By: Steve Wilmot
Edgerton, Ohio
Last Ponderings, we looked at a very important question: Are you sure you’re going to heaven when you die? If you missed it, I hope you’ll dig up last week’s issue of The Village Reporter and read it.
I want to reexamine this question a little further with a related question I’m often asked: Can I lose my reservation to heaven?
At the root of our doubts about whether we’re going to heaven is performance. Living in a culture where acceptance, promotion, and even love are based on performance, it’s natural to conclude that if you’re still sinning after God saved you, you’re not saved anymore. If ain’t performin’, you ain’t goin’.
Here’s the truth: your salvation does not depend on how you perform. God knows you aren’t perfect and never will be — he doesn’t expect you to be. Set perfection aside. Erase performance from the equation.
God saved you for one reason, and one reason only — you “have the Son” (1 John 5.12). You decided to put your faith in Jesus, not in good deeds or behavior.
If good performance didn’t save you, bad performance can’t “unsave” you. Now don’t infer this truth to mean you can sin all you want after you’re saved. Your behavior and performance do matter. God didn’t hand you a get out of jail free card to sin as often as you want.
In fact, when you gave your life to Jesus, you became a new person inside who doesn’t want to sin anymore. That’s why it bothers you now when you sin, while before you were a Christian, you didn’t give it a second thought.
[Read the internal tussle Paul experienced with sin in Romans 7.15-25.]
Sin that continues into your new life as a Christian doesn’t affect your eternal destiny, but it negatively impacts your witness to others and your relationship with God. It can’t destroy that relationship, but it breaks the harmony and closeness of your relationship with him. How close you are to God depends on complying with his commands.
Think about your family when you were a teenager. If you didn’t follow your father’s rules, you damaged your harmony with him. Selfish or hurtful behavior affected the harmony between you and members of your family. The bond became strained; you didn’t talk to each other or go on vacation together; tension built; you preferred the privacy of your bedroom to interaction in the living room.
You could have run away, or your dad could have kicked you out of the house, but you still belonged to the family. Your dad was still your dad, and you were still his son, even though your behavior caused a rift between you.
In the same way, the harmony of your relationship with God, your heavenly Father, is contingent upon your obedience to his commands. Sin mars the closeness of the relationship, but it can’t destroy it.
In the first chapter of Ephesians, Paul wrote: God “adopted [us] as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will” (1.5). He wanted you in his family. He sacrificed his only Son, Jesus, to invite you into an eternal relationship with him.
Now consider this: God knew every sin and every secret in your past. Nothing was hidden from him, and he still wanted to adopt you. Not only that, but God knew in advance every time you would disobey him after he adopted you.
Every instance when you’d do what you wanted to do rather than what he wanted you to do. He knew everything about you — past and future — and still he chose you to become his son or daughter. To belong in his family.
Let that sink in for a moment. God sees every sin you committed yesterday, and those you’ll commit today and in the future, but he won’t “un-adopt” you because you sinned.
When you grasp this truth, you’ll find the pressure to perform to earn his love and acceptance will disappear. You’ll begin to enjoy his love, kindness, and generosity for you instead of trying hard to keep the rules, so God doesn’t hand you an eviction notice from heaven. You’ll be free from the stress of wondering if you’re doing enough good to make the grade.
Stop wondering. You aren’t. You never were. You never will be. But that’s okay. You “have the Son.”
And he can’t wait to show you the home he’s built for you in heaven. To show you around. To introduce you to the great saints of old. To reunite you with your family and friends who got there before you.
Rest assured, my friend, you’re going to heaven if you have established a relationship “with the Son.” You can count on it.
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Steve Wilmot is a former Edgerton, Ohio area pastor who now seeks “to still bear fruit in old age” through writing. He is the author of seven books designed to assist believers to make steady progress on their spiritual journey.