How can I know, for sure, that when I die, I am going to heaven?
1 Jn 5:11-13, Eph 2:8,9, John 20:31, John 6:47.
We can know by trusting what he says… we can not know by trusting in anything we have done, are doing or will do. It is not in our performance but it is in HIS perfection! If we are looking at our doings, we can never know that we’ve done enough.
We can surely and always know that he has done enough! He has done all that was required to satisfy the righteous and just demands of a Holy and Gracious GOD.
God’s Holiness, comes from his righteousness and justice. What righteousness demands Justice executes; what justice executes satisfies righteousness. Righteousness guards the essence of God’s attributes.
God can only be fair and perfect. His righteousness and justice are perfect. His righteousness accepted the perfection in the impeccable Son of God, Jesus Christ! His Justice, which satisfied his righteousness was executed on sin, at the cross. All that was required for full payment of the penalty of sin was accomplished, at a point in time, on the cross, by Jesus Christ, the unique person of the Godhead. When you believed in Christ, you received almost 40 things from him that you did not merit…it’s called the salvation package and it is given to you because you have believed in Christ and it contains all that is necessary for you to have eternal life and live with him forever.
Suppose you say, if he has done that much for me surely, I can show my appreciation by doing something for him!
If anything had been left for you to do to appropriate salvation the salvation package would not be complete and you would be subject to perform or produce something to merit it.
You know you would fall short at some point or place in your behavior, either through overt or mental sins.
Let’s suppose, at a point in time in your life, at or after salvation, you served consistently and faithfully until death. What will cause you to be in the presence of God at the point of death? For example: you lived a pretty good life prior to placing your faith in Christ and afterwards you lived more consistently, but deep within you realized, every day of your life, that you did not live good enough to merit Heaven.
You needed God’s grace prior to salvation and you needed God’s grace after salvation. Let me ask you a question, did Jesus die for all the sins that you committed prior to Salvation? Of course, he did! Did he also die for every sin you committed after Salvation? Of course, he did because he died for all sins.
There is no sin that you have committed, are committing, or will commit, that was not paid for in total and covered by the sacrificial and atoning blood of Jesus Christ at the cross. If any sin remained, after he died on the cross, you could not go to heaven because no sin or any defilement will be allowed to enter this perfect place.
Rev. 21:27, “Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”
Rev 22:14, “Blessed are they who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.” There is an inside and an outside in this heavenly city. Inside are those whose who wear robes of righteousness. Outside are those who have no righteousness. They stand before this holy place in unbelief. They are and have been lost, blind and naked. They are unprepared to meet God and cannot enter this most Holy place. They are not clothed in the perfect righteousness of the perfect Savior, Jesus Christ.
Isa. 61:10, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God: for HE hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, HE hath covered me with the robe of righteousness.”
For those who are found wanting, the tragedy of all tragedy is… IT IS TOO LATE TO PREPARE! R.A. Torrey put it this way: “I am ready to meet God face to face tonight…for all my sins are covered by the atoning blood.”
He was prepared to meet God because he believed in Jesus Christ who poured out all of his atoning blood, for all sin.
Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.” R. A. Torrey did not say he was prepared to meet God because he had been a faithful and obedient servant or that he had abstained from a million and one sins to be acceptable before God. He realized that while abstaining from many sins, many sins remained from which he had not abstained.
His hope was not in himself because of his abstinence from sin, his hope was outside of himself and rested on the blessed one who paid the full penalty for all sins. His hope was not that he would be alright because he had abstained from sin… his confidence was in the BLESSED HOPE Jesus Christ, the one who, once and for all, paid the full penalty for all sins.
Abraham Lincoln stated the best he could do would rest with God when he said; “I DO the best I CAN, the very best I KNOW how and I mean to keep on doing it till the end. If the end brings me out alright, what is said against me will not matter. If the end brings me out all wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”
I can say with all conviction… the best you can do to the very end falls far, far short of the best that is required by God. The high standard is perfection and perfection cannot be found in any HUMAN beings or HUMAN doings.
The best, as required by God, is nothing short of perfection and the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, for all sin, is the only way to satisfy the righteous and just character of God.
Do you know of any human being who has lived such a righteous life so that the merit from that life reached all the way to heaven and became good enough to satisfy the holy and righteous character of God? Do you know anyone who lived such a righteous life so that, in the end, it satisfied a Holy God and exceeded his demands for the perfect righteousness that is only in Christ? NO!
Rom.3:10, There is none righteous, no not one.
Mk. 10:18, There is none good but one, that is, God.
Isa. 64:6, We are ALL as an unclean THING, and ALL of OUR RIGHTEOUSNESSES are as filthy rags; and WE ALL do fade as a leaf; and OUR INIQUITIES, like the wind, have taken us away.
