Were we Born Good? Are Children Good Enough to Enter Heaven?

At school,  children may be told that they are good or great, and self esteem, at least in The States, is considered more important than actual achievement. Kids are given trophies for participating in a sport, and sports and after school activities so often dominate life that it is hard to find time to actually teach our children that according to Jesus, they are not good enough. If we are parents, surely we are aware that our children were not born perfect and unless we give in to them at every turn they will remind us of their self centered rights.

Are Adults Good enough to Enter Heaven?

Adults may be better at disguising their imperfections, calling materialism “caring for the family” and manipulative office politics as “healthy ambition”, but we, like our children, fall far short of being good enough to enter Heaven. All of us desperately need a Savior, and His name is Jesus.

We all need Salvation from Eternal Death

Jesus means “the Lord is salvation”. That is what Jesus achieved on the first Good Friday: our salvation from eternal death.  He is the Lord God and He came to the earth as a human to grow up to be punished, receiving the punishment that we all deserve. In his letter to the Romans, Paul wrote: …”the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)

Jesus offers us the Gift of Eternal Life

Only God can give us the gift of eternal life that He invites us to receive. Jesus willingly died on the cross in our place. He understood that our sin (being self centered rather than being focused on pleasing God and living for Him) would lead to fatal consequences. Paul explains Jesus’ s amazing sacrifice in Romans 5: 6 : “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

We will never deserve God’s love. Even if we are not materialistic and even though we may help old ladies cross the road etc, etc…we can never be good enough to go to Heaven and to live with Jesus forever. Compared to God we are bad and we all desperately need Him. Unless Jesus deals with our bad attitudes and behavior we cannot expect to go to Heaven. If some how we arrived in Heaven with our selfish motives intact, our sin would pollute Heaven. No, we can’t arrive in that perfect place unless God intervenes and dramatically changes us. We need a heart transplant.

How should we respond to Jesus?

If you are a Christian I would like to encourage you to thank Jesus for what He suffered on Good Friday to rescue you from Hell.

If you are not yet a follower of Jesus, I would like to encourage you to consider how much Jesus loves you. Look beyond the cultural lie that persuades us that every type of life style is good, even if it totally contradicts the teaching of Jesus. Take a reality check and realize that even though you try to be good you can never earn your way into Heaven and neither can I.

If you have given up trying: good. Admit that you need Jesus’s help. Tell Him that you are sorry that you have ignored Him for so long and ask Him to forgive you, wash you clean and fill you with His love and power: the Holy Spirit (Himself). Jesus can turn your life around right now, filling you with His love that will enable you to love God and others: giving you a new heart. Don’t miss the opportunity to receive the most important gift.

What will you do with the Gift that Jesus Offers?

Let’s not rely on our goodness to enter Heaven one day. Instead let’s admit that we are by nature bad and we desperately need to depend on the wonderful gift that Jesus secured for us when He demonstrated His goodness,  dying for us on the cross. We need to humbly receive that gift and not assume that we already have it, or to dismiss it as unnecessary. Without the intervention of Jesus, none of us will ever be good enough to go to Heaven. Only He is good enough. Aren’t we privileged to have Jesus as our Savior?

This is a post from: WomenRespond.com

Are we Good Enough to Enter Heaven?

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Yesterday I taught the Bible to teenagers at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ club at my daughter, Alice’s, middle school. I wanted them to understand the differences between a child of God and a child of the devil. I drew two columns on the white board, one for each type of child. There is a tendency in this culture to either over or under emphasize the devil. The children are usually shocked when I mention him and they are also offended by “hell” considering it to be a bad swear word rather than a real place where many are heading.

The kids wanted me to create a third column for those people who were not Christians but did not intentionally get involved with devil worship or witchcraft. I explained that I could not as the Bible clearly teaches that unless we are rescued out of the kingdom of darkness by Jesus ( Colossians 1:13 ) we are under the power of the evil one and are children of the devil.

