Greetings:
Good works won't get us to heaven.
We can't ever do enough good things, serve on enough good church committees, or raise enough money through good and noble works or teach enough Sunday School classes or sing in the choir to get us into heaven.
No matter how hard we try, we can not do enough good things to impress God for him to give us a 'free pass' through the gates of heaven.
I'm not saying good works are a bad thing.
Quite the contrary. We as Christians are looked to to do the good works, to care of the sick, to feed the hungry and help the poor. We are looked to head up efforts to raise the money so our churches will grow and save more souls, to reach out to the world and help spread the 'good news' that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and shortcomings. We are called to fervent prayer and commanded to tell a sinful world about God's mercy and forgiveness.
But those good things or good works won't open the guarded gates of heaven for us.
The one teaching that sets Christianity apart from other religions in the world is the teaching of God’s grace, his undeserved love to each of us.
We need to recognize that we are by nature, sinners and don’t for a minute deserve God’s love.
But we are blessed that he gives it to us anyway.
We don’t need to do good things in order to earn eternal life with God. We don’t need to perform certain rituals or keep certain laws in order to get into heaven.
Jesus already did that for us with his perfect life and his atoning sacrifice for our sins.
God has been pouring out his grace upon us since the very beginning of time.
God was caring for us even before he created Adam and Eve.
In Genesis 1:26-26 we read that the entire world was created for the good of mankind, the crown of his creation .
After Adam and Eve sinned against God, he didn’t get rid of the world and start over again saying he must have messed up.
No, he promised to send us a Savior to fix everything.
It's a fact that God cares for each and every one of us even before we came into the world.
King David proclaimed to God in Psalm 139:13-16 (NLT): “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.”
Although God has made and cared for each one of us, we are still plagued by our sinful natures passed down from Adam and Eve. Because of this, we can’t possibly live a worthy enough life to earn or work our way into heaven and live with God forever.
A person doesn’t get to heaven by doing good things or being viewed by the world as a "good person."
Paul tells us, in 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NLT), “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”
Jesus took our sins upon himself and gave us his righteousness, so God no longer sees the sins that made us guilty of breaking his Law.
Christians call this justification, which is a legal term for being declared “not guilty.”
When we are saved and accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we need to believe it and accept it and be forgiven.
That's the starting point, not the end.
God looks at our record and sees no crimes, no sin, because Jesus put all of that on his record. Because of Jesus’ atonement, God looks at us and sees what Jesus did, not what we did.
There’s no need for us to earn the “not guilty” verdict because Jesus has already earned it for us.
If you’re declared “not guilty” by a judge or a jury in a modern day court of law, you don’t go back into the courtroom and try to convince the judge and the jury that you really are innocent.
In the same way, God has declared us innocent – forgiven.
Be blessed.
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