This series is geared toward those who confess to be Christians. As I was thinking about what the next topic we should discuss, the idea of truly knowing one was go to heaven kept popping in my head. Being 99% sure of one’s salvation is 100% lost in my opinion. How can one be 100% sure that he or she will enter heaven after death; can we know for sure? This posting will answer this using (of sure) the Bible.
In our day and age, the world view of truth is subjective. What’s true for you may not be true for me. In the eyes of the world, the way to heaven looks more like a nice multilane highway where all the lanes end up in the same place; Heaven. There are thousands of religions in our world today so are they are leading to the same place, right? According to adherents.com, there are over 10,000 religious systems in our world today. Are they all true? The top 4 religious systems are Hinduism (900 million people), Secularism/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheists (1.1 billion people), Islam (1.3 billion people), and Christianity (2 billion people). It is important for you to know that not all roads lead to heaven.
The Christian worldview centers on one fact; that Jesus Christ is the sole and only way to Heaven. According to John 14:6, Jesus testifies that He is indeed is the only way to Heaven;
“Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me”
Using our “standard” (the Bible), we have established that Jesus is the only way to Heaven. But how can a person be 100% sure they will be getting to Heaven after death. Let me first layout, the ways we cannot get an entrance ticket to Heaven.
1. We can get a ticket by being good.
Thinking that being good insures us an entrance ticket is wrong. We cannot be good enough in the eyes of God. Our goodness (or righteousness; $20 word meaning high moral standards) is dirt compared to God’s holiness. Isaiah 64:6 says;
“For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment;”
Not to be too graphic but the term filthy garment in this passage refers to used tampons; that right, our being good seems to God as bloody tampons (I hope using this graphic doesn’t offend anyone but that how He sees it).
2. We can earn our ticket to Heaven.
Thinking that you can do good deeds to earn an entrance ticket to Heaven is wrong, too. There will be no scale at the entrance of Heaven weighing all you bad deeds with your good ones and if your good deeds outweigh your bad ones you’ll enter; and if you’re bad outweighs the good, you go to hell. That’s not how it works. Ephesians 2:8 & 9 says;
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
If being good won’t get you into Heaven; and doing good deeds won’t get you into Heaven, how can anyone get into Heaven? You cannot do anything to get to Heaven; Jesus Christ did it all. Acts 4:12 says;
"And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved."
You might be wondering what does being saved mean? Because Adam and Eve sinned, man has been separated from God (Romans 5:12; “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—“). Because of Adam’s sin, man and God have been separated, but Jesus died on the cross to reconnect us. God is so holy that He cannot look at us because of the sin we inherited from Adam. But because of God’s love for man, He gave His Son (Jesus Christ) to make a way for us to be reconnected with Him. John 3:16 says;
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
By accepting the fact that you cannot be nor do anything to earn an entrance ticket into Heaven, you are one step closer to Heaven. The only way to be able to enter is to accept what Jesus Christ did on the cross. No amount of bad deeds you have done in your past will keep you from entering if you ask Jesus to forgive you of your past sins. All the sins you have done or everyone you will do Jesus took on Himself on the cross so you can receive an entrance ticket to Heaven.
To get this ticket, you only have to ask for it. Romans 10:13 says;
“for "WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED."’
It is really that simple; acknowledge that you have sinned and that there is nothing you can do to change that, and accept what Jesus did to free you of that sin. Just ask God to forgive you and He will forgive you.
I put a lot of Bible passages on this posting to show what the Bible actually says how one can know for sure that they have an entrance ticket to Heaven. If this post has left doubt in your mind, you should make sure you are indeed a Christian. You can either leave a comment or e-mail me (ththomasson@hotmail.com), and I’ll do the best to explain it further. You should be sure where you will spend eternity.
A distinction must be made between "saved" and assurance of salvation (even though Calvin rightly called assurance "the essence of faith"). The book of First John argues against the idea that a person will be 100% sure of the salvation 100% of the time. John writes to believers about assurance. This presupposes that those very believers may have had doubts (less than 100% sure they had a ticket to heaven).
ReplyDeleteBecause He is with us,
Roger