AWAY in an impossible condition and a condemned position. Positioned in the slave market of sin where no one can help! No one can help because they are, as it were, in the same boat. Inside the slave market of sin where everyone is not on probation but utterly condemned.
You are there too and you cannot help yourself! Why? Because you are helpless and you need his help…his help is the only help you need!
It is not assistance so that he helps you to walk, to get a little closer to him, and serve him better, it is eternal deliverance that enables you to live with him throughout all eternity!
Oh, HOW WE want to do our part! Your part is to realize you are sinking in deep water and you cannot swim or thrash about well enough to even stay afloat! You are drowning and you need to be saved! He will not rescue you from these sinking waters of condemnation, or hold your hand securely, and then let you go!
John 10:27-30, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I GIVE unto them eternal life and they SHALL NEVER PERISH, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My father, which gave them me, is greater than all: and NO MAN is able to pluck them out of my Fathers hand. I and my Father are one.
If everyone knew that Jesus was coming within the next few days, most everyone would accept him. Even then some would not!
Listen to the question Job asked God! Have you asked the same question? Do you wonder about the same thing?
Job 14:14, “If I die will I live again?” Will I slip into an eternity of nothingness? “All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.
Job 14,15, You will call and I WILL ANSWER YOU: You will long for the creature your hands have made.”
Job 13:15, My eyes are on my redeemer, and not on me or anything I have done or can do… my eyes are on him whose beginnings are from old. I am occupied with him and though he slays me, yet will I hope in him.
Job 19:25-27, For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins (my mind & emotions) be consumed within me.
I don’t know what you know, but Job says: I know that my redeemer lives and in vs 26, after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.
Further in vs 27, I myself will see him with my own eyes I and not another. How my heart yearns within me!
2 Cor 5:7-8, We are confident and prefer to be absent from the body… why? Because it is to be at home, or present with the Lord. Pros + accusative (face to face).
Dan 12:2, Everyone whose name is found written in the book will be delivered. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life and others to shame and everlasting contempt.
This is critical and can’t be overlooked…
Heb 11:6, Without faith it is impossible to please him. What is faith? It is stated here in Heb 11:1, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the old testament saints were commended for (they didn’t see but believed!)
By means of faith, we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
Vs 3, He that cometh to God must believe that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Jesus said to Thomas in…
Jn 20:29, “Thomas because you have seen me, you have believed, blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. In
Matthew 16:4, to the legalistic and unbelieving Pharisees he said, “an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign.” We are living in a sign-less generation and no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah the prophet. Jesus being in the earth for three days is an essential part of the gospel…the sign is the sinless offering of Jesus Christ on the cross, his death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and his victorious session at the right hand of God where he sat down victoriously because the work required for eternal salvation was finished
What do you believe? Do you believe the clear wording in
1 Thessalonians 4:14? For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him!
Jesus Christ is the only person in history who can offer eternal life, who can give it and then keep you and deliver you all the way into heaven for eternity. What an offer…what a gift…what a giver…what a Savior!
James 1:14, Every good and perfect gift cometh down from the father of lights in whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning.
The good gifts are his supplying all of our needs according to his riches in glory. The perfect gift is eternal life that resides in his person and which we have abiding in us when we accept him as our only hope of heaven…don’t hesitate to make him the object of your faith…that is where the merit is…it is a sure, abiding and steadfast hope because the merit is in him and not in you! Look to him…the thief on the cross looked to him, the Israelites in the desert looked to him through the brazen serpent and their instructions were…
LOOK and LIVE, and not live and do… the doing is done and that is why you need only to look and live.
Num. 21:8, “Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole; and everyone that is bitten when he looketh upon it shall live.”
No gazing intently, no throwing dust in the air, no frothing at the mouth, no jumping pews, or rolling in the isles… just look and live.
If they looked, they lived, if they did not look, they did not live. You can’t do, perform, or serve your way to heaven, you will never, and can never, do enough to merit eternal life because all the doing is done, not by you, but by him. If you could do and by your doing add to what is already accomplished by Jesus Christ you would be working to improve what he has been perfectly done and is finished.
Attempts to stack your human efforts and filthy self-righteous rags on the perfect work of Jesus Christ is blasphemous. It is man seeking to gain the approbation or favor of God through his pitiful human and unacceptable efforts. If frail human efforts, to appropriate salvation, became acceptable to God, his so great salvation would be no more of grace. Give up your doings, and look at him and his done. He stated in no uncertain terms…”IT IS FINISHED”, why not simply believe these powerful words of life and rest in the person of Jesus Christ. To do so is to have life eternal. To look elsewhere is to be eternally condemned.
