What gets you into Heaven: accepting Jesus as your savior ONLY or doing good deeds as well?

Question

Note: If you don't even believe in Jesus, please just don't answer this question with smart-alecky anwers



Look at these two verses in the Bible:

Romans 10:9-10
That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

Revelation 20: 12-13
And I saw the dead... Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done.



The first seems to say all you need to do is accept Jesus as your savior. The second seems to say that you need to have good deeds in your life for your name to be written in the book of life- thus being saved for eternity. Which is it?

Answer 1

John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

The word "again" (anothen) in Greek means "from above", so born from above.

John 3:4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?
John 3:5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
John 3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

We all are born of the flesh and water, the womb. You must be born from above or the Spirit. God's Word is His Spirit.
I pray that helps you. Sow to your spirit by studying His Word which is God's Spirit.

KEEP MY WORDS
John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

WE will come
make OUR abode with him.

Answer 2

Part of the problem is that you can't insert "all you need" or the word "only" into Romans 10:9-10... it's simply not there. In fact, the only time "faith" and "only" are mentioned together in the Bible is James 2:24: "Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only."

To get the whole picture you have to take the entire New Testament together, not just one passage. If you add together Romans 10:9-10 (believe and confess) and Acts 2:38 (repent and be baptized) and Revelation 2:10 (be faithful unto death), you can get a good sense of the complete plan of salvation (note there are many more scriptures to support each of these commands, this is just a sampling). Feel free to contact me if you would like more info.

Answer 3

OK...well the short answer is that accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior is the way to get you to heaven. You can't just believe He is ("because even the demons believe--and shudder."). You have to confess with your mouth like Romans says. Here's the second part. BECAUSE you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior you would WANT to do good deeds. Because God is now living in your life, you want to live to glorify Him.
Once in Heaven God gives people gifts according to what they have done on earth. So people who have done tons and have given alot will receive greater gifts. However, since heaven is perfect, there will be no jealousy of each other's gifts. (All this is taken from the Bible. I'm not making this up.) Good luck to you in the future!

Answer 4

I don't believe that you need to accept Jesus as your personal savior. If you want to, then that's your prerogative. Don't you believe that God is loving and just?? If you do then how can you accept the fact that just because someone doesn't accept Jesus as their savior that they go to Hell? Doesn't God love all of his/her children? I have a hard time believing that someone will go to Hell just because they were born in a part of the world that is not Christian and they were brought up with a different set of beliefs. I have known many people that were good people who did wonderful things with their lives. I cannot believe that just because they have a religion that is different than Christianity or even no religion at all that they will not get to go to Heaven. But then again we won't really know the truth until we die, will we?

Answer 5

Accepting Jesus as your savior is all that is needed to get into heaven. Good works will be an outward sign of your salvation. Look at Ephesians 2:8-10. Let me give you an example of this. If you accept Jesus at church tonight and leave to go home and die in an accident before you can do any good works, you will still get into heaven. Absent from the body present with the Lord.

Answer 6

The only way to be saved from you sins is to ask Jesus Christ into your heart as your lord and savior as listed in Romans 10:9-10.

What Revelations is talking about is when we come before God after the end times to account for how we acted--for our deeds. Once you have accepted Christ it becomes your responsibility not to waste the gift of his salvation. We as Christians are to look and be ready and rejoice that he is coming again, we should pass his teachings on through our words and actions to further his kingdom.

Our actions as Christians will be judged to see if they hold up to the mettle of Christ and God's holiness, but a man can not be saved by works alone. Many who accept Christ will not have much to show when they come before Christ to be judged, because although they accepted Christ as Savior, they did not act out what they believed.

When that judgment comes what ever has stood up to God's standards will become jewels that God will form a crown for the Christians to wear (Revelations).

Answer 7

When I used to believe in a god it was explained as requiring both. The very fact that both authors of Revelation and John have conflicting belief systems on something as important as going to heaven or not should raise a red flag to you of the bibles use. How many other things are going to be like this when you use an aged old book to solve your present day problems? Think about it... would the creator of the universe be so silly as to only provide a book to mankind, first of all. Second would this god be ignorant in the area of organized seasonings? Hence the reason we have so many interpretations of this book.

Answer 8

If you believe in Jesus with all your heart. That is AUTOMATIC acceptance to heaven.

Many Christians believe that is all you need, but you believe that God is a fair God? and a just God? what about a person that grows up in a Hindu society and isnt surrounded by christianity as a child that grows up in America today?

Then God will judge them on how they have lived life. If they lived life right. Every person knows what is considered right or wrong.

That is my belief on the matter.

Answer 9

What gets you into Heaven: accepting Jesus as your savior ONLY or doing good deeds as well?

Repentance & accepting Jesus as savior is your ticket to heaven.
not works.

in Revelation 20 John is talking about saints who are resurrected and bound for glory because they believed & confessed Jesus as Lord. the judgement of works is for rewards in heaven.

Answer 10

Both. People are silly if they think they can sin all they want and make excuses without repentance and still wear those golden shoes, as long as they say that they believe in Jesus. There's saying, then there's doing. The rules might be different for Jews though, it doesn't make sense that good Jews wouldn't go to heaven.