I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
John 14:6
Maps can be useful in navigating through unfamiliar territory. Unfortunately, I had to learn the value of maps the hard way, some years ago. A pastor friend had invited me to Canada to speak at his church’s annual Valentine’s banquet. I departed Dallas early one morning and, after a plane change in Minneapolis, landed in Winnipeg, Manitoba, around four o’clock that afternoon with plenty of time to spare.
After retrieving my luggage, I stood out front waiting for my host to arrive . . . and waiting . . . and waiting. After about thirty minutes, I strolled back inside the terminal to call the pastor’s home. When I looked down at the invitation letter he had mailed a few weeks earlier to retrieve his phone number, I noticed that the city and province on his letterhead did not correspond with my present location. Because I had preached for the pastor at his church in Winnipeg ten years earlier, I had assumed he was still at the same church. Big mistake!
I took the letter with me to the airline counter and explained that I had apparently traveled to the wrong city. According to the pastor’s letter, I needed to be in Vancouver, British Columbia. Not knowing anything about Canada, I innocently asked, “Is there a bus I can catch to Vancouver? I need to be there in thirty minutes.” All the agents behind the counter started laughing and saying in unison, “You’ve got to be kidding! Vancouver is 1,500 miles west of here!”
Fortunately, a plane was getting ready to depart for Vancouver in the next few minutes. Even though it was a three-hour flight, the two-hour time change between Vancouver and Winnipeg would work in my favor and I could arrive at the church just in time to speak. I ran to the departure gate as fast as possible, and as I was about to walk down the jetway, the gate agent handed me a map of Canada (apparently the story of my mistake had already traveled from the ticket counter to the departure gate). “Here, read this; it might help you the next time you travel to Canada!” she said, and chuckled.
Accidentally traveling to a wrong location can be embarrassing. But there is one time in your life you don’t want to end up at the wrong destination—and that’s the day of your death. Many will be surprised at the people who will be in heaven. People we may think should be in heaven won’t be there, while many people we don’t think should be in heaven will be. The worst surprise of all will be for those people who assumed they would be welcomed into God’s presence but will instead be turned away from heaven’s gate.
The Bible clearly says that only those who have trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins will reside in the new heaven and the new earth. When people argue against the exclusivity of Christ for salvation by saying, “No one but God can decide who will be in heaven,” they miss a crucial truth: God has already decided the standard by which people will be admitted into His presence. When we declare that faith in Christ offers the only path to heaven, we are not creating our own criterion but simply repeating the requirement God established.
When I suggest that those who are in heaven will surprise us, I’m not at all implying that we will be shocked to see Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims standing alongside Christians. As I explain in my book Not All Roads Lead to Heaven, the popular belief that all religions in the world lead to God negates the most basic teaching of Jesus, who declared, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6). The God who never changes is not going to suddenly surprise us by saying at the last minute, “I’ve changed My mind about this ‘faith in Jesus’ requirement. Everyone’s welcome—come on in!”
What I am saying is that since only God is able to “judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12), He alone knows who has sincerely placed his or her faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins. You may be truly surprised by others who are—or are not—in heaven. But, hopefully, you won’t be surprised about your own eternal fate. If you wait until you have passed from this life into the next life to see whether you are welcomed into God’s presence, you will have waited too long.
Unfortunately, many people will be shocked on the judgment day to discover that they will be turned away from heaven’s entrance. Jesus described that reality with what I believe are some of the most disturbing words in the entire Bible:
Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast our demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?” And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.” (Matt. 7:21–23)
Notice it is not just a few people who will be disappointed to discover that they were wrong about their relationship to God. Jesus said “many” who thought they would be welcomed into heaven will instead be dispatched into hell. Why? Simple: they were on the wrong road that led to the wrong destination. Jesus said earlier in Matthew 7 that there were two very different roads or “ways” that led to two very different destinations:
Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. (vv. 13–14)
How can you make sure you don’t make the same tragic mistake? Suppose you live in Oklahoma and want to travel north to Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada (on purpose!). You pull your car onto the highway and sincerely believe you are on the right road heading to your intended destination. But several hours into your trip you notice highway signs reading, “Dallas, 100 Miles; Houston, 300 miles.” Later on you see a billboard: “Enjoy a night’s rest at the Holiday Inn, Laredo, Texas.”
