We don’t like to think about it, but in a world of rising terrorism, cancer patients breathing their last, and unexpected heart attacks, death is very real. Even if you’re young and healthy, you could be living in your last hour right now.

If you died today, would you be ready? Here’s a way to find out. Let’s say you died tonight, and you stood before God, and He asked you, “Why should I let you into heaven?” What would you say?

Maybe you’d say, “Because I’m a good person.” Or, “Because I went to church all my life.” Or maybe, “Because I gave to charity,” or even, “Because I’m not as bad as some people—like Hitler or Stalin, or the murderers and rapists of this world.”

Here are other common responses:

“Because I obeyed my parents and get good grades.”

“Because I prayed the sinner’s prayer when I was five or went forward to the altar as a child.”

“Because I raise my children well and spend time with them.”

“Because I’ve been faithful to my spouse.”

“Because I read the Bible”

“Because I go to church.”  

“Because I’ve tried my best.”

Those are very common answers. But they pose a very big problem. If God could accept you into heaven because you are a good person, then why did He send His only Son to die on the cross? If you and I really aren’t that bad after all, why did Jesus Christ have to be brutally tortured and put to death?  

There are two reasons God cannot accept us into heaven based on our own goodness:

We lack perfect righteousness

Pretend that you stand on the west coast in Long Beach, California, and you try as hard as you can to jump to Catalina Island. You might make it 10 feet into the water. Maybe even 15. But Catalina Island is 40 miles out there. Even the longest jumper falls way short.

In His sermon on the mount, Jesus told the people, “You are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). How perfect is God? The apostle John said, “God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). In Leviticus 11:44 God told the Israelites, “You shall be holy for I am holy.” In God you will not find the slightest hint of sin or darkness. He is perfectly pure. And God requires the same standard of holiness in you and me.

I understand that presents a problem. None of us can even get even close to reaching Catalina Island. But the problem is even bigger. We not only lack the perfect righteousness of God, but the second reason God cannot accept us into heaven is because…

We possess sinful rebellion.

Our problem is not simply the lack of righteousness but the presence of sin. For a moment, consider just three of God’s 10 Commandments:

“You shall not lie.”

Have you ever told a lie before?

“Well, I’ve told white lies."

But God isn’t interested in the color of your lie. If someone tells lies, what do you call him?

“A liar. But,” you might say, “I’ve only told one or two—so you can’t call me a liar.”

How many times do you have to commit murder to become a murderer? Once. Even if you’ve told one lie, by the Bible’s standard, you’re a liar—as I am too.

Let’s look at another of the 10 Commandments: You shall not steal. Have you ever stolen something? Even something small? Ever cheated on your taxes—refused to report all your income that year? Ever taken something that does not belong to you and failed to return it? Ever downloaded music you didn't pay the copyright for? If you are honest, you must admit that you are a thief, just like me.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the commandment, “You shall not commit adultery.” Now most of us can say, “Oh that’s easy, I’ve never slept with someone else’s spouse.” But Jesus said that if a man lusts after a woman, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Mat 5:28) Ever lusted after somebody or looked at a pornographic picture, or fantasized about sexual intimacy with someone who isn''t your spouse. If you’ve been honest in your heart, you know that as a lying, thieving, adulterer of the heart you won’t be innocent on the Day of Judgment.

And maybe you’d say: Well, I haven’t broken all the 10 commandments—just a few of them, so I’m not all that bad.

The Bible says “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all” (Jam 2:10). In early spring I was talking to a student on campus about Jesus Christ. I asked him to read Romans 3:10-12. Here’s what it says:

There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.

He finished reading and I asked, “What do you think that is saying?”

He looked at me and said, “Well…if that’s true, we’re in big trouble. If this is true then no one is good.” Here, a man who had not grown up in a Christian home, had never been taught the Christian faith, could see by a very plain reading of the Scriptures that no one is good.  

Mathematically, your problem is not only minus, but also plus. You fall short of God’s perfect standard and you have broken God’s law. You lack righteousness and you possess a sinful nature.

Understand that God did not give us these commandments because He delights in condemning people and watching them suffer. You’d consider a doctor a quack if he found that you had lethal cancer but told you it was just a headache. You'd want him to tell you the truth—even if the truth is very bad news. God has done the same thing for you through His 10 Commandments. He gave us these laws to show us how sinful we are, so that we would see our need for mercy.

After hearing this, many people try harder to live a good life to earn God's favor. They figure if they just try hard enough and do enough good things, they'll increase their chance of being forgiven and going to heaven.

But salvation is a gift, not wages. You cannot earn heaven. Try as hard as you may, God would be an unjust and evil God to let any of us into heaven based on our own righteousness. Hitler may only get 10 feet toward Catalina Island, and Mother Theresa may make it 60 or even 100. But neither will make it on their own because both fall very short of God’s standard.

If God simply wanted to make people more moral, he would have sent a moralist to reform the world, not His Son to die for the world.

Then how can you get to heaven? How can you be saved from the wrath of God? How can you be forgiven on the Judgment Day?

700 years before Christ put His foot on this planet, the prophet Isaiah predicted that He would come to earth to suffer and die for the sins of the world. Here is what he said: 

Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him (Isa 53:4-6).

Jesus Christ went to bat for you. He suffered and died in your place. The punishment of hell that you deserve He took upon Himself in your place so that you could be forgiven and made clean and whole.

In the early pioneer era of California lived a wheat farmer whose field sat next to the railroad tracks. One day when his grain was ripe and ready for harvest, a train passed by and sparks from the locomotive set his field on fire. The farmer rushed to the field nad started a new fire to stop the original one. But he lost half his crop. Dejected and discouraged, he said to himself, “Why did God allow this?”

As he walked along he noticed the charred body of a hen which had been caught in the blazing inferno. He turned over the dead bird with his foot, and five little chicks ran out from underneath. The farmer wept, as he realized that this was a picture of what the Savior did for him.

Christ will either be your Judge, or He will be your Savior. The first time He came into this world to save you from your sins (John 12:47). But the next time He’ll come as Judge (Acts 17:31).

Choose to trust your own righteousness and goodness and efforts of morality, and on Judgment Day the scales will be weighed and you will be found guilty.

But turn from your sin and self-righteousness and humble yourself before God, recognizing that He provided a sufficient sacrifice in your place—the place where you deserve to be—and by the righteousness and death of His Son, God will forgive you of your sins and you will become His child.

And then death isn’t quite so scary anymore.