This is a response to a quiz that I ran across while on Facebook.

What is on my mind is that a friend of mine sent me a request to take a quiz to see what war leader I am most like, and as I navigated to that page, another quiz popped up.. This quiz was going to give me the results to let me know if I was either going to Heaven or Hell. Looking at the quiz, the questions are based on good works, and I can tell you that my best work is about as useful as a dirty rag in God’s eyes. Isaiah 64:6 reads “We are unfit to worship you; each of our good deeds is merely a filthy rag. We dry up like leaves; our sins are storm winds sweeping us away.” So, our good deeds DO NOT get us anywhere.

The quiz would be better with only one question: “If you were to stand before the Lord, and He asked you, ‘Why should I let you into Heaven’, what would you say?” The only answer that He is looking for is that you accepted His son, Jesus to be both your Savior and Lord.

The apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church in I Corinthians 15:3 “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;” One portion of scripture that Paul could have referred to was the prophet Isaiah, when in Isaiah 53:5 we read “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” The “He” Isaiah referred to was Jesus. Then we look to Luke 23 and read the account of the actual crucifixion. Luke 23:33 reads “And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left.”

We then look to John and John 3:16 reads “God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die.” We “never really die”, because we are promised in Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The reason for this promise is due to Romans 3:23 that reads “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;”

Understanding that just simply “doing” our best is not good enough, but that it takes Jesus can lead us to I John 1:9 : “But if we confess our sins to God, he can always be trusted to forgive us and take our sins away.” So, if we admit that we cannot get into Heaven on our own, and we believe that it is Jesus ALONE that will give us eternal life with Him there and confess, according to I John 1:9, it is at that point, you will know the answer to the question: “Are you going to Heaven or hell?”

As an aside about good works, once we have accepted Christ as our Savior and Lord and realized that He is the only way to Heaven, then we will do “good works” for people, not because we have to—to earn something; but because we want to. Because of the “free” gift we were given. Two additional scripture passages include: Hebrews 10:24 “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:” and Ephesians 2: 8-9 that reads “You were saved by faith in God, who treats us much better than we deserve. This is God’s gift to you, and not anything you have done on your own. ⁹It isn’t something you have earned, so there is nothing you can brag about.”