Let's see what the Bible declares. It may come as a surprise to many that God's pass mark for getting into heaven is actually 100 per cent - perfection - that is, if you want to get in on your own merit. When speaking about God's moral laws, particularly his command to love others as much as we love ourselves, the New Testament declares, "Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it" (James 2:10). When we consider that Jesus said the most important command of all was to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37), then it becomes obvious that we all have a problem. The situation looks bleaker still when we take into account Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that we break God's commands as much by our thinking as by our actions (Matthew 5:21, 22, 27, 28).

The God that the Bible reveals to us is a "holy" God. This means that he himself is without evil and is implacably opposed to it. As the prophet Habakkuk declared, "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong" (Habakkuk 1:13). He is not only a God of love, but also a God of justice, and to be true to his own nature, he must judge evil. So here lies the problem. Nothing tainted with evil can live in God's presence. I may think I am better than most, but we are all in the same boat, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). That doesn't mean we are all as bad as we could be. It simply means that none of us are as good as we should be. Obviously there must be some other way of getting into heaven than by trying to be good enough.