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What About Sinning or Repenting On Your Deathbed? (part 2)

As we’ve already considered in part one, the topic of death brings up a lot of questions. Sure, as Christians we don’t need to fear death’s sting anymore. But what if you sin right before your last breath? Will you still make it to heaven?

This is one of those questions that can spook us when we’re not looking. In reality, though, it all comes back to how we view ourselves either as worthy or unworthy in the light of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. In other words, for what reasons do we really think we are going to heaven right now?

It turns out that none of us are good enough to achieve salvation on our own. In Isaiah 64:6, the prophet writes that all of our good works are like “filthy rags” in the face of God’s holiness. In ancient times, the kind of rags he describes were strips of cloth used as bandages to keep lepers’ body parts from falling off. Pus-filled. Disease-riddled. Worthless.

Gross.

That is how God describes our best compared to his best… gross. None of our righteousness can stack up tall enough for us to climb up to heaven. We all stand before God the same: not good enough on our own. It is certainly not our good deeds or right living that earns God’s love. No, Jesus’ saving sacrifice is the only thing that frees us from our wrong living and makes us live rightly before God.

Isolated moments of doing good or bad cannot get us to heaven, so it is doubtful they can keep us out either. Upon our deaths, it is Jesus—not us—who will define whether or not we spend eternity with God. So whether or not we sin just before we die is probably not the right question. The real question is whether or not we continually accepted Jesus’ right living in place of our own. Did we constantly trade our filthy rags for his clean robes?

Whether we are on our deathbeds or just living our normal lives, asking to be cleansed of our sins and mistakes is a constant necessity for each of us. So perhaps, rather than focusing on sin and death, we should focus on God’s freeing forgiveness and the life of faith he desires for us all.