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Not everyone gets to go to heaven!
God wants every person to be with Him in heaven, but to get there, you must come HIS way.
Many think that if they are just a good person or if they do good deeds then God will let them enter heaven when they die.
That kind of thinking is a slap in the face of God!
God sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer, bleed and die on the cruel cross of Calvary to pay your sin debt and make a way for you to get to heaven.
If you think you can get to heaven any other way but by Christ, then you are saying that God was a fool for sacrificing His own Son when you have the goodness within yourself to earn your way to heaven.
So, what does God say about doing good works or having your good out weigh your bad?
Isaiah 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
God says that even the very best you can do, the best works you can create, are like "filthy rags" in His sight.
The filthy rags God speaks about refers to the bandages used to wrap the lepers sores. Disgusting to even think about, but God looks at the very best of our goodness and says they are filthy.
Ephesians 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.
If we could work our way to God then we could "boast" or brag about how we worked our way to heaven.
None of us are good enough to measure up to God's requirements.
Romans 3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
When the Bible says we have "come short" of the glory of God, it means that we have missed the mark. Like an archer, we can try to shoot at God's target, but we always come up short. It's not that we miss wide or shoot too far. We can't measure up or hit the target of righteousness God requires in order for us to enter heaven.
We can not measure up and we are sinners in the eyes of God.
Because we are sinners, there is a price that we must pay.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death;
The death that God refers to in Romans 6:23 is a spiritual death.
All people will die physically, but those that reject Christ as Savior will also die spiritually. They will be separated from God when they are cast into the lake of fire.
So, we can't measure up, we can't work our way in and we can't do enough good to impress God.
What then is our hope of making it to heaven and missing hell?
Well, God loved us even when we were unlovable.
Romans 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
When we were enemies of God, He loved us so much that He sent His Son to die for our sins.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Since Jesus, the only One Who was righteous, died on the cross of Calvary, He now offers His righteousness to anyone that will accept Him and the finished work He did on the Cross of Calvary.
Romans 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Paul made it plain as it can be:
Acts 16:31 And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.
But this belief is more than just believing with your head. It is more than an intellectual belief. This belief is trusting and believing in your heart.
You must believe in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
1Corinthians 15:3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
If you will believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, asking Jesus to forgive you of your sins and ask Him to be you LORD and Savior, Jesus will save your soul!
You will be made a child of God!
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