Gospel Testimonies

The Fog Clears and I Find the Path to the Kingdom of Heaven

By Chen Ai, China

I followed my parents in their belief in the Lord ever since I was small, and now old age is staring me in the face. Although I've believed in the Lord all my life, the problem of how to rid myself of sin and get into the kingdom of heaven had been an unsolvable riddle that caused me constant consternation, leaving me feeling lost and pained. I wished so much to be able to figure out during my lifetime how to rid myself of sin and get into the kingdom of heaven so that when my time came I would be able to face death with the knowledge that my life was complete, and I could at last meet the Lord with peace in my heart.

In an attempt to resolve this dilemma, I avidly consulted the Bible, going from the Old Testament to the New and from the New Testament back to the Old, reading the Bible over and over. But in the end, I could find no right answer. Out of options, all I could do was throw my effort into behaving as well as I could according to the Lord's teachings, for the Lord said: "[T]he kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matthew 11:12). But I discovered that in real life, no matter how hard I tried, I still couldn't live up to what the Lord required of me. Just as the Lord said: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like to it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37–39). The Lord requires that we love God with all our hearts and minds, and that brothers and sisters love each other. But no matter what I did, I just couldn't achieve this kind of love, because my love for my family was greater than my love for the Lord, and I just wasn't capable of truly loving my brothers and sisters in the church as I loved myself. On the contrary, I was often petty and calculating with others when my own interests were involved, so much so that resentment would be aroused within me. How could someone like me ever be saved and get into the kingdom of heaven? The Lord Jesus also said many things about getting into the kingdom of heaven, such as: "Truly I say to you, Except you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3). "For I say to you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:20). I was unable to put any of these requirements of the Lord into practice. I would often tell lies, and would blame the Lord whenever I encountered something that wasn't to my liking. My thoughts contained deceit and dishonesty, and I was constantly languishing in sin, sinning and repenting, repenting and sinning, over and over again. The Lord is holy, and in the Bible it states: "[H]oliness, without which no man shall see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14). How could someone as utterly filthy as me ever be fit to enter the kingdom of heaven? This was very vexing for me. But whenever I read about the way of justification by faith as espoused by Paul in Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians—that to have faith and be baptized means that one is certainly saved, that if we believe in the Lord in our hearts and acknowledge Him with our mouths, then we are justified by faith, forever saved, and that when the Lord comes again He will surely raise us up into the kingdom of heaven—I would feel overwhelmed with joy. I would feel that I need not worry about getting into the kingdom of heaven. But then I would remember what the Lord said about people only being able to get into the kingdom of heaven through their own efforts, and I would feel uneasy. To be justified by faith and then to get into the kingdom of heaven—could it really be that simple? Especially when I saw old pious believers nearing the end of their lives and appearing restless and worried, so much so that they would even weep copiously and not one of them seemed happy to go, I couldn't help but wonder: If they say that they can get into the kingdom of heaven through justification by faith alone, why then do they look so terrified on their deathbeds? It seemed as though they themselves had no idea whether they'd been saved or not, nor where they would be going after death. I pondered the Lord Jesus' words over and over, and I contemplated Paul's words, too, and discovered that the words of Jesus and the words of Paul differed greatly on the matter of who could get into the kingdom of heaven. According to Paul, a person is justified by faith simply by believing in the Lord—if that were the case, then everyone would be saved. So then why did the Lord Jesus say, "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like to a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away" (Matthew 13:47–48)? Why, when the Lord returns in the last days, does He need to separate the wheat from the tares, the sheep from the goats, and the good servants from the evil servants? From these words spoken by the Lord Jesus, it is clear that not everyone who believes in Him can get into the kingdom of heaven. So I wondered: Am I saved? And will I be able to get into the kingdom of heaven when I die? These questions still lingered in my mind like riddles, and I was at a loss to answer them.