“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” – Hebrews 8:12

 

 

If you die tonight, where are you going? How many good deeds does it take to make it into Heaven? Are you even keeping track? Did you maybe forget one or two bad things that may make the difference when you time comes?

 

 

God is a true and righteous God and not a single bad action will go unpunished. You can’t break His laws and get away with it, but we have broken His laws, haven’t we? You might say, “At least I haven’t killed anyone.” You might not have killed someone outwardly, but we sometimes commit murder in our hearts when someone cuts in line at the grocery store or calls us names in traffic. Well, how about honoring thy father and thy mother? Did you ever get punished as a child and said or wished some bad things on your parents? The Bible says thou shalt not covet, but we covet all the time when we see something or someone that gets our proverbial motors running.

 

 

After thinking about any of those things, go back to your little scorecard of good deeds and tell me how you are stacking up?

 

 

So how is it even possible for any of us to make it into Heaven. The Bible says that only the righteous shall see God, so how do we have a chance? Let me sum it up for you in one word. Jesus. Only Him alone is enough to pay for your debt. Jesus lived the sinless life that we can’t, but yet He took the punishment for sin that we couldn’t. Through His life, death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus Christ stamped “Paid in Full” on your debt. When you accept Jesus and what He did on the cross, you can stand before God when your time comes and know for a fact that He doesn’t see all of your bad deeds. When you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, that list is wiped clean. God only sees the good deeds of Jesus from that moment forward.

 

 

Romans 10:13 – “for EVERYONE who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

 

 

This all doesn’t mean that we can go on sinning as much as we want. To accept this free gift of forgiveness we need to repent, or in other words, change our minds towards sin and bad things. You won’t always get it right, but now you are at least willing and trying to go down the right path. You don’t have to keep score of how many good things versus how many bad things you do. We can’t do enough good deeds to earn us a place in Heaven. That’s why we need Jesus to open the door for us. It’s not about our work, it’s about Jesus’s finished work on the cross.

 

 

 

John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

 

 

 

God loves you!  So stop trying to work yourself into Heaven and don’t worry if it has been enough. Instead, call upon the beautiful name of Jesus Christ and let His precious blood wash away all of your sins. His arms are open wide on the cross; wide enough for you and all of your sins.

 

 

 

God’s blessings to you.

 

DH