus 3:5 says, “he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit”. The Holy Spirit does a work in the life of someone who puts their faith in Jesus. The Holy Spirit renews the heart and creates a new person on the inside. Galatians 2:20 says “”I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” and 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”

If you want more information on how to be saved, read the Path of Salvation and 10 Verses that talk about salvation.

Grace to You answers a similar question: How good do I have to be to go to heaven?