There are Two Ways to Gain Eternal Life

Every now and then, when I speak on the topic of good works, I ask my audience a trick question: How many ways are there to gain eternal life?

The answer I always get back is: one.

Technically, that is incorrect. According to the Bible, there are two ways to gain eternal life. The first way is the way we are supposed to gain it. And the second way is the only way we can gain it.

The way we are supposed to gain eternal life is by doing good works. The Apostle Paul makes this clear in Romans 2:6,7, “God will give to each person according to what he has done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.”

Jesus responds the same way when asked by the expert in the law, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the law?” Jesus asks. When the man quotes the two greatest commandments, Jesus agrees. “Do this and you will live,” he said. (See Luke 10:25-29.)

So the way we are supposed to gain eternal life is by doing good works. But there are two problems. In God’s sight, we’re not good people. And we ratify this reality by failing to do the good he wants us to do.

This “little detail” about human nature and our works surfaced when a wealthy ruler asked Jesus the exact same question as the expert in the law, but prefaced it like this: “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Listen to how Jesus responded: “Why do you call me good. No one is good except God alone.”

The Apostle Paul makes the same point in Romans 3:10, “There is none righteous, not even one.”

It’s as if we’re tone deaf but trying to audition for the lead part in an opera and the director is putting his hands to his ears and yelling, “Stop! Stop! That was terrible!”

That’s the way it is with God and our good works. We cannot gain eternal life by working because we have a nature that is contrary to God’s and our works fall short of what He requires.

And that brings us to the second way to gain eternal life, which, in practice, is the only way we can gain eternal life.

That way is by acknowledging that we are not good people—that we are, in fact, wicked people who have done bad things—and then placing our faith in God’s provision for our sin, Jesus Christ.

Paul makes this second way to gain eternal life clear in Romans 4:5, “To the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.”

So do you think your good works are going to get you to heaven? Think again. God is saying, “Stop working! Let’s get something straight. You’re not good and it taints everything you do. You are incredibly mistaken if you think doing a few superficially nice things are going to earn you eternal life with Me in heaven.”

No, it’s only when we come clean with God, acknowledge that we are sinners who think, say and do evil all the time, and then trust in His provision for our sin—Jesus Christ’s death on the cross—that we can even begin to do the things that are pleasing to him.

This post first appeared in Doing Good Well, Thirty Daily Meditations on Developing a Biblical and Focused Discipline of Good Works, by Herb Reese, and in NewCommandment.org.