Why should I let you into my Heaven?
If you were to die tonight and God were to ask you, ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?' what would you say?
Life’s most important question
If you were to die tonight and God were to ask you, ‘Why should Ilet you into my heaven?' what would you say?
That's a great question, but one for which many don't have an answer.
A significant number of people can think of no clear reason why God should let them into heaven.
Others reply, "I've tried my best to obey the Ten Commandments and to love others as I love myself;
I think overall I'm probably no worse than anyone else."
These people have a reason for their hope but a very uncertain reason.
If you are depending on your own goodness to get you into heaven, then you could never know for sure that is where you are going.
How good is good enough to meet God's standard?
What if you do something dreadful later on in life?
When anyone looks into their own heart and see all the wrong things that they think and do every single day, they would correctly conclude that they don't have any chance of going to heaven based on their own record.
Certainly I could never be sure of going to heaven on my own goodness.
Ephesians 2:8-10 – We cannot do anything to earn our salvation. God saves us by His grace through faith in Christ.
For I know the gravity of my sin and my inability to pay the price it incurred against the holy and eternal God who created me.
Romans 3:23 – Every person has sinned and is therefore separated from God.
Romans 6:23 – We have earned an eternal death penalty because of our sin.
John 3:16-18 – We were under condemnation, but because God loves us so much, He sent Jesus to provide a way of salvation.
But the Bible tells us we can know for sure that if we repent (turn away from) our sin and approach Jesus with a contrite heart, and fully acknowledge that it was His work on the cross that God will accept as the complete payment for our sin debt., He will forgive our sin and we will be with Him and worshiping Him throughout eternity.
Romans 5:8 – God showed His love for us by sending Jesus to die for us.
2 Corinthians 5:21 – Sinless Jesus, took our sin, so we could have His righteousness.
1 Peter 3:18 – Jesus, who was completely righteous, died for us, the unrighteous, so He could bring us to God.
The apostle John says, "I write these things to you WHO BELIEVE in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life" (1 John 5:13).
John wants us to know for sure that those who are reborn in Christ are going to heaven.
Assurance of eternal life constitutes the first Christian certainty. While John wrote his gospel to bring unbelievers to faith (John 20:31), he wrote the epistle to give believers confidence that they possessed eternal life. The false brethren’s departure left John’s congregations shaken (John 2:19).
He assured those who remained that since they adhered to the fundamentals of the faith (a proper view of Christ, obedience, love), their salvation was sure. eternal life. This does not refer primarily to a period of time but a person (John 20; John 17:3). Eternal life is a relationship with the person of Jesus Christ and possessing His nature.
How could we know such a thing for sure? Certainly we can't if it depends on our own goodness. But John explains how we can know this when he says, "This is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life" (1 John 5:11-12).
John explains it in simple terms. If we have Jesus, we have life. If we don't have Jesus, we don't have life.
Eternal life is God's free gift, which comes to us wrapped up in His Son. We receive Jesus Christ, and along with Him we receive life.
Turn our back on Jesus, and in the very same motion we are turning our back on heaven.
Romans 10:9-10 – We are saved through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
John 14:6 – Jesus is the way to God the Father.
Acts 4:12 – Jesus is the only name that can save us.
If you can understand that, then you understand why Christians can be sure about going to heaven.
If attaining heaven depends on our best efforts, it must always remain uncertain. But if heaven is simply received as a free gift based exclusively on the righteousness of Jesus, then we can know that we have it for sure.
As surely as we have received Jesus's perfect goodness and asked for all our rottenness to be laid on him, so surely we have received heaven.
Dressed in the breastplate of His righteousness, given to us as a free gift of grace, we can be utterly confident of our eternal future.
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Thank you