Good day
We've established from the previous message that eternal life is a free gift and is freely available and accessible to all; then we asked the question, If that's the case, does it mean that everyone will automatically enter into Heaven one day?
Matthew 7:21-23
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
Lawlessness means someone has no regard for the law/commandments, which usually results in the committing of sin (1 John 3:4). Now sin is when we disobey the instructions/commandments of God (eg. like disobeying one of the 10 commandments, "do not steal") and the verse below tells us that sin is what separates us from God.
Isaiah 59:2
"But your iniquities (sins) have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear."
James 2:10
For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.
This means that even if we've told one lie in our lives, it means that we've sinned and will be held accountable for our actions, therefore proving the Bible true when it says that we’ve all sinned and fallen short of God’s Glory:
Romans 3:23
"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"
Let’s suppose a person sinned only 3 times per day, so let’s say for example on a given day that they told a lie, took something that didn’t belong to them and got angry and held unforgiveness towards someone (basically anything that falls short of God’s commandments/standards); people may generally assume that that’s an acceptable amount and still judge that person as being a fairly good person … but let’s see what happens if we begin to add that up.
If someone commits 3 sins per day multiplied by 7 days per week that makes it 21 sins per week.
If we then took 21 sins per week multiplied by 52 weeks in a year that makes it 1092 sins per year.
Then if we took 1092 sins per year multiplied by 80 years (as an example) that makes it 87360 sins in that person’s lifetime.
Now what would a judge do with us if we came before them with 87360 traffic fines? Would we still be as innocent as what we think we are; do you think they'd let us walk away freely or do you think there'll be some form of punishment? ... What about standing before God, the greatest judge of all, should He treat us any differently if we stood before Him one day with thousands of sins? Wouldn't this be a much more serious issue than standing before a human judge with mere traffic fines?
Or let’s say you came over to my house and I offered to make you an omelette. I went to the fridge, took out 3 eggs, and on breaking the last egg into the bowl I noticed that it was rotten. Would you want to eat that omelette knowing there’s a rotten egg in there? Would that be acceptable? In the same way we can’t offer our lives to God with all the things that we call good and yet include the things that God calls sin. Because of our sin, we can’t expect our lives to be acceptable to Him. This is why someone cannot enter into heaven based on their good works, because regardless of how much good they do, if they've committed a sin somewhere along the way, they'll still be guilty before God.
From this we can clearly see that man cannot save himself ...
So now we're sitting with a problem, on the one hand eternal life is freely available to all, but on the other hand, our sin prevents us from obtaining it ... so how is this problem solved? (Please read Part 16)