Don’t all good people go to heaven?

AN HONEST QUESTION

“I’m a pretty decent, good person. I look after those around me – that’s what Jesus told us to do, isn’t it? Surely God wouldn’t shut someone out of heaven if they are kind, loving, and thoughtful?!”

The Bible doesn’t picture heaven as a boring, floating-around-on-clouds-strumming-harps kind of life. It points us instead to the renewed world God is one day going to make. It’s a real, physical, human existence.

So who will be in this amazing recreated world> Three truths about heaven help us think this question through.

HEAVEN IS A “PERFECT” PLACE

When we talk about “good people”, we mean people who aren’t perfect, but are more good than bad (no one is perfect!) Heaven isn’t good, it’s perfect – “nothing impure will ever enter it” (Revelation 21:27). It’s great to know heaven is a perfect place with nothing less than “100% pure” in it. It would be great to live somewhere better than the best we can imagine or experience in this life!

But heaven’s perfect standards means that just being “good” isn’t good enough to get in.

That leaves us all with a problem. We can all think of things we’ve done, said, and thought that are less than perfect. And we can’t make up for those things: a small black mark on a white shirt makes it less than 100% clean, however white the rest of it is.People like us have no place in heaven.

HEAVEN IS BEING WITH JESUS

Jesus said that in heaven he would sit with his friends, eating and drinking (Luke 22:29-30). At the centre of heaven is Jesus’ throne, and people there will love and serve him (Revelation 22:3). So if we’re good people but don’t want Jesus to be our king, we are saying we don’t actually want to be in heaven – we’d rather miss out.

And God’s Son Jesus also warned: “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words…[I] will be ashamed of him when [I] come in [my] Father’s glory with the holy angels” (Mark 8:38). If we won’t let Jesus be king in our lives, he won’t want us in heaven – however good or bad we are.

HEAVEN IS OPEN TO ALL

No one is good enough to go to a perfect heaven. We’ve all “sinned” – rejected Jesus. But he “died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Jesus died and was separated from God so that imperfect people don’t have to experience that beyond death. He died to offer us his status as God’s child, with a place in the family home with God – heaven.

So the way to perfect life for ever is open to anyone, “good’ or “bad” – if they accept Jesus’ death in their place.

YES, BUT…

“If knowing Jesus is the only way to heaven…what about other religions?“

“This is all about the future. What does Christianity have to say about the point of life now?“

FURTHER STUDY

Thanks to the internet, we have an incredible number of resources at our fingertips. In an abundance of information, however, the challenge is often finding the right thing to study. With this in mind, we’ve curated this list of articles and videos for you as you continue your investigation into the topic explored in this article.