I taught from 1 John 3:7-10: “Dear children, don’t let anyone deceive you about this: When people do what is right, it shows that they are righteous, even as Christ is righteous. But when people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born into God’s family do not make a practice of sinning, because God’s life is in them. So they can’t keep on sinning, because they are children of God. So now we can tell who are children of God and who are children of the devil. Anyone who does not live righteously and does not love his brother does not belong to God.”

This passage does not say that by behaving well we can earn our way into the family of God. Instead it explains that when we become part of God’s family, Jesus enters us and because we are now led by the Holy Spirit, we are changed and we cannot keep sinning routinely (although we will still make mistakes).

How do we become part of God’s family? The teenagers who prepared their testimonies believed that baptism was the clear proof that someone had become a child of God. The Bible explains that baptism is symbolic of a believer passing from death to new life and this is a powerful image. The reality is that some people get baptized and then settle down to a life of sin with the smug assumption that they have done what it takes to go to heaven one day. A baptism must be accompanied by a dramatic spiritual new birth, if it is to be more than a historic ritual. John 1 explains that ..”to all who believed Him and accepted Him, he gave the right to become children of God.” They are reborn-not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan but a birth that comes from God.” God re- creates us when we respond to Him, believing and receiving Him, accepting Him as Lord of our new life and repenting of the messy lives we used to live.

Once we are under the leadership of Christ, rather than (wittingly or unwittingly) under the devil’s authority, we will change, so long as we really are living under the authority of Christ with His Spirit.1 John 2:3 says that ..”we can be sure that we know Him if we obey His commandments.” If we refuse to obey Jesus we are not His children. Jesus commands us to love one another in a Christ like way. 1 John 4:17 challenges us to copy Jesus. He showed us real love by giving up His life for us. Similarly, “..we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” This is made even more challenging by the following verse: “Dear children let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”

We are taught to be like Jesus: “Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did.” If we are Christians we will obey Him and resemble Him, otherwise we are not His children. I John makes this very clear. A very important part of being a Christian is loving God and loving other Christians. Elsewhere we are also told to love our enemies: we are commanded to love everyone, but if Christians fail to love those who are members of the body of Christ, how can we effectively help people who are not part of the Christian family? We know that walking as Jesus did involved meeting all sorts of people, to heal them, to cast out demons, to teach them the truth and to invite them into a relationship with Him. Without Christ’s love we will fail to reach out to those who so desperately need His love.

If we are God’s children are we letting Him lead us, are we obedient, do we give up our lives to help others, are we asking Jesus to fill us with His Holy Spirit? Thankfully Jesus will forgive us and re-instate us as he did with Peter. We are told in 1 John that we will not continue to live a life of sin once we have been dramatically re-created as Christians, as Jesus is in charge of us. I John 1:8-10 encourages us that when we confess our sins Jesus will forgive us and purify us. Sin should be the exception rather than the routine. Let’s make sure that we are truly living as children of God: forgiven, transformed and radiating the love of Jesus in action. We can be full of good intentions but thankfully Jesus did not just profess His love for us but He demonstrated it on the cross. Let’s follow his lead and show others that we are truly God’s children expressing His love, extending His hand of mercy. If you are not yet a child of God, ask Him to rescue you from the kingdom of darkness and receive Him so that He will live in you, dramatically changing your life.

This is a post from: WomenRespond.com

A Child of God, or a Child of the Devil?

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My son James, who is a junior at high school, was writing an essay about the American Dream and how this ideal has changed for Americans through the centuries. Last night he asked me to edit his writing and it was this that prompted me to think about this further. James compared the colonists’ focus as pleasing God rather than themselves. Their ultimate hope was heaven and this was their “dream”. At the time of the revolutionary war the dream was now related to freedom. Unless they were free and independent they could not be fulfilled. The Romantics were intrigued with nature which was reflected in their art and literature. The American dream for them was to focus on the natural world, to escape from the urban, to see this as their ultimate goal.

