“If you were to die tonight, would you go to heaven?”
For years, this was a classic question missionaries would ask when knocking on someone’s door. The hope was that if the respondent said “I don’t know,” it would open up the door (literally and figuratively) to a gospel conversation.
But how would you answer this question: “On a scale of 1–10, how confident are you that you are going to heaven?”
Setting aside the fact that “going to heaven” is not the way I would prefer to word the question, you get the point: how confident are you that you are saved and that you will spend eternity in God’s presence and in his kingdom?
Interestingly, the higher the number you would give yourself, the less culturally acceptable that answer is. After all, how arrogant do you have to be to believe that you can know for sure? And doesn’t the Bible warn us against pride? No one is perfect, so humility is in order when it comes to the number you would give yourself. You’d have to be really unself-aware or naive to give yourself anything above an 8, and even an 8 is pushing it. At least, that’s likely what you would hear if you were to pick a random person on the street.
Most people wouldn’t give themselves a below-average number (most of us don’t think we are that bad). But go too high, and you're smug and conceited.
But did you know that there are only two biblically correct answers? The options are either 1 (you’re going to hell) or 10 (you know for sure you’re going to heaven).
In fact, the most dangerous number you could give yourself is an 8 or a 9! Scripture is not unclear on this. If you genuinely trust in Christ and have repented of your sins, you can know without a doubt that you are going to heaven.
There are a number of passages that are exceedingly clear about this; here are but a few:
1 John 5:12-13: The one who has the Son has life. The one who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
John 5:24: Truly I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not come under judgment but has passed from death to life.
Romans 10:9: If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
John 6:40: For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Acts 16:31: Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.
Scripture is not unclear about what happens to those who trust in Christ; they will be saved. And this is why giving yourself an 8 or 9 can be so dangerous. Not because genuine Christians never struggle with assurance of salvation, but because many people give themselves a high number based on how good they think they are. They believe they have lived a good enough life that God should let them into heaven. But this reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of salvation. Our confidence cannot rest in how good we think we are, but in what Jesus has done for us.
And yet, Scripture also tells us that works-based righteousness is damning, because our works only reveal that we cannot come anywhere close to the perfection that is required to stand before a holy and righteous God.
Here are just a few (of many) verses that teach us this:
Galatians 3:10: For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, Everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed.
James 2:10: For whoever keeps the entire law, and yet stumbles at one point, is guilty of breaking it all.
Romans 3:20: For no one will be justified in his sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law.
The law (God’s commands for how we are to live) reveals how desperately we need atonement. If salvation is based on your works, no amount of good works can erase any of the bad you have done. It’s great to do a lot of good things. But you are still dead in your sins!
We need someone to stand in our place for our sins. We need Jesus.
Ephesians 2:1 tells us we are dead in our trespasses and sins, and verses 4-5 tell us that God, being rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead, and that we are saved by grace.
Now, it is understandable to wrestle at times with the magnificent grace of God. It is perfectly normal to question why God would fully forgive us in a way we could never repay! But God does not lie, and if he says we can know our standing before him based on what we do with Jesus, then we can know.
On a scale of 1–10, how sure are you that you will go to heaven? There are only two acceptable answers: one and ten. What you do with Jesus, not what you do, is the difference between those two numbers.
Either Jesus’ perfect sacrifice covers your sins, or it does not. And if it does not because you have not trusted in him, you must know that the sum total of all your works (both good and bad) is death. Because God is righteous, holy, and loving, he will not tolerate sin and wickedness.
But Jesus came to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).
“If you were to die tonight, would you go to heaven?”
If you know Jesus, you know the answer. 10/10
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