The normally accepted idea of how-to-get-to-Heaven is to make sure your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds. We all acknowledge that “nobody is perfect” and we all disobey God and do bad things sometimes. So, in order to “get right with God” we think we need only to obey God more, and do enough good things that will make up for the bad. We think this “tipping of the scale” in our favor will give us a better standing with God.  And then we reason that He will have to let us into Heaven when we die.

While that scenario seems plausible to us, the Bible however presents a different idea about how to get right with God. It refers to “getting right with God” as becoming “righteous in His sight”. And, unfortunately it says only one man has ever been able to achieve that.

“For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.”

‭‭The Bible tells us the first man ever to live, our great, great, great-ancestor Adam disobeyed God and thus made all of his descendants (all of us) sinners. That’s bad news for all of mankind. But the verse also includes good news about another man. It says “so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.”

Notice that it involves only one man. It does not say “by the obedience of many, many will be made righteous”. It discusses only the obedience of one man. And it says his obedience will make many people righteous! Are you that one righteous man that can make other people righteous too?

No. The Bible makes it clear that no human being is able to be that one.

“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”

So, the obedience referred to is not possible by any one of us, and so none of us can make ourselves righteous in Gods eyes. That is why God sent us His son as our Saviour. The only obedient “one man” is the Lord Jesus Christ. It is only through HIS obedience that we are able to be declared righteous and find ourselves “right with God”.

It is when we admit that we cannot do it ourselves because we are sinners and acknowledge our need for a Saviour that we can receive a righteous standing with God. When we believe what God the Father has told us about what His son did for us on the cross, He gives us salvation from sin and eternal life with Him in Heaven.

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