Hopefully, those signs would be enough to convince you that you are on the wrong road, heading to the wrong destination. In spite of your sincere belief that you are traveling north, you are, in reality, going south.
The Signposts Leading to Heaven
No one accidentally ends up in heaven or hell without warning. Instead, there are definite “signposts” along the way, alerting us as to whether or not we are on the right path leading to the right destination. The journey to heaven (or hell) begins in this life. If we are truly on the road that leads to heaven, there are four signposts we must acknowledge along the way.
Signpost #1: We Have a Sin Problem
Many people refuse to go beyond this point. They would rather turn around and head another direction than face the unsettling truth of Romans 3:10–12:
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.
To be “righteous” means to be in a right standing with God. And how many people are naturally in a right relationship with God? Zilch, zero, nada—or as Paul said, “None . . . not even one.” We are all sinners. Admittedly, we can always point to those who are worse than we are, such as murderers and child pornographers. We may not be as bad as we can be, but we are just as bad off as we can be. All of us have sinned, creating an eternal gulf between God and ourselves.
The sin virus we inherited from Adam infects every action, every motive, and every thought. In our honest moments we know that’s true. Have you ever been minding your own business—maybe even sitting in church—when some horrible thought comes into your mind? Where did that come from? you wonder. It’s a symptom of the sickness we have all contracted.
Yet even though we experience the symptoms of sin every day, some people still want to claim they are innocent—that the label “sinner” doesn’t apply to them. These people are like the little boy who protests to his mother that he has been nowhere near the cookie jar—with crumbs dangling from his chin.
Similarly, we can claim our innocence as vociferously as we want. The problem is that the “cookie crumbs” of sin are all over us, pointing to our guilt. As the apostle John declared:
If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us [because] if we say that we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar. (1 John 1:8, 10)
Whether we acknowledge it or not, the fact remains: we are all sinners. And the result of sin is death. “The wages of sin is death,” Paul wrote in Romans 6:23. As we saw in chapter 7, the Greek word translated “death” is thanatos, which means “separation.” Just as physical death is the separation of our body from our spirit, spiritual death is the separation of our spirit from God. Physical death is temporary, but spiritual death is eternal. Death is God’s righteous judgment on sin. And this leads us to the second signpost.
Signpost #2: God Is Sinless
Since God is the Creator of heaven, He gets to create the rules—not unlike what I used to tell my teenaged girls: “My house, my rules.” And the standing rule of heaven is holiness. God’s standard demands absolute perfection. No less than six times does God command us, “Be holy because I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:16 NLT).1
But we’re not holy. And this compounds the problem of sin because it separates us from God. So, how can a sin-infected person ever relate to a sinless God? “Well, God can just overlook our imperfection, can’t He?” many ask. “After all, shouldn’t God be as tolerant of our sin as we are of other people’s sins?” Unfortunately (or fortunately), God is not like we are. The word holy literally means “separate.” God is “separate” or “different” from humanity. The prophet Habakkuk wrote:
Your eyes are too pure to approve evil,
And You can not look on wickedness with favor. (Hab. 1:13)
When you couple the reality of this second signpost about God’s holiness with the truth of the first signpost about our sinfulness—it’s enough to make us very discouraged, very quickly. For example, imagine on your trip from Oklahoma to Winnipeg you see a sign that says, “Winnipeg, 1,300 miles.” It’s a long trip, but with perseverance you can make it—until you notice your gas gauge indicates only a quarter of a tank left. No problem. You pull into a gas station . . . only to discover you have no cash or credit cards with you. There is a serious deficit between what you have and what you need to get to Winnipeg. At this point you seriously consider doing a U-turn because there is no answer to your dilemma.
The Bible says that to make it to heaven our spiritual “tank” needs to be filled with perfection. The only problem is that none of us has enough goodness to make it all the way to heaven. We may have more than others, but even a tank that is seven-eighths full won’t get us there. God demands that our spiritual gas tanks be full and running over if we are going to make it into His presence. So what’s the solution? Look at the third signpost.
