So many people say: “I am good, if there is a heaven, I will go.” Who is to say that our standards of what is good, are the same standards as what God considers to be good? The glorious almighty powerful God is good and perfect. He cannot be near sin. And we are all sinners, no one is perfect. We cannot meet the standards of God, without being perfect. God knows this and wants a personal relationship with each imperfect one of us, which is why He gave His son Jesus to die for all of us as a sacrifice so we can all be near Him and go to heaven if we believe!
God’s love is unconditional. He loves all of us, even the murderers. And He is waiting for us to choose to believe in Him willingly. If people are already being “good,” then why don’t they choose to accept His wonderful gift? How hard is it to believe? If there is no heaven or hell, then what do you loose by believing?
God does not send anybody to hell, you choose to go to hell by not believing. God wants everybody to go to heaven. He gave us that freedom to choose to believe. Have faith and trust in God's perfect consistent Word.
Jesus was not just a man or a prophet. Jesus's teachings were consistent in love and forgiveness. He was perfect. How can you believe that Jesus was just a great prophet and like His teachings, if you do not believe His most important teaching? That He died so we could live?
I like this article from crosswalk.com, which explains how Jesus was NOT Simply a Good Moral Teacher. Here are a few quotes from the article:
How, in the name of logic, common sense, and experience, could an impostor -- that is a deceitful, selfish, depraved man -- have invented and consistently maintained from the beginning to end, the purest and noblest character known in history with the most perfect air of truth and reality? How could He have conceived and successfully carried out a plan of unparalleled beneficence, moral magnitude, and sublimity, and sacrificed His own life for it, in the face of the strongest prejudices of His people and age? (Philip Schaff, The Person of Christ. New York: American Tract Society, 1913, 94-95)
C.S. Lewis, one-time atheist and author of The Chronicles of Narnia, put the dilemma this way:
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said [about Himself] 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 at 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 away with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (Mere Christianity)
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