Does God grade on the curve?

How good do you think you have to be in order to go to heaven? You may have wondered about this from time to time. Thinking about things of eternity is healthy. It’s heavy, too. We’re so often caught up in just getting through the day that we hardly have time to think deeply. We’re so ingrained in our culture toward the 20-second sound bites, reading headlines, scanning Facebook posts or 140-characters or less tweets, that’s it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep our minds engaged in weighty matters without getting easily distracted. But heaven is a topic worth contemplating long and hard.

So, how good do you think one has to be? Does God grade on the curve? Everyone knows that no one is perfect, so do you just have to be better than most? Or, as long as you’re good most of the time, isn’t that good enough? If you’re a faithful spouse, a loving parent, a productive employee or a model citizen, is that good enough to go to heaven? Or does it take all that plus volunteering at the blood drive, working at the food pantry, coaching your kid’s soccer team, helping with 4-H and giving money to charity?

How good is good enough for God? Is regular church attendance good enough? What about serving on the missions committee or teaching a Sunday School class? What about ministering at the nursing home or chaperoning the next youth group outing? Now that ought to earn you a special seat in heaven if anything will, right?!

It’s impossible to be perfectly good, but surely, at least if you don’t do anything terrible like killing someone or abusing children or robbing a bank that ought to score some points you can cash in for eternal rewards. Won’t there be some kind of heavenly scales with all your good deeds going on one side and your bad deeds on the other, and whichever outweighs the other will determine whether you go to heaven or not?

Somebody once jokingly said, “My greatest fear is standing behind Mother Theresa in the Final Judgment line and hearing God say to her, ‘You know, you really should have done more.’” 

Friend, let me tell you what the Bible says: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). God says that because we have all sinned, we all fall short of His glory. That is to say, that no one can be good enough to go to heaven. You can list every good work on your resume and hand it to God at the gate, but it won’t be enough. God is perfectly holy and righteous, and we’re not. There is no amount of good things we can do to earn a seat in heaven. In fact, because of our sin, what we really deserve is death, eternal separation from God in hell.

But here’s the good news: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16)! Whosoever! That’s you! That’s me! In His great love and mercy and grace, God has made a way possible for us to be saved from death and hell and saved to eternal life in heaven. That way is by believing in Jesus as Savior and Lord of your life. That means repenting of your sins and trusting in the forgiveness Jesus offers to you by His death in your place on the cross and in His triumphant victory over the grave.

The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9), but no matter what your past has been like or what your present condition, you can be made righteous in God’s eyes through faith in Jesus and through Him only. And no, even Mother Theresa won’t get in based on what she’s done. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). Neither you nor I can be good enough to go heaven, but we can receive by faith the “gift of God which is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Why not come to Jesus today?