Green Bean Cans and Eternity

Where does a person go after death? We need to understand one thing from the beginning. 

When you draw your last halting shallow breath on this earth, from that point on, you are winging it on your own, with no one to run interference for you. 

Family ties mean nothing in eternity. The great-great-grandaddy who left your family a bajillion dollars in the oil, or cattle, or real estate business? He has no sway whatsoever in guaranteeing you an eternity with no whiff of smoke. And having royal blood coursing through your veins? Being the direct descendent of someone was a direct descendent of King Whatchacallit of Kalukamacogee does not mean your eternity will have cool air conditioning everywhere. 

Most people understand all this, so instead, they turn to good works. “God is good, so He must want me to be good-good-good. So I’ll do everything perfect, to make sure I get to heaven.” But that phrase ‘winging it on your own’ doesn’t mean that spending your entire waking hours here on earth working as a wannabee Mother Theresa will enable you to avoid ‘THAT PLACE.’  

Someone might be thinking, “Well, how about kindness, sincerity, and honesty?” Well, granted, you will be enjoyed by those around you, but those still don’t qualify someone for heaven. 

According to the Bible, life after death simply doesn’t work in any of those ways. In fact, Scripture says exactly the opposite. That book consistently teaches that giving our time, or good works, or our money has nothing to do with where we spend eternity.

So then, what does?

One of the easiest ways to understand that all-important point is found in this question: 

If any of us could be good enough to get to Heaven when we die, then why would Jesus – the Son of the Living God, the absolute Creator of all – come to earth as a tiny helpless infant and some thirty+ sinless years later allow Himself to die as the entire payment for the sins of the world? 

If we could do enough, or pay enough, or be perfect enough, why would He bother to do what He did? The answer? Not one of us can do the impossible…being perfect and sinless enough to pay for our own sin.

For example: A tin can that once contained green beans cannot claim to have never contained green beans. Impossible. It can be scrubbed and sanitized so much that it is almost see-through, but it can never claim to be “unused.” The analogy applies. Once a person sins – even just one time – they can never claim to be sinless. They have to have a qualified Someone who agrees to sanitize them, to make them ‘sinless – an unused can.’ And Scripture says the only one qualified to do that is Jesus, the One who never sinned at all.

Simple facts from the Bible, and a simple analogy for an explanation, but a very concrete truth.