Strips of sunlight pierced the overhanging branches and glanced off the water. "What a perfect morning for fishing," Phil thought. The glassy stillness of the lake was disturbed only by occasional ripples set in motion by the gentle rocking of the boat.

Actually, the beauty of the east Tennessee sunrise had only interrupted his thoughts, which quickly returned to Ray, the man sitting behind him in the boat. Phil figured that Ray's call asking him to go fishing was an answer to prayer for an "open door." They had been friends for a long time, but Phil's attempts to convey his faith in Jesus Christ to Ray had been fruitless. Ray would always say something like, "My faith is a personal thing, and I really don't like to talk about it," thus slamming the door shut on the conversation. Beside that, Phil began to feel he was getting a reputation with Ray as a religious "weirdo." He resorted to prayer--prayer that God would make Ray curious. When he called, Phil sensed that an answer was on the way.

They had settled into serious fishing. Neither talked for several minutes at a time. After a while, Ray said, "You know what those people in my wife's church believe?"

"No. What?"

"They think you don't have to do anything good to be a Christian."

"Really?"

Five minutes of quiet fishing passed.

"What do you think?" Ray asked suddenly.

"What do I think about what?" Phil's calm voice hid his excitement at seeing God create spiritual interest in his non-Christian friend.

"About what those people in my wife's church think," Ray returned with mounting exasperation.

"Oh, that." Phil thought a few seconds before the mischievously said, "Well, if I talked about that, I'd be discussing my persona beliefs, and I don't like to talk about my personal beliefs."

This time about twenty minutes of quiet fishing went by. Then Ray interrupted the silence again.

"Well, if you were going to talk about it, what would you say?"

"What would I say about what, Ray?"

"The idea that you don't have to be good to get to heaven!"

Phil responded casually, "I guess I'd just say what the Bible says."

"Well, what does it say?"

"Actually," Phil answered, "the Bible says you have to be perfect to go to heaven."

"Perfect!"

"Yep. Jesus took the two most outwardly righteous groups of His day as an example and said, 'For I say to you, that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven' [Matthew 5:20]. A little later He went on to say, 'You are to be perfect, as you heavenly Father is perfect' [Matthew 5:48]. Heaven, then, is a place where there is no sin, not just a place where there is not much sin or a place where people live who have tried real hard not to be sinful. God will only allow perfect people in heaven. Now Ray, if you were going to get a new window in your house, you wouldn't want one that had a big old crack in it, even though there were some pieces that were OK. An unbroken window is not just a window with some unbroken pieces in it. In the same way, heaven is not a place for pretty good people with only some sin."

"That sounds just the opposite from what my wife's church believes."

"What they probably mean," Phil continued, "is that Jesus Christ paid for all our sins. The Bible says when Jesus died on the cross, He 'perfected for all time those who are sanctified' [Hebrews 10:14]."

"What does it mean to be sanctified?" Ray wanted to know.

"It means to be made holy," Phil answered. "And we become holy when we accept God's gift of forgiveness by receiving Christ into our life. Christ paid for all sins of all time. So when we receive Him, God doesn't see any of our sin anymore."

"But then why not become a Christian and live as bad as you can?" Ray asked.

"Because when a person receives Christ, he is born into God's family. When that happens, the Holy Spirit comes into a person and changes his desires. Lots of people act like Christianity is just a human religion, so they invent lots of rules to keep people in line. Actually, since it's really of God, the Spirit of God within the believer convicts him of sin and teaches him godliness from inside out as he studies the Bible and fellowships with other believers. After you are born into a certain family, you can rebel against everything your parents tell you, but the natural thing in a good family is a desire to please your parents. When you receive Christ, you not only have a new birth but a new daddy--God!"

How good do you have to be to get to heaven? How good is good enough? And why not become a believer, yet live as bad as you can? Human beings from Socrates to Ghandi have struggle with those questions, but only the Bible has a solution. As we encounter people with questions in this area, we need to keep several facts in mind. The questions that usually come up are:

God requires perfection. He told Abraham that he needed to be "blameless" (Genesis 17:1). God told Moses to tell Israel, "You shall be holy, for I the lord your God am holy" (Leviticus 19:2). Jesus said, "You are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48). The context of Jesus' words is the importance of righteousness (verses 20-28). Later on, the apostle Peter reminded the early church that God said, "YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY" (1 Peter 1:16).

God's standard never falls short of complete righteousness and holiness. Anything less than perfection is sin. Sin causes suffering. Because heaven is a place of no suffering, it must also be a place of no sin, not just a place of not much sin or a place for people who tried hard not to sin. If suffering is to be done away with, sin must be eliminated, not just minimized. If we suppose God will accept the better people of this world, those with the least amount of sin, we are still asking God to accept sin. As Phil illustrated it to Ray, an unbroken window is not simply one with some unbroken spots in it.

