Getting into Heaven

Do you believe in Heaven and eternal life?  Do you want to go to Heaven and have eternal life? If you answer yes, then how do imagine getting into Heaven and have eternal life? If you answer no, then why are you here?

Who Gets To Go To Heaven?

There may be as many opinions on who gets to go to Heaven as there are people. Here are a few of the most popular ones:

Whoever obeys the Ten Commandments will go to heaven. Whoever goes to church will go to heaven. Whoever does more good things than bad things will go to heaven. Whoever believes in God will go to heaven.

Sound familiar? Which one do you believe in? Well they are all wrong! If none of these are correct, who gets to go to heaven?

This is what the Bible says: John 3:16-18 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.   Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

Still say, no I can get there by myself? Let’s look at one of the most thought of ways to get into Heaven. Whoever does more good things than bad things will go to Heaven.

This is also called “balance scale” judgment, and is one of the most common wrong beliefs. This opinion is wrong because the Bible never states that doing more good things than bad things will get you into heaven.  

Paul explains that going to heaven (or “being saved”) is a free gift of God.  Ephesians 2: 7-10 - Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

Paul also explains in Romans 6:23 - For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Even those who profess that they know God will not get into Heaven. Why even Satan believes in God. Show me where in the Bible it says, if you believe in God you will get into Heaven.  You may know there is a God and profess that you believe in Him, but unless you have a relationship with Jesus, you will not get into Heaven.

What does it mean to have a "relationship with Jesus Christ"?  It means that you believe that Jesus was born, lived, died, and was raised from the dead.

Most people of today can understand “religion”, can understand a rational assent to religious principles, theology, doctrine, can understand adherence to a belief-system, or devotion to an ideology or an organization. Today’s man can even understand "spirituality" if it is defined as the serenity of "well-being", or devotion to a meaningful cause, or the recollection of an ecstatic experience, or conformity to a moral ideal.

But is it possible for today’s man, the non-Christian, to understand what it means to "have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ"? Let Paul explain - 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 - The unspiritual self, just as it is by nature, can’t receive the gifts of God’s Spirit. There’s no capacity for them. They seem like so much silliness. Spirit can be known only by spirit—God’s Spirit and our spirits in open communion. Spiritually alive, we have access to everything God’s Spirit is doing, and can’t be judged by unspiritual critics. Isaiah’s question, “Is there anyone around who knows God’s Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing?” has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ’s Spirit.

What does having a relationship with Jesus look like? It is just like having a relationship with you friends, or your mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, or any family member.  You must spend time with them, to get to know them, hang out with them, talk with them, and even have hard times together.  This is the same for Jesus.

But you say Jesus isn’t living here anymore; I can’t see Him, so how can I spend time with Him?  You can start by talking to Him through whatever means, be it prayer or even a normal conversation. But you must spend time with Him to get to know Him and then He will show you who He is. He will begin to appear everywhere and in everyone that is looking for Him, because you know Him.

So remember that if you desire to live a more fulfilled life, enter into Heaven, and have eternal life, you must accept the fact that Jesus is the only way to God.

John 3:34-36 “The One that God sent speaks God’s words. And don’t think he rations out the Spirit in bits and pieces. The Father loves the Son extravagantly. He turned everything over to him so he could give it away—a lavish distribution of gifts. That is why whoever accepts and trusts the Son gets in on everything, life complete and forever! And that is also why the person who avoids and distrusts the Son is in the dark and doesn’t see life. All he experiences of God is darkness, and an angry darkness at that.”