What is the difficulty of getting into heaven?

[Handmaid for Jesus]

A lot of people think it cannot be as simple as accepting the free gift by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus. But it is.
I think some have a great respect and admiration for intellect, soulish achievement, and hard-earned accomplishments. They may have an unconscious thought that something free is not worth anything. "In order to have worth a thing has to be labored and strived for." This thought carries over into their belief system. One good example is when people say you must repent from all sin before you can be saved. You may as well say you must do a million push-ups before you can be saved. Works are works, and you will never be good enough. You will never successfully repent from all sin before you are saved. You may as well say "you must do all the works of the law before you can believe to be saved." All this is repellant to the concept of salvation by faith and grace. The purpose of the law is to prove that all are sinners and therefore need to be saved by faith. If you could repent from all sin before you were saved, that would serve to prove you do not need to be saved. So just accept the free gift and thank Him for it. Fruits will show up. Good works will occur eventually. He knows how to sanctify you and will do it as you walk with Him.

Yeah, it is all of the convoluted teachings that have gone forth. The gospel is very simple if one believes it. We get to heaven through grace by faith in Lord Jesus. He paid our sin debt. He came to pay a debt He did not owe because we had a debt we could not pay. Galatians is a good book to study and ask the Holy Spirit to make it plain.

 

[Belinda Cooper]

In the most basic terms for a child to understand, How hard or easy is it to get into heaven?
In other words, Is it easy to obtain salvation or is it hard for the joe shmoes of the world?

Anyone can enter heaven by accepting Jesus, the son of God, God in the flesh who came down from heaven, lived a sinless life, gave Himself for our sins, was crucified and rose again to give us life with Him for those that believe.

So it is simple but humans make it difficult because they want to do their will and not God's. They don't want to make Jesus their Lord but only want Him as Savior.

 

[Clare73]

We obey because we love. That's where God wants us. Otherwise we're just back to legalism

But we obey. . .and we trust on Jesus' sacrifice of atonement for the remission of our sin (Romans 3:25) and salvation from God's wrath (Romans 5:9).

 

[Soyeong]

In the most basic terms for a child to understand, How hard or easy is it to get into heaven?
In other words, Is it easy to obtain salvation or is it hard for the joe shmoes of the world?

In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus said that only those who do the will of the Father will enter the Kingdom of Heaven and that he will tell those who are workers of lawlessness to depart from him because he never knew them, and God has made His will known through His law (Psalms 40:8), so the gift of knowing Jesus by obeying God's law through faith is the way to enter heaven, which is eternal life (John 17:3, Matthew 19:17). In Matthew 7:14, Jesus said that narrow or difficult is the way to life. In Deuteronomy 30:11-16 and Romans 10:5-10, God's law is not too difficult for us to obey and obedience to it brings life, so the difficulty in getting to heaven is not in act of obeying what God laws, but in having faith in choosing to do His will instead of learning on our own understanding, which is compounded by the difficulty of other people telling you that you don't need to do the Father's will in obedience to His law.

 

[Handmaid for Jesus]

So we won't overcome sin and yet good fruit will show up anyway. Does it matter at all, then, whether or not good fruit does show up or whether or not sin is overcome at all?

Lord Jesus has taken away your sin. As far as the East is from the West removed our transgressions.
Psalm 103:12
As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.

 

[Blade]

Who so ever calls on the name of the lord shall be saved......

 

[atpollard]

In the most basic terms for a child to understand, How hard or easy is it to get into heaven?
In other words, Is it easy to obtain salvation or is it hard for the joe shmoes of the world?

Both easy and hard.

All you need to do is surrender to Jesus … but almost everyone will refuse to give up control.

 

[Clare73]

In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus said that only those who do the will of the Father will enter the Kingdom of Heaven

And the will of the Father is that you believe in Jesus Christ (John 6:29) for the remission of your sin by his atoning sacrifice (Romans 3:25).

 

[Soyeong]

And the will of the Father is that you believe in Jesus Christ (John 6:29) for the remission of your sin by his atoning sacrifice (Romans 3:25).

In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus contrasted doing the will of the Father with being a worker of lawlessness, so you don't need to jump to a different book to figure out that it is the will of the Father for us to obey what He has commanded.

