Pondering spiritual realities... I'm pressed by the notion that people think they are going to Heaven because they have good deeds. This is a dangerous thought to ponder.
"God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Proverbs 3:34, as is often stated in James 4:6. The truth is, if you think you deserve Heaven, you could not find a more dangerous place to live. You can believe you are Heaven-bound, that is fine; but do not think for a moment that you deserve it.
That's the thing. The people who aren't that righteous fall for the same trap as those who aren't that smart. The Dunning-Kruger affect, which states that the people who think they are smart often are not the same people who are actually smart, is true for righteousness as well. The people who ARE righteous, often don't think that highly of how righteous they are, while those that are not righteous, often think they are more righteous than they really are.
The Bible explicitly states that if you do your good deeds so you can tell about them later, that that kind of righteousness is not real righteousness. We need to be wary of using our good deeds to make a point. Honestly, I don't like doing it. It usually means I've gotten into a conversation that isn't healthy. If you do good deeds to tell about them later, it often means you didn't do the good deed because of love. Love has to be the only motivating factor for why we do what we do- not so we can win an argument later, not so that we can look good to other people, but purely because there was a need, and we could meet it. That's really, foundationally, what love is- seeing a need, and meeting it. We should be wary of speaking of our good deeds, because Jesus warned that people who do that will have their reward, and lose their treasure in Heaven.
The more proud you are, the more oblivious you are of how little love you show. Love is a challenging thing. Each of us will stand before God and weighed, both our good deeds and our mishaps, and God will peer into our hearts and evaluate WHY we did what we did, and how what happened in our past impacted us, and whether our hearts were in the correct place, or if we were doing things for the wrong reason, or what. Only God can truly evaluate what goes on in the human heart. Only God knows. If you think your heart might be bad, I recommend asking God to give you a new heart. He can, and will do so if you humbly ask him for one. God loves this kind of prayer, and if you ask and believe he can do it, he will do it, and you will have a new reason to do the right thing. Love is the best reason to do anything. Love is the bottom line. Choose love.
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