Which way are you headed?

We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10).

How much do you think about the future? Are you putting money away to send your kids to college? Do you have an IRA set up for retirement? Have you decided where your body is going to be laid to rest when you die?

If you’re like most people, I doubt that you’ve given much thought to the future. When life gets hectic, it’s hard to make plans for anything more than a few weeks in advance. When money gets spent as fast as it comes in, it’s hard to make savings a priority. And most people don’t really want to think about death; decisions about cemetery plots get put on the back burner for as long as possible.

But it is important to look ahead. Most people cannot retire comfortably without a sound financial plan. You cannot expect to graduate from college unless you declare a major and choose the right classes to go with it. And you cannot ignore the subject of death by hoping that everything will sort itself out at the proper time.

Like everything else, death must be planned for. It’s like taking a drive through unfamiliar country; if you don’t know where you are going or how to reach your destination, you’ll end up hopelessly lost. And if there is one time when you don’t want to be lost, it is when God calls you from this life to stand before Him in judgment.

We would just as soon avoid thinking about death, but focusing on other things won’t make it go away. Death is coming, and Paul warns us that it is something we must think about and plan for: we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. Everything we do now will have repercussions down the road. Everything you say and do is shaping your future; it is dangerous in the extreme to live only for today. When you die, God will judge you. He will look at your life from beginning to end and measure it against His righteous standard of conduct. Based on that examination, one of two futures awaits you. One future is heaven; the other future is hell.

We throw these words around very casually. On one of her albums Anne Murray sang, "Heaven is that moment when I look into your eyes." Many songs echo this sentiment; for example, Belinda Carlise sings, "We'll make heaven a place on earth." People also pepper their language with references to hell, like answering a question with "hell, yeah." Comparing something to hell can even be a compliment: "buddy, that is one hellacious looking girlfriend you got there."

But heaven and hell are very real, and getting into the right one when you die should be extremely important to you. When you were a kid, you couldn’t imagine what life would be like 50 years in the future. But once you got older, you realized that childhood was just the beginning of life. Eternity is the same way. Our years on earth are just the beginning—we are children who cannot grasp what life is really all about. When we die, we enter the long stretch. I imagine that people in heaven look back on their earthly lives and shake their heads over how foolish and shortsighted they were back then. Most of your existence will be lived in eternity, so it is critically important that you arrive in the right place.

When your soul leaves this world, there are only two places it can go—heaven or hell. Heaven is the good place; hell is the bad place. Heaven is where God can be seen and experienced; hell is the place where God is not. Because God is love (1 John 4:8), heaven is filled with love, while hell has no love at all. Because God is light (1 John 1:5), heaven is filled with glory, while hell is shrouded in darkness.

Heaven is the kind of home you always wished you could have but never really experienced. There is no sin in heaven; imagine a family reunion where no one gets drunk, no one says anything thoughtless or mean, no one gets bored or feels left out, and no one ever has to leave. Jesus said, In my Father's house are many rooms…I am going there to prepare a place for you (John 14:2). Imagine a sprawling city where everyone has more than enough personal space, yet there is no rent to pay. You are close to all your loved ones; you never have to fear going outside because there is no crime and the city is completely safe from terrorist attacks. Imagine living in a place where there is no gossip, no bad news, no lying or promise-breaking. Imagine having enough to eat and not having to worry about stretching your paycheck. Imagine a life where there are no regrets, no hurts, no disappointments, no loneliness or sadness or fear. Imagine a place where you never get weak or lose your memory or have to take medicine.

But as wonderful as all this is, it isn’t even the best part. What will make heaven truly wonderful is that we will finally see Jesus face to face. We will hear His voice and feel the love radiating from Him like the warmth of sunlight. We will finally get answers to all the questions that have troubled us for years. And for the first time, we will know with absolute certainty that we are loved with an everlasting love.

Want to go there? I sure do. But if we are not careful, our lives here on earth can lead to a very different place. Hell was designed by God to punish evil. It is not a place where Satan and his demons torment you—hell was designed by God to make the devil suffer for being wicked. If Satan himself finds hell to be unbearable, can you imagine how terrible it will be for humans? In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, Jesus pictures hell as a place of fire, where the rich man craves just one drop of water on his tongue to ease his suffering. Isaiah describes it as a place where you are constantly suffering burns, but you never escape the pain by dying. He also describes it as a place of rot and decay, where maggots live in your body as they do in a corpse.

