Before a person can be assured of salvation (going to Heaven), one must understand his or her condition from God’s perspective. How does anyone know God’s perspective, you may ask? God’s perspectives are very clearly detailed in the Bible and the Bible is God’s inspired word (2Timothy 3:16).
Now, if you choose to believe that the Bible is not the word of God you should stop reading any further as you would only be wasting your time or you could consider just one example of Divine authorship. If you do believe that the Bible is God’s word, then you will need to give it the reverence it deserves. Any Bible verse quoted below that has text in brackets is mine.
Most religions teach that, basically, you’re a good person and that God will decide where you are going when you die. Further, God will base His decision on how “good” you lived your life. Herein, is the primary reason why people don’t know where they’re going after death. They are unable to determine how good they have to be. So, all they can do is hope and wait for the judgment.
Nobody wants to believe they are going to go to Hell. Oddly, some will go so far as to say they believe in Heaven but not in Hell. However, the same source (the Bible) that tells us about Heaven also tells us about Hell. In fact, much more is said about Hell than Heaven.
So, what is God’s perspective regarding our condition or our goodness? Very simply, He says in Romans 3:10 to 3:12, “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.”
Here’s what Isaiah the prophet says on the subject in Isaiah 64:6, “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds [good works] are like a filthy garment.”
The prophet Jeremiah is even more blunt when he says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:6) Jeremiah is not referring to the organ that pumps our blood. He is referring to the inner man or the reality of who we are as people.
Now you know God’s perspective regarding our condition. It’s not easy for most people to learn this truth, much less accept it. The typical tendency is to resist it, ignore it or simply say that it is a wrong interpretation of the Bible. As far as interpretation is concerned, we accept a verse as stated unless there are other parts of the Bible that contradict it. On the contrary, the whole of Scripture supports the above verses.
This condition separates the entire human race from God and there is no amount of good works that man can do to remedy it. As a result, all men are on the way to Hell the moment they are conceived (Psalm 51:5). So, how did man get into such a state?