John 14:6 I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Jesus Christ came to earth and lived a sinless life and died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for our lives. Since Adam and Eve entered sin into the world we have been separated from God because God can have nothing to do with sin. When Jesus came to earth and died in place of our sins he took our eternal punishment for us and acted as a bridge to connect us back to God. Because of this Jesus Christ became the only way to heaven.
In order to be right in God's eyes you do not have to be perfect, you have to be righteous. There is a major difference; we know that we are not perfect you can see that every day and we are so grateful that God does not require perfection. However he does require righteousness because God has to be separated from sin. God requires that everyone pay for the sin that they have committed and the only thing that will suffice for the payment is death. So we have two options, we can pay that price ourselves or we can take the free gift in Jesus Christ who has already paid that price for us. This is the reason why Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, because of our sinfulness someone had to pay the price for our sins and he was the only perfect substitute. The only way that we can be righteous before God is to come to him with clean hands (Isaiah 1), and that must come through Christ.
To end this look at John 14:6 I want to take a look at two controversial issues that we deal with everyday. I hope that my answers and logic will give you clear direction in what to think about these areas.
First how good is good enough to get into heaven. I often hear this issue come up, of course I am going to heaven because I am a good person. The problem with this standard is that we all determine what good is. If you were to survey 100 people on what it meant to be a good person you would get 100 different answers. If good people go to heaven then everyone is going to heaven because we all believe we are good people. The terrorist that attached the United State on 9-11 believed that they were doing the right thing and they believed that they were good people. Based on their standard of good they are going to heaven. Next time you want to say that good people go to heaven ask yourself what is the standard of good, and you will find out that there is no standard. Lastly, if you want to use the Bible as your standard for good you are making a mistake because you are not good enough according to the Bibles standard for good. The Bible has a standard for good enough and that is the Ten Commandments. God knew that we were not good enough to make it to heaven on our own merit. This is why he gave us Jesus Christ. We no longer have to be good enough; we just have to believe in him.
Second, what happens to people that have never heard of Jesus Christ before? Jesus Christ claims that no one comes to the Father except through him. In other words the only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ. So that brings us to the question of what about the people that has never heard of Jesus before? Do those people go to hell because they have never heard of Jesus, we would like to say they go to heaven, but do they? Dr. David Platt was asked what happens to the innocent man that dies and never hears about Jesus. Dr. Platt said that he is 100 percent confident that the innocent man that has never heard of Jesus will be in heaven. Then Dr. Platt said that the problem with this is there is no one that is innocent. Romans chapter one says that no one is righteous not even one. Also the Bible tells us that God has made himself known to all people therefore no one is without excuse.
Now I want to take a look at what it would look like logically if the person in the deep woods of the Amazon that has never heard of Jesus somehow gets a "get out of jail free card." If this person can walk around all the days of his life and do whatever he wanted and have eternal security then the worst possible thing we could ever do is tell this person about Jesus. By telling him about Jesus we would be significantly decreasing his chances of going to heaven. So if this is true the next time you ask someone if they have ever heard of Jesus and they say no tell them they need to plug their ears and scream as loud as they can. You see it is our job to tell people about Jesus Christ because he is the way the truth and the life and the only way to heaven is through him. In the Great Commission Jesus commanded us to go to all nations and tell people about him. Jesus trusted us with caring the Gospel to all the nations. Eternal security is in him and people need to know about him. Their lives depend on it and you're the person form the job. It is time to get off the couch and start telling people about Jesus Christ. The cost is to great to sit around and do nothing.
Billy Lowe