Signpost #3: Jesus Is the Only Solution to Our Sin Problem
Think back to your imaginary trip to Winnipeg. What if, somewhere in the middle of Kansas, you run out of gas? However, out of nowhere a huge gasoline tanker appears and stops on the road beside you. The driver asks, “What’s the problem? Flat tire? Busted radiator?” No, you explain, you just ran out of gas—literally. He grins, points to his rig, and says, “Boy, is this your lucky day! I have more gas in this tanker than you could ever need in your little old car. May I fill your tank for you?”
When Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, two amazing transactions took place. First, Jesus—the perfect Son of God who had never sinned—voluntarily accepted the punishment from God we deserve for our sins. Because God is holy, He cannot simply overlook or decide not to punish our sins. Nahum 1:3 declares, “The LORD will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.” Someone has to pay for our sin—and Jesus volunteered to do just that.
But the second transaction on the cross was even more amazing. God credited us with the righteousness—or perfection—of Jesus. Even though we don’t have enough goodness to make it to heaven on our own, Jesus has more than enough and is willing to give us all we need to make up for our deficit. The apostle Paul described these two transactions—Christ getting credited for our sin and us getting credited for Christ’s righteousness:
He [God] made Him [Christ] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Cor. 5:21)
Jesus is the only Person qualified to bear the punishment for our sins and offer us complete perfection because He’s uniquely different from any other person who has ever walked on this planet. He alone is the Son of God. The signpost declaring Jesus to be our sin-substitute is the one that causes many people to stop, stumble, and begin searching for an alternate road to heaven.
In my years of ministry, I have met many sincere, well-meaning, and faithful followers of other religions, including Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormons. All of them believed Jesus was a good man, a holy man, a wise man pointing the way to either enlightenment or heaven. But none of them believed His claims to divinity and exclusivity as the only means of salvation and way to heaven.2 C. S. Lewis called such a denial foolish:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit on Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.3
We must either embrace Jesus’s claim that He is God’s Son or reject it. There is no intellectually honest alternative, given Jesus’s claim that He is the only solution to bridge the gap between our sinfulness and God’s holiness: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6).4
Because of the two transactions that took place on the cross—Christ receiving the punishment we deserve and our receiving the righteousness we don’t deserve—God offers us entrance into heaven. Paul explained it this way:
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom. 5:1)
“Justification,” as my friend Chuck Swindoll defines it, “is God’s act of mercy in which He declares believing sinners righteous while they are still in their sinning state.”5 Justification doesn’t make us righteous, as if we would never sin again. Rather, justification declares us righteous, like a judge issuing a pardon to a guilty criminal. Because Jesus took our sins upon Himself and paid for them upon the cross, God forgives us and proclaims us pardoned.
However, God’s forgiveness is not a blanket pardon from the penalty of sin for everybody. Instead, justification—God’s declaration of “not guilty”—requires faith, just as Paul said: “having been justified by faith.” This leads to the final signpost on the road to heaven.
Signpost #4: We Must Choose to Accept Christ’s Offer of Forgiveness
If you have made it this far on the narrow road that leads to heaven, you are closer than the vast majority of people who have ever lived. When most people encounter messages declaring them to be guilty before God and deserving of His punishment, they make a U-turn and go the opposite direction. Others who are willing to admit their mistakes still can’t come to grips with the idea that Jesus Christ is the only solution to our need for God’s forgiveness and start looking for a different path.
However, amazingly, there are some who agree that they are sinners deserving punishment, that God is holy and demanding of complete perfection, and that Jesus is the only solution to their need for God’s forgiveness. Yet their response is just to stop where they are and not travel the few steps further to embrace the truth that we must choose to accept Christ’s offer of forgiveness.
Think back for a moment to the driver of the gas truck who offers to fill your empty tank so you can make it to your destination: you have a need (gas) and he has the provision for your need (lots of gas). Intellectually agreeing with both of those realities doesn’t put one drop of gasoline into your empty tank. You must unscrew the cap on your empty gas tank and receive the gift of the fuel you desperately need.