But hell is not only about physical pain; there is mental suffering as well. Jesus says that the people in hell will be in anguish because they know what they are missing by not being in heaven. They have no love; they have no hope that things will ever get better. Hell is filled with people, yet they cannot comfort each other or find relief from loneliness and fear. All they have are endless days of darkness and despair.

Certainly not a place that I want to go. And yet people like Billy Joel write song lyrics like these: "They say there's a heaven for those who will wait Some say it's better but I say it ain't I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints the Sinners are much more fun...you know that only the good die young." Songs like this show that most people have no idea how awful hell truly is. If you’re wise, you’ll give serious thought as to where your life is leading—is it heaven or is it hell?

Paul says, We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. So what can we expect when called to account? Does God have a giant spreadsheet? Does He have one column for good deeds and other column for bad deeds, then adds them up and calculates our net worth? No, it doesn’t work like that. When it comes to how we perform, God has only one standard: Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy (Leviticus 19:2). To be holy is to be perfect from conception to death, never once saying a mean word, never once telling a fib, never once breaking a promise, never once talking back to your parents. To be holy is to love God so much that you never once get crabby about going to church or putting money in the offering plate for God to use. When God looks at all that we’ve done in our lives, He expects to find not even one evil deed.

I hope that you are honest enough with yourself to realize what this means. Your life is pointed towards hell. It’s the only thing you deserve for all the sins that you’ve committed. You deserve hell, I deserve hell, everyone deserves God’s punishment for the evil that we’ve done.

So how can anyone end up in heaven? Although getting there is beyond our reach, nothing is impossible for God (Luke 1:37). He has provided us with a way to enter heaven despite all that we have done wrong. He sent His Son Jesus to rescue us from hell. Jesus was born into our world so that He could be subject to God’s righteous standards, just as we are. He lived the perfect life that God demands for access into heaven. Then He allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross; while He hung there in agony, He accepted all the punishment from God that our sins had coming. During that long day at Calvary, Jesus suffered hell for us. We know He suffered hell because the sun went dark and the light was hidden. We know that He suffered hell because He cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46) Jesus suffered in darkness, separated from God’s love—He suffered the hell that you and I deserve. Then he died and was buried.

For two long days the world held its breath—what had Jesus’ death accomplished? The first rays of light on Easter morning revealed the glorious answer. Jesus had risen from the dead! He had done everything needed to free us from sin, death and hell. Jesus had offered His perfect life to God in place of our sinful lives; He had suffered the punishment our sins deserved, so that we might avoid being sentenced to hell. Remarkably, God accepted this exchange—He proved it by raising Christ from the dead. All who belong to Jesus get credited with His perfect life and are spared the hell that He suffered.

So what happens when we die and God looks at the record of our lives? The spreadsheet will contain only a listing of good deeds. All entries mentioning something bad will be erased. When Jesus forgives our sins, all record of them vanishes; God says I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more (Jeremiah 31:34).

Let’s be clear—entry into heaven is impossible without Jesus. We are flawed and unacceptable to God; only Christ can take away our sins. Jesus shares His perfection with us so we can stand before God without fear of rejection. He says, I am the LORD, who makes you holy (Leviticus 20:8). This is the Good News that filled Isaiah with joy—I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and dressed me in a robe of righteousness (Isaiah 61:10). We need Jesus at our side on the day of judgment; our Lord says, I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6).

It is vitally important to plan for the future. Every time you open your mouth to speak, every time you decide to do one thing instead of something else, that action points you towards either heaven or hell. So what will you say? What will you do? Jesus says, Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it (Matthew 7:13-14). It is easy to wind up in hell—just do what you want and don’t think about Jesus. But in order to get into heaven, you must cling to the Savior the way a baby clings to its mother. I know that you don’t want to end up in hell; heaven is your goal. So keep your focus on the future. If you do, it will affect the decisions that you make today. Remember that every decision can have eternal consequences.