God gave us all a free will and since Adam and Eve we have chosen our way to both good and bad. This is how they were deceived by Satan.
“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Gen 3:5
Adam and Eve knew and experienced what was good. They knew disobeying God was evil and they knew the consequences. Choosing to disobey God they realized the new experience of evil was in direct opposition to the good they had known. Suddenly, they experienced fear, guilt and shame, anger, doubt and confusion, and finally death. They were no longer good, they were corrupted. The cosmic battle of good and evil entered their whole being.
Evil is the absence and corruption of good. By nature evil cannot dwell in the presence of good. God is good, evil will not dwell where God is. God will not allow evil into His kingdom of heaven. He has prepared a place for evil, called hell. This is where there is no God, no good, and only evil, the absence and corruption of good.
Like Adam and Eve, we are corrupt, evil is within us and cannot be overcome except by the power of God’s love through Jesus Christ. Because of God’s holiness and goodness He cannot allow us in our fallen nature into heaven. So by nature we are all on our way to hell. No amount of work, obedience, prayer or sacrifice, ritual or tradition can save us. That is my belief, but many religions believe otherwise. Some believe they can please God and be allowed into heaven by killing his enemies and others believe it’s by following rules of works obedience and worship.
Jesus provides the only way for people to go to heaven for this reason, no one is good enough or could ever be good enough to get there on their own because evil still dwells within us.
Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. Romans 3:23-25
So unless we choose Jesus we go to hell? William Lane Craig ask “How could an all just God send people to heaven?” If God is truly good and just He must be just in administering justice and punishing evil. Why would He allow any who carry evil within into heaven?
God’s remedy is Jesus, who is not only God, but Truth, Love, Mercy, Justice and Grace. God gives us the freedom to choose life in His Kingdom of Heaven by faith in Jesus Christ. He desires a relationship with us that is based upon our free will to love and choose Him. He grants us a “do-over” with a new nature in Christ, restored and transformed by His Spirit.
This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 2 Cor 5:17
God allows us a choice to choose Him, the Lord and Savior – because no one is good enough to earn heaven and escape the justice of a good God. Andy Stanley writes that “Good people don’t go to heaven. Forgiven people go to heaven”
Gen 3:5
Romans 3:23-25
William Lane Craig Interview- “Just Thinking” You Tube Published on May 10, 2013
Q&A from the 2013 Apologetics Canada Conference.
2 Cor 5:17
Andy Stanley-“How Good Is Good Enough” 2003 Multnomah Books
Momeaning 