Good works won't get you in

Greetings:
Good works alone 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 enough 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 agape love for 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.
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.”
That's the starting point, not the end.
Continue to do the good works for which we have all be called to do, but know they are not what will get us to heaven.
Be blessed.