I am sure that many other influences have affected the “dream” through the years but I thought that the analysis of the colonists, the patriots and the romantics was fascinating. I was particularly intrigued by the reference to Jonathan Edwards, one of the “colonists” who influenced the “Great Awakening” revival and encouraged many to focus on Heaven rather than on worldly pursuits.

Jonathan Edwards wrote “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” My son, James , said that many of his class mates were put off by the strong references to God’s anger and man’s pitiful nature in Edwards famous sermon preached in 1741. However, I see it as a necessary warning to those who have not recognized that without God’s mercy they are on the way to hell. Edwards says “There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any moment, out of Hell, but the mere pleasure of God.”

Unless we respond to Jesus we are incapable of correcting our own sinful nature, to make ourselves good enough for Heaven. In today’s Christian market place we are accustomed to hearing the “prosperity Gospel” and Christian book stores are full of self help advice on how to be a better Christian mother, lover, sister etc…. If we are not careful we will miss the point. Unless we repent and believe in Christ and obediently follow His Word, we are on a dangerous, wrong path. There is a real danger that we will try and improve ourselves without falling at Christ’s feet, seeking mercy from His righteous anger. Let’s make sure that our friends understand why we need to submit to Christ. Avoiding mentioning hell might be politically sensitive but we all need to know that hell is a place where we deserve to go and we can only avoid it if we seek Christ’s mercy and forgiveness.

In Edwards’ sermon: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” he refers to the likely response of someone who finds himself in hell. This individual had planned to avoid this awful destination but had failed to follow Christ’s path, following his own dream instead:

“No, I never intended to come here: I had laid out matters otherwise in my mind; I thought I should contrive well for myself — I thought my scheme good. I intended to take effectual care; but it came upon me unexpected; I did not look for it at that time, and in that manner; it came as a thief — Death outwitted me: God’s wrath was too quick for me. Oh, my cursed foolishness! I was flattering myself, and pleasing myself with vain dreams of what I would do hereafter; and when I was saying, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction came upon me.”

We should be loving, welcoming, sensitive and kind yet not to the extent of avoiding telling the truth to those who without Christ will perish. Edwards was preaching a sermon in church. It seems totally appropriate to challenge people directly in church: to wake people up to the necessity of pleading for Christ’s forgiveness rather than assuming that Jesus will pamper them.

Many people do not attend church. They may be pursuing the American Dream or a version of this: prosperity or freedom or New Age ideology. Little seems to have changed. People continue to dream but Christians are Jesus’ representatives on earth and like Edwards, we can help them understand our fate. We need to show, through our behavior, that we are God’s children, changed by Him to reach out in kindness and self sacrifice. Our generous and loving response to those who are not Christians will make it more likely that they will want to listen to God’s message of hope and warning. If we genuinely care about their eternal future we will explain about heaven and hell. We might find Jonathan Edwards’ fire and brimstone preaching offensive, but avoiding spelling out the truth to both Christians and non Christians is ultimately much more offensive.

The parable in the Bible about Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16: 19-31) reminds us of the reality of hell. The rich man goes to hell and the beggar, Lazarus, goes to heaven. The rich man wants his brothers to be warned about the horrible reality of hell. His life of luxury could not help the rich man in his eternal plight and his desire for his relatives is not a life of ease or of political correctness, but that they should be told the truth. I want to emphasize that we should avoid any type of American dream that fixes our attention on present riches, or on created things rather than on the Creator. The message of the Bible will be offensive to some but it will persuade others to seek God’s mercy. Jesus received God’s righteous anger when He died on the cross, receiving the punishment that we deserve. We can only expect God to avert His anger if we follow Him on His terms and seek His forgiveness. In contrast, worldly dreams may be inspiring but if they are not true, we will be bitterly disappointed one day.

This is a post from: WomenRespond.com

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