Every morning my online news page has a poll. It is not always a heavy-duty one but is often lighthearted. Last Sunday’s poll began with the question: “Do you believe in an afterlife?”
My answer choices were “yes,” “no,” and “I don’t know.” So, of course, I selected a resounding “YES!”
That question was easy. The next one, however, not so much. “Do you think your afterlife is determined by how you lived?”
My answer choices were again “yes,” “no,” and “I don’t know.”
As a Christian, I needed another choice – maybe even a different question. I needed that question to read, “Do you think your afterlife is determined by how your LORD Christ Jesus lived and died?” Then I could answer with a resounding “YES!”
I cannot live righteously on my own. All my feeble efforts at holiness and meeting the standards of God fall far short. My afterlife is not determined by how I lived; it is determined by my one right response to the invitation of God to surrender my life to Him.
I have righteousness because of God’s grace and mercy. I will see my Father God because of the sacrifice of His Son.
In truth, there is only one way to God, one way to worship Him, and Jesus died on a cross to open that way, that life to us.
“Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’” [John 14:6 HCSB]