Why Won't Everyone Go to Heaven?

It's really not that complicated.

It seems there's always been a misconception about heaven:  if I'm a good person and God is a good god, then of course I'm going to heaven!  I've heard this from family members, acquaintances, strangers, Hollywood, books, and the media.  What I find most fascinating is that I've even heard it mentioned in one form or another at funerals for people who didn't really believe in an afterlife.  How in the world does one gain access to heaven without believing there's a heaven to go to?  But that's not a question for today.

Today I want to give you a really easy understanding as to why not everyone will enter heaven.  It's so simple, even elementary children can follow the logic.

Picture your neighborhood.  All the houses on all the streets, from the front of the neighborhood to the back.  Most of us know a few neighbors.  We might even be friends with a few.  How many houses in your neighborhood can you just walk into?  I don't mean knocking and hearing "come in."  I mean uninvited or unannounced.  In all the houses I've ever lived in, I cannot think of one house in my neighborhoods that I could just go to and walk in at any time of day, for any reason.

Now, is there someone's home that you can walk into without calling ahead or knocking?  My son
still has a key and a garage door opener despite living several states away.  If he wanted to surprise us, he could.  I no longer live in the same town as my mom, but when I did, I could drive to her home and walk in as if I lived there.

What's the difference between these two situations?

Relationship.

The ability to walk into a home not only requires relationship, it requires a level of intimacy.  The person living there must know you.  And you must know them.  There's more than just a casual connection.  There's more between you than just a common neighborhood.  It's a bond built on history together.  And whether you're related by dna, marriage, or decades of friendship, you're family.

That is how heaven works.  You cannot walk into God's home unless you have a relationship with Him through His Son, Jesus.  You cannot enter into His home unless you are family as His child by accepting Christ as your Savior.  Just as I would never allow a stranger to just casually walk into my living room to sit with my children, God does not allow just anyone to walk into His presence.  It doesn't matter if the person is nice, attractive, wealthy, famous, or generous; no stranger is coming into my home uninvited.

Yet many think that they good works they do will be the key that opens the pearly gates.  They're counting on their list of positive deeds to outweigh their list of negative behaviors.  Unfortunately, there are not enough good works to erase all the negative stuff we do throughout our lives.  That is why Jesus was sent - to take our place and do the one "good deed" we need to wipe out the list of all our evil deeds.  Because He left His home, we have the opportunity to join Him in it.

1 Corinthians 6:9 says, "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit [enter] the kingdom of God [heaven]?"  There has to be a way to make us righteous - morally right and justified in the eyes of a Holy God.

Ephesians 2:8-9 clarifies that "by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is a gift of God not a result of works, so that no one may boast."  So we need to be made righteous in the eyes of God, but works doesn't' do it.  So what does?

In John 14:6, Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me."  Only through Jesus can we be made righteous!  Only through Jesus is heaven opened to us.  Only He is the key to salvation and an eternity with Him.  The alternative is an eternity without Him.

There is no house you can enter uninvited anywhere in the world without having a relationship with the person inside.  How much more must God protect His home?  But He has made a way for each of us if we will only accept it.






For more analogies like this, see The Poop in the Brownies Part 1 and Part 2.