The idea that all good people go to heaven sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? I’ve been following God for quite some time and every time I’ve disagreed with God about what is good, I ended up being wrong. In some cases, we just need to trust God, but in many cases like this one, there are clear reasons why God says what he says. So, here’s the #2 reason why you don’t want all good people to go to heaven.
Why Aren’t We In Heaven Right Now?
Beyond whether or not all good people go to heaven, why don’t we first ask why we aren’t in heaven already? I mean, why would God put us on this broken, harsh, and dangerous planet? Surely a good God would’ve plopped us in heaven right from the start.
Why make us live these hard lives before granting us access to heaven?
Well, let’s go back to the beginning. According to the first two chapters of Genesis, the Garden of Eden sounds quite wonderful. It almost sounds—dare I say it—heavenly. So what happened?
People could walk with God and talk to God and never worry about pain, fear, or hardship. Then one day, that all changed. Mankind sinned and that heavenly place became what we now know as earth.
I’ll come back to this point in just a moment, but first, we need to set some groundwork.
What Makes Heaven, Heaven?
This is an important question. Why do we want all people to go to heaven? If we are going to get mad at the God of the Bible for not allowing every good person into heaven, then we must work off of what this same God says heaven is.
We don’t know too much about heaven because it’s too amazing for us to understand. However, we do know some key things:
- We will be in God’s physical presence: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (Revelation 21:3)
- We will live forever: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death . . .” (Revelation 21:4a) or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
- Pain or discomfort will be no more: “. . . or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4b)
- There will be no sin or wickedness in heaven: “But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” (Revelation 21:27
I’ll stop right here for now, though there are lots of other things we know about heaven.
Doesn’t this sound like a great place? How nice would it be to get along with everyone and have no worries? The interesting thing is all four of these things were also true about the Garden of Eden before mankind sinned.
What Happened to Earth?
Why doesn’t God walk physically with us anymore? Why can’t we just live on forever? The answer to both of these is sin.
God can’t be with sin.
When mankind sinned in the Garden of Eden, God had to distance himself because he can’t be with sin. He’s too good to be with sin.
Unfortunately, even the best person on earth still sins. “No one is perfect”, as the true saying goes. So, if God let all good people into heaven, then heaven would become another earth as all these “good” people bring sin into heaven.
The #2 reason why you don’t want all good people to go to heaven is that if they did, heaven wouldn’t be heaven anymore.
These sinful people will then cause pain, and break the peace, and once more God’s wonderful creation would be destroyed. God would have to remove his physical presence from another sinful world, and once more death would exist as sin continues to erode our bodies.
But if no one is perfect and if even a little bit of sin will destroy heaven, how could anyone go to heaven?
Who Goes to Heaven?
Imagine you live in a pandemic (too soon?) where an extremely deadly virus infects one person after another and there’s no cure or vaccine. The only way to stop the spread is to create a quarantine zone. Only people who show that they don’t have the virus can pass through.
In a way, this is exactly the case with heaven. The only problem is that every human is infected with this virus called sin, so no one can enter. But God loves us so much that he doesn’t want to abandon us to die these terrible deaths. So he came to us himself.
He came as a human and against all odds was able to stay clean of this virus by never once thinking, saying, or doing anything sinful. Then, since he was the only one able to enter the quarantine zone, he instead traded up his life for us so we could enter because of what he did.
This is exactly what the Bible says: “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man” (John 3:13). “For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:17). “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me'” (John 14:6).
The Transformation
But sin isn’t just a regular virus that can be cured with a vaccine. To be free of sin, we need to be completely transformed and remade into a new creation free of sin. This is what 1 Corinthians 5:17 says “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
This is the only way to irradicate sin from our bodies. God wants everyone to enter heaven, but he won’t force anyone. Just as it’s wrong for a man to force a woman to marry him, so it would be wrong of God to force us into heaven where we can only be in a relationship with him since his physical presence will be everywhere. It must be our choice.
So, we must accept this transformation offer so we can pass through the quarantine zone and enter heaven. That’s exactly what it says in Romans 10:9 “Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
What Now?
If you haven’t done this yet, there’s no better time than now. Please email me at philip.wilder.author@gmail.com and I’d love to walk you through how you can do this. Or, you could check out growingwithjesus.com
Hopefully, this post clarified a lot of misconceptions and helped you understand why it’s so important that we turn to Jesus rather than our own good works to enter heaven.
At this point, the question then changes from, “Why doesn’t he let all good people into heaven?” to “If this is real, why don’t more follow it?” I hope to answer this question soon. What do you think the answer is? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
Please also stay tuned as next week I’ll be talking about the #3 reason why you don’t want all good people to go to heaven.
If you want to be updated on when these blog posts are released, I’d encourage you to sign up for my email list by clicking here.
If you want to read the #1 reason why you don’t want all good people to go to heaven, you can do so by clicking here.
Wow. So true, Philip.
But that one about the pandemic, made me laugh but also do that rolling eyes kind of emoji lol. 🙄
I think the reason why good people don’t go to Heaven is simple. The only definition that makes us good as people is only because Jesus is in us, and He is good ALL the time. He forms us and shapes us from glory to glory to be like Him, but it is a daily process and surrender we must undergo in our lives each day! We could never be good on our own, no matter how hard we try. Besides, works alone don’t make us so-called “good”. The only example of goodness we can follow is our God. Besides, Without Him and His Son, Jesus… that word, good…is just a cliche. 🙌🏻🙏🏻