Similarly, there has to be a point in time when by faith we acknowledge our need for God’s forgiveness and accept His offer to allow Christ to pay for our sins and fill us with His perfection. God doesn’t force anyone to receive His offer of forgiveness. Only those who choose to receive His gift will be granted entry into heaven.
But as many as received Him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name. (John 1:12)
This might be a good time to pause and ask where you are on the road to heaven. Perhaps you are ready and willing to open your heart to receive God’s offer of forgiveness into your life so that you can be sure that one day God will welcome you into His presence. If so, I invite you to take a moment and pray this prayer to God. It’s not a magic formula but rather a way to open your heart and receive God’s offer of forgiveness.
Dear God,
Thank You for loving me. I realize that I have failed You in many ways, and I’m truly sorry for the sin in my life. But I believe that You loved me so much that You sent Your Son Jesus to die on the cross for me. I believe that Jesus took the punishment from You that I deserve for my sins. So right now I’m trusting in what Jesus did for me—not my own good works—to save me from my sins. Thank You for forgiving me and helping me to spend the rest of my life serving You. In Jesus’s name I pray. Amen.
If that prayer represents the desire of your heart, you can be assured that you are on the road that leads to heaven. As the apostle John wrote, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).
The Inhabitants of Heaven
Jesus was clear that there are only two possible eternal destinations that await us when we die: heaven or hell. He said, “These [the unrighteous] will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matt. 25:46).
Those who receive God’s pardon for their sin by trusting in Jesus Christ are assured of “eternal life” because they are “righteous”—in a right standing with God. Everyone else is guaranteed “eternal punishment” because of his or her refusal to receive God’s gracious gift.
What about those who’ve never had an opportunity to receive Christ’s offer of forgiveness? Are they condemned to hell for rejecting an offer they’ve never heard or were incapable of embracing? Though I deal with this subject extensively in my book Not All Roads Lead to Heaven, it might be helpful to briefly discuss the answers to these questions by looking at three groups of people that seem incapable of trusting in Christ for salvation.
The “Heathen” Who Have Never Heard
Christians who hold to the exclusivity of Christ for salvation are often asked about the “heathen” in remote places who haven’t heard about Jesus. “How can God send them to hell for rejecting a gospel they’ve never heard?” they protest. But you don’t have to travel to Africa to find people who have never heard about Jesus. Many within our own borders have never heard about Christ, especially as our country becomes increasingly secular. But the question remains: If God is just, how can He condemn people to hell who have not had the opportunity to trust in Christ for salvation?
Paul answers this question in the opening chapters of his letter to the Romans. The apostle affirms that everyone is guilty before God: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). In Romans 1–3 Paul declares that those who “fall short” include faithful Jews who observe God’s law, moralists who follow their own law, and Gentiles who have never heard about God’s law.
In Paul’s day, Gentiles were the equivalent of today’s “heathen.” Gentiles were non-Jews who did not have the benefit of reading the Old Testament or hearing the preaching of the prophets, since they had no relationship with Judaism.
So how could God justly condemn them if they had no opportunity to even know about the one, true God? The answer is that God has provided everyone on the planet enough information to know about God by simply looking at creation:
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. (Rom. 1:20)
Theologians use the term “natural revelation” to describe information about God that is available to everyone, regardless of whether they have ever read a Bible or heard a sermon. For example, while campaigning in Egypt, the great military leader Napoleon Bonaparte walked the decks of one of his ships anchored in the Mediterranean. One evening he overheard some of his officers mocking the idea of God’s existence. The general paused and interrupted. Making a sweeping motion toward the stars, Bonaparte said, “Gentlemen, you must first get rid of these!”
Everyone can look at the world around them and know there is Someone greater than themselves who must have created the universe in which we live. As David exclaimed:
The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.
