I’ve entitled our message this morning “Good Enough for Heaven?” with a question mark. Is anyone really good enough to go to heaven? An article from the Los Angeles Times says, “An overwhelming majority of Americans continue to believe that there is life after death and that heaven and hell exist . . . [and] nearly two-thirds think they are heaven-bound. On the other hand, only one-half of one percent said they were hell-bound.”(1) You see, most people believe they are going to heaven when they die, and they base their conclusion on being a morally good person.
One time when I was trying to witness to a non-Christian, he said, “I know I’m going to heaven when I die. I’m a good person. I would give you the shirt off my back if you needed it,” and there’s no doubt in my mind that he would; but would that really get him to heaven? I once sat in the home of an elderly church member and listened to her tell me, “All that really matters is that you have a sincere heart in whatever religion you worship and that you do good things for others. I go to church and help people in need, so I know I’m going to heaven when I die.” But, let me ask you again, “Is anyone really good enough to go to heaven?” Well, let’s look at the Bible and find out!
Are We Really Good Enough? (vv. 17-18)
17 Now as He was going out on the road, one came running, knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” 18 So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God.”
We see here “what seemed to be an earnest young man who came running to [Jesus]. The man humbly knelt down, complemented Jesus on being ‘good,’ and asked how he could obtain everlasting life,”(2) obviously thinking eternal life must be related to someone being good. So, let me ask you something? “Would you consider yourself to be a good person?” I think most of us would, and there are a lot of people who believe they’ll go to heaven simply by being good; but by whose standard are we measuring our goodness? Are you really good enough, and are you willing to stake your life on it?
Notice that Jesus corrected this young man concerning the word “good.” He said, “No one is good but One, that is, God” (v. 18). His reply seems kind of strange, because if anyone were good it was certainly Jesus. He was the incarnation of God Himself (John 1:1, 14), and He was perfect and lived a sinless life. Hebrews 4:15 says that Jesus “was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Jesus later died on the cross as a sacrifice, as the perfect Lamb of God, to pay the penalty for the sins of all mankind. He could do this because He was without sin. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that being without sin would certainly make Jesus a good person.
We need to keep in mind, however, that Jesus was more than good; He was righteous. Perhaps, because righteousness seems akin to goodness, Jesus could have let this man’s acknowledgement slide without getting technical; but Jesus didn’t want the young man to relate salvation and eternal life to one’s goodness. He didn’t want him to be fooled and led astray, and so He began shifting his focus toward the truth. The truth is that no one is good enough, and no one can make it to heaven through their own goodness; and we’ll discover this truth as we continue along in the Scripture.
The True Standard is the Law (vv. 19-20)
19 “You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Do not defraud,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother’.” 20 And he answered and said to Him, “Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.”
This young man’s “earnest and humble heart would seem to make him a prime candidate as a potential convert. Modern evangelism would give this man the message of God’s love and have him pray a ‘sinner’s prayer’ . . . [but that’s] not what Jesus did in such a case. He didn’t [immediately] share the message of God’s grace. Instead, He reproved the man’s understanding of the word ‘good’ by opening up God’s standard of goodness,”(3) and God’s standard of goodness is the Law; or simply put, the Ten Commandments.
I earlier said, “There are a lot of people who believe they’ll go to heaven simply by being good; but by whose standard are we measuring our goodness?” We should be measuring ourselves against the perfect Law of God. There are many Christians who will say that Jesus came to do away with the Law in exchange for grace, but Jesus didn’t say that. In Matthew 5:17, He said, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” Jesus came not to abolish the Law, but to show that the Law points toward Him. In Galatians we read, “Therefore, the Law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (3:24).
Notice how Jesus asked the young man if he knew the Ten Commandments; if he were familiar with them. He wanted him to see that he didn’t quite measure up, that he wasn’t really good enough through his own efforts; but instead, he self-righteously stated that he had kept every single one of the Commandments, even from his very youth. Have you ever met somebody who says that they’ve kept all the Ten Commandments? Believe it or not, I actually have. So, let me ask you right now: “Do you think you’ve kept the Ten Commandments?” – you who are here today? Well, let’s find out by looking at three out of the six that Jesus mentioned; and please don’t raise your hand as I ask the following questions.
Has anyone here ever told a lie? Some people would say no, but even a “fib” or a “white lie” is still a lie. The Ninth Commandment says, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:16). Bearing false witness against your neighbor or bearing false witness of any kind, simply put, makes you a liar. Have you ever stolen anything? Most of us would say no, but even if you only swiped something as small as a Crayon when you were a kid, then you’ve stolen something. The Eighth Commandment says, “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15), and stealing makes you a thief.
Let’s do one more. Has anyone ever committed adultery? Well, hopefully, no one has. But have you ever looked at a woman (or looked at a man) with lust? Based on the Seventh Commandment (Exodus 20:13), Jesus said, “Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Most of us will see that we’ve already fallen short after examining just three of the Ten Commandments, making us lying, thieving, adulterers at heart.