In Psalms 119:142, God's law is truth, in Psalms 119:160, the sum of God's word is truth, and in John 1:14, God's word became flesh and dwelt among us, so Jesus is God's law, the truth, and God's word made flesh, which is evidenced by the fact that he set a sinless example of how to walk in obedience to God's law, so which so he was claiming when he said that he is truth (John 14:6). In Hebrews 1:3, the Son is the exact expression of God's nature, which he express in sinless obedience to God's law, so he is the personification of God's nature, or the physical manifestation of God's law, the truth, and God's word, so obedience to the law of which he is the living embodiment is the way to believe in the nature of who he is, or in other words, the way to believe in him, so God's law is His instructions for how to believe in Jesus, which is also how He has made His will known, and which is why there are many verses that connect our faith in God with our obedience to His law or that connect our unbelief with our disobedience:

God's law was given for our own good (Deuteronomy 6:24, 10:12-13) and obedience to any set of instructions that are for our own good is about putting our faith in the one who gave them to rightly guide us, which is why Jesus said in Matthew 23:23 that faith is one of the weightier matters of the law. What we believe is expressed through our actions, which is why James 2:17-18 says that faith without works is dead and that he would show his faith by his works, so doing good works is what faith looks like. In Hebrews 11, every example of faith is an example of someone doing works. In John 3:36, believing in Christ is equated with obeying him. In Revelation 14:12, those who kept God's commandments are the same as those who kept faith in Jesus. In John 6:40, those who believe in Jesus will have eternal life, in John 17:3, eternal life is knowing God and Jesus, and in Matthew 19:17, the way to enter eternal life is by obeying the commandments, so obedience to the commandments is what it looks like to believe in Jesus and to know him. In Habakkuk 2:4, the righteous shall live by faith, and in Isaiah 51:7, the righteous are those on whose heart is God's law, so living by faith does not refer to a manner of living that is not in obedience to God's law. In Romans 1:5, we have received grace in order to bring about the obedience of faith, and in Romans 16:25-26, Paul's Gospel and the preaching of Christ was to bring about the obedience of faith. In Deuteronomy 28:1, it speaks about faithfully obeying the voice of the Lord. In Romans 3:31, our faith upholds God's law. God is trustworthy, therefore His law is also trustworthy (2 Samuel 7:28, Nehemiah 9:13, Psalms 19:7, 18:30, 33:4, 111:7, 119:30, 42, 75, 86, 99, 138, 142, 151, 160) and a law that isn't trustworthy can't come from a God who is trustworthy, so to put our faith in the law is to put our faith in the Lawgiver to rightly guide us, while to deny that God's law is of faith is to deny the faithfulness of God.

In Deuteronomy 32:51, Moses broke faith with God because he did not obey what God commanded him to do. In Numbers 5:6, disobedience to God's law is referred to as breaking faith. In Joshua 7:1 and 1 Chronicles 2:7, Israel broke faith by not doing what God commanded. In 1 Chronicles 10:13, Saul broke faith because he did not keep the command of the Lord. In 2 Chronicles 33:19, sin is equated with faithlessness. In Jeremiah 3:6-14, Israel was faithless because they did not obey God. In Ezekiel 14:13, sin is equated with acting faithlessly. In Psalms 119:158, David said that he looked at the faithless with disgust because they did not keep God's commands. In Romans 1:29-32 and Revelation 21:8, being faithless is associated with actions that are in disobedience to God. In Hebrews 3:18-19, unbelief is equated with disobedience. In 2 Timothy 3:8, those who oppose Moses also oppose the truth, being corrupted of mind and disqualified in regard to the faith.

 

[Handmaid for Jesus]

And the will of the Father is that you believe in Jesus Christ (John 6:29) for the remission of your sin by his atoning sacrifice (Romans 3:25).

QFT!
Too many Christians are as the Galatians. Paul called them foolish because they did not believe Jesus' sacrifice was enough to keep them.

 

[Clare73]

In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus contrasted doing the will of the Father with being a worker of lawlessness, so you don't need to jump to a different book

And the issue with considering the whole counsel of God?

Including Romans 13:8-10 where loving our neighbor is the fulfillment of the law, "and every other command there may be."

 

[fhansen]

But we obey. . .and we trust on Jesus' sacrifice of atonement for the remission of our sin (Romans 3:25) and salvation from God's wrath (Romans 5:9).

