Answering the Question: What Must I Do to Go to Heaven?
Introduction
There’s a conversation going on in the New Testament that starts in the gospels and runs to the very end. It’s a conversation or question Jesus took up several times. The early church continued to discuss this question and even convened a conference in Jerusalem to answer it. This question is asked by every generation including our own. It’s probably a question you’ve wondered.
The question is this: What must I do to go to heaven?
That’s an important idea to think through.
One popular answer is this – you just need to be a good person. I believe this statement intends to say that there are a lot of opinions on this or that topic, but when you get down to the basics, it is about living your faith. After all, you can get your doctrine right but live it wrong. Jesus had some harsh but important words for people who did that.
Just be a good person. The word “just” implies nothing else and can appear to say that our beliefs don’t matter. However, Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, MIND, and strength.”
What we think about God matters a lot. A lot of Jesus’ teachings and parables were aimed at correcting wrong-headed ideas about God. That was the basis of the parable of the Prodigal Son – Jesus was saying, “God has mercy and fierce love for those who make mistakes, turn around, and come back home. It’s never too late to make the right choice.”
Just be a good person. I think we need a dose of humility, and James provides it in verse 27: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for the orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
Does that seem attainable to you? Do that perfectly every day and you get to go to heaven. Does that sound like good news?
Jesus also had a lot to say to people who thought they were deserving of all of God’s blessings because they were morally better than others. If you ride this thought very long, it takes you to a land of pride.
What must I do to go to heaven? The answers put us in a bind. If I say be a good person, I can’t limit that to actions. It must also be about how I think about God. At the same time, I must reach a very high standard if I’m to be pure and unstained by the world.
By the way, whose standard of good are we using? Yours, someone else’s, God’s, the standards set by the writers of the Scripture? Some would condemn the fact that you watch television. Others would condemn the fact that you haven’t sold all your possessions in support of the poor.
What if I told you that working through those questions brings us close to good news?
The question, “What must I do to go to heaven?” is the wrong question. It’s the worst question because it makes it about you.
I have great news; we are Protestant Reformed Christians. We camp out in this area because we find the real answer amazingly beautiful, good, and liberating.
The question is not what I must do to get to heaven. The question is this, “What has God done for me and how am I going to live in response to that?”
If I could jog your memory about the Ugly Duckling sermon from Ephesians 1 (article here). We read from the holy text that God loved us before the foundations of the world were set. Before we did anything virtuous and knowing that we would do plenty of bad, God graced us, forgave us, reconciled us, and determined to be forever faithful to us no matter what. We place our faith, our trust in that good work done on our behalf.
That answers what God has done for us. God had secured heaven for us. Salvation is what God has done for us, not what we do to earn it. We are assured of this time and again.
The conversation is this: God has given me incredible grace and forgiveness, so how do I gratefully respond to that with my life.
That is the impetus for the letter, James, the brother of Jesus, wrote to a group of Christians who were suffering persecution for their faith.
If you want to know how to live in a way that honors what God has done, then it looks like this. This is the journey of the Christian’s life.
I. Children of God vs. Children of Desire (James 1:12-18)
James begins with a powerful exhortation: “Whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”
Like nothing else can, suffering clearly shows us the end of ourselves and the beginning of God.
It’s like working out. You lift weights and there is a point where you can’t lift it anymore. It’s not because you are weak; it’s because you are tired. But with rest and care, you will get stronger.
When we answer, “What must I do to go to heaven?” We get into that tricky trap of asking, “Am I good enough?” And when something bad happens we think, “See, I wasn’t good enough and God is punishing me.”
James, the brother of Jesus who knew his brother quite well, says, “That’s not how God works.” God is not tempting you or trying to trip you up. God is there to help you maintain your faith. God doesn’t act that way.
God wants you to have a strong faith.
II. The Power of the Tongue and Temperament (James 1:19-21)
James then shifts his focus to communication, urging Christians to “be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.”
There is a righteous anger Jesus, and the prophets embodied. It was a thoughtful, grounded response to injustice. That’s not the kind James is warning against. He speaks of the kind of anger that flares up without thought, the kind of anger that damages relationships and reputations. It’s the short fuse with lasting damage.
He compares our mouth to the mouth of God by talking about God as the “Father of Lights,” which refers to the story in Genesis about God creating the sun, moon, and stars.” Out of the speech of God, life, humans, and abundance grew. Therefore, our speech should be patterned after God’s.
We have the power to bless or curse with our mouths. We should bless.
James says, “Do you see? God came to you and spoke words of blessings through the story of Jesus. You should bless others and lift them up.”
How do we avoid these pitfalls? By allowing the gospel, the seed that was implanted, to grow. We look to Jesus’ life and teachings to guide us.
III. Being Doers of the Word (James 1:22-25)
Let’s think about the phrase be unstained by the world.
In James’ time and in our own, it is easy to point out corruption and moral decay. Some early Christians thought the way to remain unstained by the world was to withdraw from society, to become hermits. The thought was “the world” was corrupt and corrupting and if I avoided it, I could be unstained.
But did you notice that James said, that when you go astray, it is because of the wayward desires in your own heart?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a captain in the Army of the Soviet Union during World War 2. In a letter to a friend, he criticized Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, who by the end of his reign would be responsible for the deaths of 10-20 million of his own citizens. His letter was intercepted by Soviet authorities and Solzhenitsyn was a political prison in the Gulags, one of the prison camps in which 2 million or more died.
He survived and wrote about his experience. In one passage he wrote about the dividing line of good and evil. He wrote, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes [of people], nor between political parties—but [the line separating good and evil passes] right through every human heart.”
The issue is here, in our heart, how we choose to act. Christians daily ask, will I allow the grace of God and the teachings of Jesus move the line inside of me?
James says, don’t just listen, but be a doer of the Word. Let God move the line inside of you. Allow God to cool your temper, to bring control to your mouth, and to help you know what influences are good or bad for you. And, most of all, care for others who are vulnerable, because that is what God did for you.
That is what a pure religion is – a religion that is thoughtful, careful, and compassionate.
The question is not what must I do to get to heaven. The question becomes, will I let the “heaven” that is in me get into the world?
