While there are varying views of heaven and the afterlife among evangelical Christians, most agree on how one gains eternal life.
If you want to read more than my little blurb here, pick up John Eldredge's book, Epic : The Story God Is Telling and the Role That Is Yours to Play.
Disclaimer: This is a rough paraphrase of the story of God's redemption of humanity as recorded in the Bible. It is what it is. The intent of this post is to answer the question of a guy that sounded like he honestly wanted to know. Questions are fine, but if you want a theological debate you probably know where to find them on the Web anyway. With that in mind...
God created Adam and Eve. They lived in a garden called Eden. Life was perfect then. They had total access to God. They walked with talked with God every day. God made things easy to exist. He gave them only one condition to live by. "Don't eat of the tree of good and evil. If you do, you'll die." Adam and Eve gave in to the temptation of human pride and ate the fruit. It immediately caused a separation between them and God. They had to leave the garden of Eden. The result 0f their disobedience was separation from God, pain in birth, hard work, and unpleasant things like thorns and thistles started cropping up...not to mention physical death.
God didn't give up on humanity. He made a covenant (literally "cut a deal") and said that he would never leave or forsake humanity. In fact, he made a way for sin to be forgiven. A sacrificial system was put into place but humanity did a lousy job of following that. He knew the sacrificial system they were using wasn't going to be the solution. The whole time this was going on, God was telling us there was much more to come. Much more of his forgiveness and love that is.
Enter Jesus Christ. He was God in the flesh. 100% God and 100% man. That's a tough one to explain...it just is what it is. He was born of a virgin, impregnated by the Spirit of God. Very mystical, but, why shouldn't it be? This is God stuff we're talking about.
Since Jesus was God in the flesh, he lived a perfect life. No one in history can say that. He showed us what it meant for a human to have a perfect relationship with God in the midst of a world that was infected through and through with sin. Sort of a prequel to a new Eden...a new heaven and new earth. Religious people hated Jesus' guts. They tried to kill him from the get-go. In due time. God had a plan for humanity to be redeemed through Jesus.
The religious freaks had Jesus sentenced to be crucified and he was crucified between two criminals. Then Jesus, doing exactly as the Father asked, took all the sin of humanity on himself. My sin, your sin, everyone's sin was nailed to the cross and forgiven forever.
He was buried. He stayed there for three days. On the third day, he rose from the grave. Can't explain the metaphysics, he just rose from the grave. After he rose from the dead, he spoke to his closest disciples and told them what they need to do...that was to tell everyone possible that their relationship with God could be restored.
When we believe this story, a story only God could pull off, God restores our relationship that was broken in Eden to brand new.
Our reaction to the story can be outlined like this:
- Admit that what we've been trying to obtain peace and forgiveness hasn't worked and that we need God to forgive us of our sin.
- Believe that Jesus died on a cross to forgive us our sin and that he rose from the grave.
- Accept God's free gift of eternal life. God gives you eternal life because you admitted that what you've done hasn't worked and you've been humble enough to admit it.
- Commit to growing your relationship with God.
Another good thing to do is read the book of John in the Bible. It explains things really well. Go to www.biblegateway.com