Day to day pours forth speech,
And night to night reveals knowledge. (Ps. 19:1–2)
Is a belief in the existence of God enough to assure someone entry into this place called heaven? Absolutely not. As we’ve seen repeatedly in this book, the New Testament declares that no one can be saved apart from exercising faith in Jesus Christ. So you might wonder, “What use is ‘natural revelation’ if it doesn’t give people the specific information about Jesus Christ they need to trust Him for the forgiveness of sins?” The late theologian Charles Ryrie explained that natural revelation is not sufficient to save a person, but it is sufficient—if rejected—to condemn a person.6
If the unbeliever who has never heard of Jesus rejects the “natural revelation” that God has provided about Himself through creation, Paul says that unbeliever is “without excuse” (Rom. 1:20). That unbeliever is not only condemned by his or her own sin but also by his or her refusal to accept the information about the one true God that nature reveals.
However, if that unbeliever embraces the truth about God that creation reveals, God will make sure he or she receives the information about Jesus Christ necessary for salvation. Remember, God wants to save as many people as possible, not as few people as possible. The apostle Paul affirms that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4).
Obviously, not all people will be saved. The majority of humanity will reject God’s offer of forgiveness. But the deepest longing of our heavenly Father is that everyone would respond to His gracious invitation of salvation. However, to be saved one must “come to the knowledge of the truth.” And Paul defines that truth in the next two verses of 1 Timothy 2: “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time” (vv. 5–6).
Doesn’t it make sense that if God desires everyone to be saved and that the only way to be saved is by embracing the truth that Jesus Christ died for our sins, then God will ensure that anyone who wants to know God will receive that information about Christ?
A person’s response to the natural revelation about God available through creation is a reliable gauge of whether that person truly wants to know God. If the heathen in Africa—or the heathen living next door to you—rejects that knowledge of the true God, then why would he or she respond positively to any more information about Jesus Christ and God’s offer of salvation? However, if that person embraces the little information about God he or she receives through creation, we can rest assured that God will provide “the knowledge of the truth” needed for salvation.
The New Testament is filled with illustrations of those who received additional revelation—the special revelation about Jesus Christ necessary for salvation—based on their faith to whatever revelation they had already received. For example, the Roman centurion Cornelius was “a devout man and one who feared God” (Acts 10:2). Cornelius knew nothing about Jesus, but he sincerely wanted to know God. So what did God do? He miraculously orchestrated for the apostle Peter to come to Cornelius’s home to share the gospel of Christ. As a result, Cornelius and all of his family were saved and baptized (vv. 44–48).
The same thing happened to an Ethiopian government official who had traveled to Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel. While on his way back to his homeland, the Ethiopian had an encounter with Philip, who had been dispatched by an angel. The Ethiopian was reading from the scroll of Isaiah about the coming Messiah but didn’t comprehend what he was reading. So, “Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture he preached Jesus to him” (8:35). And the Ethiopian responded, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God” (v. 37) and was baptized.
I can’t tell you the number of times I have received an email or letter from someone saying, “I was flipping through the channels on television and just happened across your program, heard about Jesus, and trusted in Him for my salvation.” The longer I live the less I believe in mere coincidences. When God sees a man, woman, boy, or girl who truly wants to know Him, He will make sure that person receives the information about Jesus necessary for salvation.
Whenever you are asked about those who have never heard about Jesus Christ, remember this simple truth: no one will ever be condemned to hell for rejecting a gospel they never heard. Instead, those in hell will be there for rejecting the information God has already provided about Himself.
Old Testament Saints Who Lived before Christ
How can we be certain that Adam, Eve, Noah, Sarah, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Rahab, or any of the other Old Testament people we call “saints” are really in heaven? After all, these people lived before Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and God’s Word is clear: “There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). So how can Christ in whom they had never trusted save those who lived before His time?
There is not enough space here to look at each person individually, so let’s look at one representative for all those who lived in Old Testament times: Abraham. The average Jew thought of Abraham in the same way the average American thinks of George Washington: he was the “father of the nation”—figuratively and literally! In Genesis 12, God promised to make Abraham the father of the great nation of Israel. Abraham believed God’s promise, uprooted his family, and headed toward the land of promise.
Abraham’s life was marked by obedience to God: leaving the security of his homeland to head to the Promised Land, allowing his nephew, Lot, to get the best of him in a real estate transaction, and offering to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac to God. If anyone was a candidate for salvation by good works, it was Abraham.
