by Jeremy Paschall
A teacher asked the children in her Sunday School class, "If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would I get into heaven?"
"NO!" the children all answered.
"If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard, and kept everything neat and tidy, would I get into heaven?"
Again, the answer was "NO!"
"Well," she continued, "then how can I get to heaven?"
In the back of the room, a five-year-old boy shouted out, "You gotta be dead!"
Children have a unique ability to tell it just like it is, don’t they? But the children in that class understood something that most older folks have not yet learned — that entrance into heaven is not attained by all the good works we may do.
We sometimes hear people say, “I’m sure that so-and-so will go to heaven because they’ve done so many wonderful things.” Or maybe we even take confidence in our own accomplishments thinking that we have done more good deeds than others we know. But regardless of how many great things we have done, it simply will not be enough to get us into heaven.
We can never “earn” our way into the presence of God. Our very best efforts fall far short. Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:4-5: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).”
Paul said our salvation is by grace — favor that we do not deserve. God loved us enough to send His Son to earth that we might be saved (John 3:16). Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father by through Me” (John 14:6). How can one get to heaven? Only by God’s grace expressed in the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
But does that mean that there is nothing required of us to get into heaven? All we have to do is accept by faith that God’s grace will save us? That’s not what James said. “What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?... Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself” (2:14,17). James said faith that does not act is dead, unproductive, and worthless.
So as long as one’s faith in the grace of God is active, doing something — it doesn’t matter what it is doing — then that person is going to heaven? It’s not quite that simple. Matthew 19:16-22 records the story of a young man coming to Jesus to ask, “What good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?” Since they were still under the Old Testament Law, Jesus told the young man to keep the Commandments. The young man indicated that he was doing just that, but asked, “What am I still lacking?” When Jesus told him to sell all that he had, give the proceeds to the poor, and follow Him, the young man left sorrowful because he was not willing to do quite that much. What would it have taken for that young man to have eternal life? Doing all that Jesus asked of him. “Jesus said, ‘Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter” (Matthew 7:21).