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"Do you think good people who aren't Christians go to hell?"
Guess which famous American once lamented the in
justice he suffered
as,
"I have spent the best years of my life giving people the
lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the
existence of a hunted man"?
It was Al Capone. We know him as a murderer, but Al Capone thought he was a man of
justice in a world of in
justice.
Your standard of justice is most likely higher than Al Capone's standard of
justice, but God
's standard of justice is much
higher still. In fact, the Bible says that God
's standard of
justice is absolute perfection
and defines sin as anything short of it, including seemingly innocuous
things like jealousy (
Exodus
20:17), lust (
Matthew
5:27-28) or being angry without reason (
Matthew
5:21-22). The Bible adds that everyone has sinned (
Romans
3:22) and that the mandatory sentence for sin is the death penalty (
Romans
6:23). That's the bad news.
The
Gospel, which means "good news" is that God in His love decided
not to wipe us
out. But neither could a God of justice simply let our sins slip by since turning a
blind eye to in
justice wouldn't serve justice. So what did God do? He came and took our
death penalty upon himself.
If that is tricky to understand, imagine that
you have been found guilty of a crime which carries a mandatory
death penalty. At your sentencing, you stand before the judge, who happens to be
your father. Because your father is a good judge who needs to uphold justice, he
confirms your penalty of death. But then, as you start to panic, your father
rises from the bench, takes off the judge's robe, walks down to you and tells you that because he loves you, he will take
your death penalty to save you, and does.
The cross of Jesus was where the
Justice of God collided with the love of God,
and
Jesus was the only one capable of absorbing the force of that collision.
So, to answer your question, the Bible says that people who are "good"
as defined by God go to
heaven, and the rest of us
go to hell unless we sincerely recognize ourselves as
falling short of God
's standard of perfection (i.e., are "sinners") and believe
that
"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)
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