Yet the apostle Paul declared it was Abraham’s faith—not his works—that granted him right standing with God:
If Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Rom. 4:2–3)
Paul’s quotation comes from an incident in Abraham’s life recorded in Genesis 15, which is key to understanding the apostle’s explanation of the source of Abraham’s salvation. Abraham had just rescued his nephew Lot from powerful kings in the East. Believing they would retaliate, Abraham feared his family name might come to an end. But then the Lord spoke to Abraham:
Do not fear, Abram,
I am a shield to you;
Your reward shall be very great. (Gen. 15:1)
It looked to Abraham that the promise of Genesis 12—to become the father of a great nation—was about to evaporate. So Abraham wanted to know how the Lord planned to keep His promise: “O Lord GOD, what will You give me, since I am childless?” (v. 2).
But the Lord wasn’t about to renege on the unconditional promise He had made with Abraham. God took him outside and told him to look up and “count the stars” (v. 5). Then God repeated His promise: “So shall your descendants be” (v. 5).
What was Abraham’s response? The Bible records that Abraham “believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness” (v. 6). This is the verse Paul quoted two thousand years later in Romans 4:3 to prove that Abraham’s salvation was through faith and not through works.
The Hebrew word translated “reckoned” (chashab) is an accounting term that means “credited.” Think of the faith transaction this way: imagine you go into a store to purchase a new sofa for your living room. The sofa costs $1,000 and you pay with your credit card. Amazingly, by simply allowing the salesperson to swipe that piece of plastic you are allowed to walk out of the store with a valuable piece of furniture. Why would the salesperson allow you to immediately begin experiencing the joy of a new sofa in exchange for a worthless piece of plastic? Although the card itself has no intrinsic value, it represents a promissory note—a promise to pay. Later, when the bill arrives in the mail, it must be paid.
In the same way, when Abraham and others in the Old Testament exercised faith in God, their faith represented a future “promise to pay.” Abraham and the other Old Testament believers were immediately “credited” with salvation. And when the bill came due, the only Person capable of satisfying their sin debt paid it. When Jesus cried out on the cross “It is finished” (John 19:30), the word He used was tetelestai, a Greek accounting term meaning “paid in full.”
Regardless of when a person lives in history, there is only one way anyone can be saved from eternal death—through the payment Jesus Christ made on the cross to satisfy our sin debt. Those who lived before Christ were saved “on credit”—a right standing with God was immediately “reckoned” to their account until Christ could pay their debt on the cross.
Children and the Childlike Who Cannot Believe
As a pastor, one of my most painful duties is ministering to a family that has lost a child, especially if that child was a newborn or infant. One question consumes the thoughts of every family member: “Is my little one in heaven?” Parents and grandparents of deceased teenaged or adult children who are mentally incapacitated to the point of being “childlike” ask this same question: “Are they in heaven?”
I wish I could point to one passage of Scripture proclaiming a resounding yes, but I can’t. However, we do have the confident claim by one of God’s choicest servants, some interesting observations from Jesus’s teaching, and the rationale of theology to assure us that children and the childlike do go to heaven when they die.
Just as Abraham serves as an illustration of the faith of all Old Testament saints, so David serves as a representative of all parents who have lost a child before he or she could express faith. David’s tragic story began one evening with a rooftop walk. The mighty king of Israel spotted a beautiful woman named Bathsheba bathing in the moonlight. David sent for her and the rest, as they say, is history.
When Bathsheba discovered she was pregnant, David attempted to cover up the fact that he was the father. He recalled Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, from the front lines and tried to convince him to spend the night in his own bed with his wife. Surely, everyone would then surmise that Uriah was the father of his wife’s baby. When Uriah refused to indulge in this pleasure out of deference to his fellow soldiers who were still in the field fighting for their country, David arranged to have Uriah murdered, making his death appear to be a battlefield casualty.
Later, the prophet Nathan confronted David over his twin sins of adultery and murder. Instead of continuing the cover-up of his sins, David confessed his transgressions and received God’s forgiveness. Nevertheless, God’s forgiveness did not erase the temporary—and very painful—consequences of David’s actions: a divided kingdom, a disloyal son, and the death of Bathsheba’s child.