Yes, we obey because the Spirit's given us the love with which to do it (Rom 5:5), without which it would only be self-motivated. It's good to know the command, but the command, by itself, effects nothing, no righteousness on its own. I appreciate the wisdom of a 4th century bishop:

"If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages, . . . we resemble mercenaries. Finally if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for him who commands . . . we are in the position of children." Basil of Caesarea

 

[Soyeong]

And the issue with considering the whole counsel of God?

Including Romans 13:8-10 where loving our neighbor is the fulfillment of the law, "and every other command there may be."

If we love God and our neighbor, then we won't commit adultery, idolatry, theft, murder, rape, kidnapping, favoritism, and so forth for everything else that God has commanded, so love fulfills the entire law because it is inclusive of everything in it and everything in it is an example of what it means to correctly obey the command to love. A house divided against itself cannot stand, so the counsel of God should not be interpreted as speaking against obeying the counsel of God, but if you interpret part of the counsel of God as speaking against obeying other parts of the counsel of God, then you are not accepting the whole counsel of God.

 

[Clare73]

Yes, we obey because the Spirit's given us the love with which to do it (Rom 5:5), without which it would only be self-motivated. It's good to know the command, but the command, by itself, effects nothing, no righteousness on its own. I appreciate the wisdom of a 4th century bishop:

"If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages, . . . we resemble mercenaries. Finally if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for him who commands . . . we are in the position of children." Basil of Caesarea

It also takes power, from the Holy Spirit.

 

[Soyeong]

QFT!
Too many Christians are as the Galatians. Paul called them foolish because they did not believe Jesus' sacrifice was enough to keep them.

Christ spent his ministry teaching his followers how to obey God's law by word and by example and Galatians should not be interpreted as speaking against following Christ. Paul was a servant of God, so he should not be interpreted as speaking against obeying what He has commanded as if obedience to God was somehow a negative thing, or as if God can't be trusted to guide us. God's word should not be interpreted as speaking against obeying God's word.

In Acts 5:32, the Spirit have been given to those who obey God, so obedience to God is part of the way to receive the Spirit, however, Galatians 3:1-2 denies that works of the law are part of the way to receive the Spirit, therefore works of the law are not in regard to obedience to anything that God has commanded. In Romans 3:27, Paul contrasted a law of works with a law of faith, so works of the law are of works while he said in Romans 3:31 that our faith upholds God's law, so it is of faith, and a law that our faith upholds can't be referring to the works of the law that are not of faith in Galatians 3:10-11. In Galatians 3:10-12, Paul associated a quote from Habakkuk 2:4 with a quote from Leviticus 18:5, so the righteous who are living by faith are the same as those who are living in obedience to God's law, while no one is justified before God by works of the law because they are not of faith.

 

[Clare73]

If we love God and our neighbor, then we won't commit adultery, idolatry, theft, murder, rape, kidnapping, favoritism, and so forth for everything else that God has commanded, so love fulfills the entire law because it is inclusive of everything in it and everything in it is an example of what it means to correctly obey the command to love. A house divided against itself cannot stand, so the counsel of God should not be interpreted as speaking against obeying the counsel of God, but if you interpret part of the counsel of God as speaking against obeying other parts of the counsel of God, then you are not accepting the whole counsel of God.

Perhaps you should then not set Romans 13:8-10 against the rest of the counsel of God.

 

[Soyeong]

Perhaps you should then not set Romans 13:8-10 against the rest of the counsel of God.

I said that love is inclusive of everything that God has commanded, so unlike you, I am not setting it against the rest of the counsel of God. In Matthew 24:12-14, Jesus said that because of lawlessness the love of many will draw cold, so you should not try to use love to justify lawlessness to God's other laws.

 

[fhansen]

It also takes power, from the Holy Spirit.

Either way we can't do it without Him-and we must do it, love that is, with all the righteousness implied in that in order to gain eternal life. He orchestrates the whole thing; our only part is to cooperate-because while that love is a gift it's also choice, or else its not love.

 

[Clare73]

Either way we can't do it without Him-and we must do it, love that is, with all the righteousness implied in that in order to gain eternal life. He orchestrates the whole thing; our only part is to cooperate-because while that love is a gift it's also choice, or else its not love.

False. . .
Does a small child have a "choice" about loving its mother?

 

[fhansen]

False. . .
Does a small child have a "choice" about loving its mother?

they're born with that instinct.. But we're born without knowledge of, let alone faith in, let alone hope in,, let alone love for, God. Agape can be embraced and accepted and acted upon and grown, or not. It's a daily choice