We Will Always Fall Short (vv. 21-22)
21 Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.” 22 But he was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
Jesus wasn’t telling the young man here that he could obtain eternal life by selling everything he had and giving it to the poor. If this were true, then any one of us could buy our salvation either through cash or by doing any number of good deeds. The focus here was not on working one’s way to heaven; but we can see that the young man didn’t understand what Jesus had intended by His statement. Jesus was simply expounding on God’s standard of goodness. “He used the Law to expose the man’s hidden sin: this man was a transgressor of the First of the Ten Commandments.”(4)
The First Commandment is this: “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3). To this young man “his money was his god, and one cannot serve both God and money [Matthew 6:24]”(5) He thought he had kept the Ten Commandments from his youth, but he still fell short in one area, revealing that he didn’t quite measure up. In James 2:10, we read, “Whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.” So, after hearing this, are any of us really good enough?
Paul said in Romans 3:10, “There is none righteous, no, not one.” He also declared in Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and let’s not forget how Jesus said, “No one is good but One, that is, God” (Mark 10:18). In reality, no one is a good person; so, let me ask you another question: “On the Day of Judgment, if God judges you by the Ten Commandments, will you be found innocent or guilty?” If you don’t know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and Lord, the answer is guilty. You see, goodness won’t get us to heaven. The only thing that will lead to eternal life is righteousness; a righteousness that is bestowed on us by God’s grace and not earned.
So, let me ask you one final question: “Do you think you will go to heaven or hell?” (see 1 Corinthians 6:9-10). Paul said in Ephesians, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). None of us are good enough to earn salvation and eternal life, and none of us can make it to heaven by doing good works. We’ll never be good enough on our own; and if we’re trying to make it to heaven by our own merit, then we’ll wind up in hell.
There are a lot of people today who say we can’t lead someone to Christ by preaching the Ten Commandments, because people don’t want to be judged. Others will say that preaching about hell is outdated and condemning. People today have a distorted view of love, that’s its sappy and tolerant; but real love is not afraid to share the hard truths that lead to life. In verse 21, we read that Jesus shared what He did because He loved this young man. Jesus loved him enough to share the hard truth, which is this: That none of us can ever measure up by ourselves, by our own goodness or through our own works.
Remember, Galatians 3:24 says, “The law was our tutor [or schoolmaster] to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” Not through good works, but by faith in Christ. The law exposes our shortcomings as we stand before a just and holy God, revealing our need for a Savior. John MacArthur says, “Grace means nothing to a person who does not know he is sinful and that such sinfulness means he is separated from God and damned. It is therefore pointless to preach grace until the impossible demands of the Law and the reality of guilt before God are preached.”(6)
Time of Reflection
So, now that you’ve heard the impossible demands of the Law and have come to understand your guilt before God, and have learned how your own works will lead to falling short of God’s righteousness and spending an eternity in hell; allow me to share with you the good news of the gospel, for that’s what the word gospel means: “Good News.” Listen closely, as I now share with you the grace and mercy of God.
We read in Galatians 4:4-5, “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” Who pays for their own adoption, and who gets to choose their own adoptive parents? The answer is no one. God chose us and paid the adoption price by giving His one and only Son, Jesus. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
So, what is the ultimate demand of the Law? Romans 6:23 says, “The wages [or penalty] of sin is death.” The ultimate demand of the Law is death for our sins, or shortcomings; but Jesus died for all of our sins when He hung on the cross and was buried in the tomb. He paid the penalty for our sins, in order to free us and redeem us from the demand of the Law. Jesus was not only crucified and buried, but He rose again from the dead, showing that He had power over sin and death.
Romans 10:9-10 says, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” If we will repent and confess our sin, and turn away from our sin, and believe in what Jesus did for us on the cross, then it will take effect in our life; and we will be forgiven and cleansed of our sin, thereby receiving eternal life. If we will confess Jesus as Savior and Lord, we will be declared righteous before God and able to enter heaven when we die.
Isaiah 64:6 says, “But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses [or good works] are like filthy rags. We all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” I want to encourage you this morning to cast off the filthy rags of self-righteousness in exchange for the garment of grace in Jesus Christ, and come receive eternal life and the hope of heaven.
NOTES
(1) Ray Comfort, The Way of the Master (Wheaton Illinois: Tyndale House, 2004), pp. 41-42.
(2) Ray Comfort, What Did Jesus Do? (Bartlesville, Oklahoma: Genesis Publishing Group, 2005), p. 42.
(3) Ibid., p. 43.
(4) Ibid., p. 43.
(5) Ibid., p. 43.
(6) Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort, The School of Biblical Evangelism (Alachua, Florida: Bridge Logos Foundation, 2004), p. 84.