Immediately after his birth, David and Bathsheba’s child became ill and lingered on the edge of death for seven days. During that week, David neither ate nor slept but fasted and prayed for his son’s recovery. After the child died, David quickly recovered from his grief and began to eat.
His servants were perplexed. Tradition held that fasting and weeping took place after death, not before. Now that the child had died, how could the king go on as if nothing had happened? David’s answer was simple and direct—and full of faith. Knowing God would not bring his son back to life, David said: “I will go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Sam. 12:23).
As long as the child lived, David believed his petitions might move the Lord to heal his son. But once the child died, David knew no amount of fasting and praying would bring his son back. The king could pick himself up and look forward because he believed his son was with God in Paradise. If David believed his son had gone to hell or simply to the grave, he could not have honestly declared that he would see his son again. Instead, the king would have had every reason to continue mourning even more intensely. David’s dramatic change in demeanor after his son’s death was rooted in the belief that his child had gone to heaven.
Admittedly, David’s claim doesn’t prove definitively that children and the childlike go to heaven when they die. But if we couple David’s claim with some of Jesus’s teachings about children, I believe we can make a strong claim that children who die before they are capable of exercising faith in Christ are welcomed into heaven.
For example, in Matthew 18:1–4 Jesus uses a child to illustrate the spiritual quality of humility necessary to receive God’s gift of forgiveness:
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
Jesus could have selected any child to illustrate the spiritual lesson of humility, but if He had selected one destined for hell then the analogy wouldn’t have made sense. The child Jesus selected represented all children—just as Abraham represented Old Testament saints and David’s son represented deceased children. By His actions and words, Jesus indicated that all children (and those who are mentally childlike) are destined for heaven.
Beyond the belief of David and the teaching of Jesus, consider the testimony of Scripture. Nowhere in the Bible are children condemned to damnation. Of all the biblical descriptions of hell, infants or little children are never mentioned as residing there. Nor are infants and children described as standing before the great white throne judgment of Revelation 20, which is the precursor to eternal punishment in the lake of fire. I believe this is another piece of evidence that argues strongly for the presence of children in heaven.
Finally, we need to recognize that the Bible distinguishes between inherited sin and the sin of unbelief. As we’ve seen, humanity—including children—has inherited Adam’s guilt and corruption. The fact that everyone—including babies and children—dies is proof that we have all contracted the sickness of sin. Nevertheless, God distinguishes between inherited sin and deliberate sin. He declared that people are responsible for their own sins, not the sins of others:
The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself. (Ezek. 18:20)
We find a great illustration of the distinction between the guilt of adults and children in Deuteronomy 1. Because of their failure to believe in God’s power to give them the Promised Land, God pronounced a sentence of death on the Israelites. They would wander in the wilderness until that unbelieving generation passed away. However, the Lord exempted one group of Israelites from His condemnation. The Lord said:
Moreover, your little ones who you said would become a prey, and your sons, who this day have no knowledge of good or evil, shall enter there, and I will give it to them and they shall possess it. (Deut. 1:39)
God did not hold the children accountable for the sin of unbelief because they “had no knowledge of good or evil.” In the Bible, the sin of unbelief is not simply failing to believe God; it is the deliberate choice not to believe what God has said. Unbelief is the willful rejection of God’s revelation—a choice children and the childlike are incapable of making.
Again, none of these arguments is enough in and of itself to say definitively that children and the childlike automatically go to heaven. However, when we consider all of the evidence Scripture provides, I believe we can say that our loving God welcomes children into heaven. As Abraham declared, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” (Gen. 18:25). We can depend upon God to deal justly—and graciously—with those who are incapable of exercising faith in Christ.7
Who will be in heaven? It is significant that, outside of those who lived before Christ and children (and the childlike) who are incapable of trusting in Christ, there is no instance in the New Testament of anyone being welcomed into God’s presence apart from a personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. To attempt to reduce the population of hell by ignoring that requirement and allowing other individuals or groups into heaven is something none of us has the authority to do—especially if we take seriously Jesus’s claim that “no one comes to the Father but through [Him]” (John 14:6).