You can't earn your way to Heaven. It is a FREE gift.
You don't work and try to be good to get to Heaven, you try because you ARE going to Heaven.
You will do more out of love than out of fear.
When I first heard this I ask the following question..." Do you mean to tell me that if I believe that Jesus died on the cross for all MY sins, I can live as I please and still go to Heaven?"
Listen to the answer I got. It changed my life.
If he had said....
"No, you must do this or that or stop this or that." I would have turned away and just gone on with life.
BUT he said...
"Son, that's a crude way to put it....But God loved you that much."
Yes, I am going to Heaven because of what Jesus did for me when He died on the cross. I now have the rights of a Son, but God now has the rights and responsibility of a Father to instruct and discipline. But His punishment will not be to kick me out. He loves me, and He loves you.
Look at the first line...You can't earn your way to Heaven. It is a FREE gift.
Consider this. If I give you a free gift, for example, a corvette stingray or whatever your favorite car may be. Don't you have the ability to accept that gift and say 3 months later bring it back to me and say I changed my mind, here take it back.
Remember the story of the adulteress who was caught in the act and brought before the Christ? What were his last words to her? Your sins are forgiven, GO AND SIN NO MORE. That was the condition. Once you have come to Christ all of your sins are forgiven, but I believe if you go back to adultery, YOU RETURN OR REJECT THE FREE GIFT.
It then goes on to say, "you try because you ARE going to Heaven.
You will do more out of love than out of fear."
We can conlude from that statement that if you don't TRY and aren't doing so out of love rather than fear, that you never really accepted the gift to begin with. If you truly accepted the free gift, where is the evidence by the way you now live life?