What If You're Wrong About What Happens After You Die?
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Think you are a pretty good person? After all, you try hard to do the right thing. Sure, you’re not perfect, but who is? Maybe you think that—if there is a God—he (or she or it) is going to look at your heart, see that you made an honest effort, and let you enter heaven. If there is a hell, you’re not going there because that’s the place for the really bad people.
Take a moment and imagine that you are driving on a freeway. You look around and see people in their cars in front, behind, and beside you. Now consider that each person around you has a belief system regarding what will happen when he or she dies. All of these people base their life choices on this belief system. Will life after death turn out to be exactly what each person has believed it to be? Can they all be right, even though their views may be wildly different?
This is impossible since the most common views of the afterlife are mutually exclusive. For example, Christianity teaches that "it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment" (Heb. 9:27), while Hinduism holds the belief of reincarnation. Furthermore, it is unrealistic to think that we can imagine into reality what happens after we leave this earth.
What will happen if you are wrong?
Now let’s get back to the thinking that your good efforts will be good enough for God to let you into heaven. Here are two questions to consider:
Why do you think you are correct?
What is going to happen if you are wrong?
According to the Bible, there was once a way to enter to heaven based on our own good efforts, but it crumbled when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2–3). Because of humankind’s rebellion against God, we are all inherently sinful and unable to stand before a holy God (Rom. 3:23).
God must uphold his attributes of holiness, goodness, justice, and righteousness. Thus, we must keep God’s laws perfectly because his nature requires it, but none of us is able to do it. Without God’s intervention, we are all under condemnation (John 3:18). Yet, this is not the end of the story!
God in his love and mercy sent his Son to earth for us.
Because we are no longer able to climb up to heaven due to our own tainted nature and works, God in his love and mercy sent his Son to earth for us. Jesus humbled himself by taking on human flesh, “becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8). He lived the perfect life we should have lived (but failed to do) and he redeemed us (something we couldn’t do for ourselves) by offering himself up as the perfect sacrifice for our sins (Matt. 5:17; Rom. 10:4; Heb. 10:14).
It is by God’s grace alone—through faith in Christ alone—that we have peace with God and enter into his presence. If Jesus, the Son of God, humbled himself to serve us, why should we think our pride-filled works could ever grant us access to God?
We need to humble ourselves before our almighty God.
Jesus’ humility was both the means and the model for our own humility before God. In the book of Luke, Jesus taught about the necessity of a penitent heart:
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9–14)
We don’t have to look very far to see that something is wrong with the world—terribly, terribly wrong. While there are various explanations for the presence of evil, the Bible says that rebellion against God is at the root of it all. We can never clean ourselves up enough—or do enough good works—to reach heaven on our own efforts. One day each of us will stand before God to answer for how we lived on this earth—whether we like it or not.
The only thing that will matter is how God views you.
On that day we can humbly rest upon the perfect work of Christ done on our behalf, which we receive by faith alone, or we can proudly proclaim to God a list of our own self-perceived accomplishments, which are nothing more than filthy rags (Isa. 64:6; Phil. 3:4–9). Thankfully, the Bible contains many verses that happily assure us that all who trust in Christ are no longer under God’s condemnation but instead are cleansed from all unrighteousness (John 3:17–18; Rom. 8:1; 1 John 1:9).
In the end, it won’t matter how you view yourself. The only thing that will matter is how God views you. Christ came to earth the first time in humility to serve, but the next time he will come in glory to rule. If you haven’t done so already, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, and receive Christ as your savior. Wanting something to be true doesn’t make it so. As Jesus reminds us, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). Stop thinking that you can sovereignly determine what happens to you after you die, and seek the truth while it can be found.
This article is adapted from “You Have to Be Perfect to Get into Heaven” at corechristianity.com and was originally published at Beautiful Christian Life on November 18, 2019.
