None of us deserve to go to heaven. This truth should make sense to us. Who would ask God (now or at the time of our death) to give them what they deserve? That is a fatal question. A better request is God please give me what I don’t deserve. Heaven is a gift that is possible only through the removal of our sins. Since we are all sinners, we all need to be saved. If we think we have not sinned, we deceive ourselves and place ourselves in tremendous danger. There is no sin that will be allowed in heaven. We all sinned so it stands to reason that we are doomed unless we can get those sins removed.
God says that only though His forgiveness of sins by the shedding of Christ’s blood can the sins be removed. Christ died for our sins so we would not be required to die for them. The Gospel is not complicated. We can make it complicated however. We can judge God by looking at the failures of others, especially people who failed us and think that Christianity is not credible or that Christians are hypocrites. The truth is that Christianity is built on the Person of Jesus Christ not on the behavior of human beings. Christ is both God and Man. All others, every single person including ourselves, are failures without Christ.
No sin whatsoever will be allowed in heaven. Our confidence in being good enough must come through faith in Christ and no confidence in ourselves. We cannot do the impossible. We cannot ever be good enough. But Christ is good enough. Christ loves you so much that He laid down His life to remove all your sins to make it possible for you to have eternal life. Can you give thanks for heaven this Thanksgiving?
The following message was delivered by Pastor Chris Butler of North Naples Baptist Church. Message begins at 30.00.
