WHAT JESUS TAUGHT ABOUT HEAVEN? ( Part 4 )

Pastor Christopher Choo

Lesson 3286

WHAT JESUS TAUGHT ABOUT HEAVEN? ( Part 4 )

Are not most people basically good and hence eligible for Heaven? 

Yesterday's devotional provoked some readers especially those who think mankind is generally good and deserves to be in heaven when they die.

When compared to God’s standards of holiness, no one is “good.” To one degree or another, we all “fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). 

This does not mean that we are always actively engaged in doing evil or participating in depraved acts all the time. But it does mean that in our very nature we are “fallen,” in rebellion against God and incapable of saving ourselves.

Abba Father, those who hold the view that people are generally good and entitled to heaven tend to make the error of viewing human nature as basically good.

Biblical evidence as well as experiential evidence show this view to be false. As the Bible explains, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, KJV). Psalm 51:5 comes across even stronger: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”

We need a Saviour to save us from death, decay, disease, the devil himself and Hell.

Indeed we are blessed with a Saviour who redeemed us with His Blood. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, we shall be resurrected from the dead.

Romans 8:11

And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.