How Good Must One Be to Get to Heaven?

How good does one have to be to get to heaven?

Will God accept sincerity?

Will God accept you if you do the best you can and lead a good life?

Can you get to heaven if, from this day forward, you serve the Lord?

Anyone who knows anything about God and His word knows that the answer to these questions must be AN EMPHATIC NO! (Romans 3:20, Romans 3:28)

It is not possible for any man to do or think anything that is good or acceptable before God (Isaiah 64:6).

God cannot and will not accept anything less than WHAT HE IS, which is absolute perfection.

He says in Leviticus 22:21, “It shall be perfect to be accepted.”

In order to get to heaven by our works, we must be as good as God, perfect in all things–perfect in heart, perfect in thought, perfect in works, PERFECTLY HOLY!

Is there, therefore, no hope?

Must we all perish forever?

NO!

Blessed be the Lord our God!

In Christ He has found a way to be both just and Justifier. He has found a way to make fallen, sinful people like us perfect–perfectly holy and perfectly accepted.

Now this perfection is not of us, in us, nor through us, nor the results of anything we do or have done. It is entirely the work of God’s free grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. God has taken Christ’s perfect righteousness and imputed it to us, making us to be the very righteousness of God in Him.

The penalty against sins was paid in full by the doing, suffering, and dying of our Lord Jesus as the sinner’s Substitute.

- Scott Richardson (1923-2010) served as pastor of Katy Baptist Church in Fairmont, West Virginia

 

Romans 2:6 Who will render to every man according to his deeds.

"The reward that the Lord is here said to render to every man according to his deeds; the sense is, not that the merit of every man, considered in himself, and without an eye to Christ, will form the standard of retribution. For, alas! if this were the case, everlasting condemnation must alike fall on all, for all the world; in the Adam-nature of an unregenerated, unrenewed state, become guilty before God, Romans 3:16. But the meaning is, (and indeed the verses which follow explain it,) as men are accepted in Christ, or as they reject Christ in their own souls. They (saith the Apostle) who seek for glory, and honor, and immortality, eternal life; that is, they seek those things in Christ. Indeed, nowhere else can they be found. Christ himself is eternal life. And they who have Christ, have eternal life in Him, and all the blessings connected with it, John 3:36. But to them that are contentious, that is, contend against Christ as the whole of salvation, and stand upon the bottom of their own works, either in whole or in part, there will be indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil. Hence this scripture is in this way very fully established. The Lord will render to every man according to his deeds. Here are the deeds of faith, and the deeds of works. And the issue is as might be expected. Reader! ponder well the subject. Think what a mercy it must be in that final day of account, which Paul calls, the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, to have a perfect, complete, and all-sufficient righteousness to stand in, for the justification of our persons before God. That can only be found in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if it be blessed then, so must it be now."

- excerpt from Robert Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary on Romans 2:1-11