Those who believe God should accept them because they are relatively good have not taken a close look at themselves. Social psychologist Jerald Jellison estimates that the average American outstrips Pinocchio by telling 200 lies a day.¹ That is 73,000 lies a year! How old are you? If you are thirty, that's 2,190,000 sins you would have to explain away. If you are forty, it is nearly 3 million--and that is only lies. Now do the same for gossip, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions and so on--see Galatians 5:19-21 for a start. No one comes even close to being righteous.

The second crucial factor in this issue is that God made perfection available as a free gift. By dying on the cross, Jesus Christ "perfected for all times those who are sanctified" (Hebrews 10:14). You see, God "made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). We swap our sins for Christ's perfection. At that specific time in history, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them" (2 Corinthians 5:19). So whether we are Hitler of Ghandi, our sins are no longer the issue in beginning our relationship with God. The only issue involved is what we do about Jesus Christ.

If a criminal is handed a pardon, the issue is no longer his crime but rather what he will do about the pardon. If he refuses it, he will remain in prison. The questions, Why is he in prison? and, Why is he not out of prison? have two different answers. He is in prison because he is a convicted criminal. He is not out of prison because he refused the pardon. In the same way, the answer to the question, Why will a person be in hell? is, Because he is a sinner, but the answer to the question, Why will he not be in heaven? is, because he did not receive Christ.

Many unbelievers, concerned about how relatively good or bad they are, need to realize that their sins no longer have anything whatsoever to do with beginning a relationship with God. All those sins have already been paid for. That is what the Bible means when it says we are being offered salvation on the basis of "grace" (unmerited favor, Ephesians 2:8-9), and "mercy" (unmerited noncondemnation, Titus 3:5). Mankind is being offered a pardon. That pardon, Jesus Christ, is the only issue before us.

If Christianity were only a religion made up by people, the question "Why not become a Christian and then live as bad as you can?" would be a legitimate concern. Expecting people to get better just because they prayed a prayer makes no more sense than pardoning all convicts and expecting them to become model citizens. We would certainly ask, "How do we know they won't just accept the pardon and live as bad as they can?"

But with salvation there is one big difference: it is from God, not man. When we receive Christ, God comes into us and changes us from the inside out. The Bible says, "Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Then, too, there is the fact that receiving Christ makes you part of God's family, and God takes care of His family. The author of Hebrews says, "God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?" (Hebrews 12:7). Also, being in a good family generally motivates people to be part of what that family stands for. So it is with the family of God.

A word of caution is in order here. In answering the question about miracles, it is crucial to maintain a truly biblical viewpoint. Many try to get the Bible off the hook by explaining away the miracles in some way other than supernatural occurrences. Some try to say the stories of Adam and Eve or Jonah and the whale are myths rather than actual historical events. Or they may claim that the wind blew the Red Sea back in a spot shallow enough for the Israelites to cross. That kind of thinking is clearly in conflict with the plain, normal interpretation of the Scriptures. More understanding of our three-dimensional universe may unravel some of the reasoning behind the wonders of nature, but it will never give natural explanations for the supernatural events recorded in the Bible.

Then there are some who believe God is performing supernatural events today, and they mention that to the unbeliever. The problem is, those events are probably outside the experience of the unbeliever asking about miracles. All it does, therefore, is widen the communication gap between the two of you. Besides that, present-day miracles are not the real issue. Person needs to receive Jesus Christ as his or her God and Savior; and that message comes from the Bible, not form today's activity. Therefore it is the Bible, not current events, with which an unbeliever must deal as his source of truth. A defense of modern experience adds nothing to that.

What is my advice? Do not apologize for the Bible as understood in a normal sense. Do not add modern miracles to dazzle your unbelieving friends with your experience. Just "make a defense" (1 Peter 3:15) for the truth God's Word contains.

Ray accepted Jesus Christ as his personal God and Savior some time after the fishing trip. Phil's sensitivity to God's leading here contains some exciting lessons for us.

For one thing, Phil was able to turn the situation over to God while remaining available for God to use him. Paul exhorted the Colossians, "Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving; praying at the same time for us as well, that God may open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned" (Colossians 4:2-3). The key to friendship evangelism is to use both prayer and friendship.

Another principle is observed in the fact that Phil motivated Ray through his conversation. When he realized he was beginning to sound like a "religious weirdo," Phil backed off and let God do the initiating. And when He did, Phil gave only short incomplete answers until Ray was ready to hear the whole gospel. We must motivate our hearers to keep asking questions.

In the passage just mentioned, Paul went on to say, "Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned, as it were, with salt, so that you may know how you should respond to each person" (Colossians 4:6). I can still hear Professor Howard Hendricks of Dallas Theological Seminary saying "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink--but you can feed him salt!" Does our conversation with unbelievers leave them thirsty to hear more about God?

^[1.]  Hedley Donovan, ed., "Ground Rules for Telling Lies," Time, 3 April 1978, p. 67.