Do all moral humans go to heaven?

Question

Given a person X who leads a "moral life" based on the law laid out in the Bible. Given that X does not believe in the existence of God or any other God.

If the Christian Faith happens to be the truth, can X be saved (meaning being accepted into heaven)?

Can X be saved if X follows all laws, except for those who are calling for a direct relationship with God?

Can X be saved if X follows his or her conscience, but because of lacking knowledge of the law is still sinning?

What are the different positions on these questions of each denomination?

Answer 1

No one lives a moral life in God's eyes:

Romans 3:10-12

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. 12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

Jesus Christ was righteous on our behalf. Our faith in this, His shed blood for our sins, and His resurrection is how one is gifted salvation. We place our faith in Him and His completed work for us, rather than have any faith in our own self-righteous efforts for salvation.

Ephesians 2:8-9

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Romans 3:25

Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

2 Corinthians 5:21

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Romans 10:3

For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.

1 Corinthians 15:1-4

Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; 2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. 3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

Once someone has placed their faith in Christ being their righteousness, it is important to live a life more righteously for God. We do this out of our love for Him because of what He did out of His love for us through Jesus Christ. Someone's "moral life" without faith in Christ will count as nothing for salvation.

Romans 4:3-5

For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. 4 Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. 5 But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

Answer 2

My answer would be No. Consider these Bible verses:

John 14:6:

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

John 3:18:

"Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son."

1 John 5:12:

Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

In general Romans 3 gives a more details explanation.

In Vers 10 it says:

as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;

And Vers 21 says:

For by works of the law no human being[3] will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

Summarized in vers 21-24:

21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

Also let's pick apart "leads a moral life with equivalent morals to that of a christian" a bit.

Can you imagine a person who does not believe in God but fulfills the most important commandment in the Bible in Matthew 22:36-39:

36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

So part of Christian morality is to love God. I would presume here that you can't love what you do not believe in.

There is also Romans 2,14-16: (In general read Romans)

14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

So I would make the case that God is able to consider the situation and context of each person, meaning that if a Person doesn't know anything about God and his law, that person still might have a chance. But the issue is that God still judges that person, instead of Jesus paying the debt for that person. But still, I think God will still be fair about it.

But to sum it up: In general, if you know about God and his law (and that is what you imply by saying "and the Christian faith turns out to be the truth") and still don't follow God, then you will be judged by God.

If you repent and follow God, God's judgment is fulfilled by the sacrifice of Jesus. To give an analogy: A Person X owes 1 Trillion Dollars and if X does not pay, he will be thrown in jail. Unless X has a friend that pays the money for him, X will be thrown into jail. Now if X has made that rich friend (which is Jesus) then the debt is paid, and X is a free man.

This means the relationship between X and God changes from "defendant before a judge" to "friend of someone who loved X enough to pay 1 Trillion Dollars for".

So while the bible might sound quite harsh at first glance, it provides an easy way out by repenting and following Jesus, while still dealing with sin appropriately. The easiest way to do this practically would be to pray, but I would strongly recommend going to a local church for more guidance.

Answer 3

The answer is No, observing the moral law alone does not lead to God or to eternal life because if this were so God wouldn't have sent his only Son into the world to teach us his ways.

Additionally Jesus said he is the way the truth and the life and in order for you to see God or enter into paradise you have to believe in him as the only begotten Son of the Most High

John 14:6

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

God's love is poured out to all those who accept his Son and believe his teachings and practice them.

John 3:16

For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have life everlasting

Without faith and believing you do not please God, John 3:16 clears all doubt about being good and not believing in Jesus as the perfect atonement that clears all sin from you and enables you to see God.

Answer 4

As far as humanity is concerned, we are all immoral with respect to God's perfect standard of morality. That is why the law of God (as stated in the Bible) condemns all of us as sinners who cannot keep his perfect law. The whole point of the law is to prove our lawlessness. The law is only given for the lawless!

"Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. ...For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God... Where is the boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." - Romans 3:20-28 A.V.

Jesus gave his followers the parable of servants with duties to perform before they can sit down and eat. Regarding the servant's master Jesus asks:

"Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all these things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do." Luke 17:7-10 A.V.

There are no Brownie points for doing what God says we ought to do. We ought to keep his perfect law. But none of us ever can, therefore even our best endeavours to do our duty will always fail and we will remain judged by God as lawbreakers, as to break one part of his law means to break it all; which is why "the law made nothing perfect" - James 2:10 & Hebrews 7:19.

The whole world is guilty before God. We cannot justify ourselves. We cannot boast that some of us "are moral humans"! That very boast condemns us as proud sinners who disagree with what God has stated!

Nor does the matter of location in heaven prove we are moral (or, at least, 'more' moral than those who don't gain entrance there). That is the way sinners think, trying to compare themselves with others, as if attaining (say) 75% of a moral standard will "do the trick" while those not quite getting to such a "high standard" will be kept out of heaven.

Heaven is God's holy, perfect domain. No unholy or imperfect ones can be there. All of us unholy, imperfect sinners need to become new creatures in Christ to enter God's presence. We cannot make ourselves such new creatures. Only by the grace of God can we be crucified with Christ - dying to self - and become new creatures through and in him.

This means that the question needs to be taken back to the drawing board and completely changed. As it stands, the only answer is, "There is no such thing as a 'moral' human, and humans who do get to heaven never get there by their attempts at morality. Only once they realise they can do nothing to merit being 'accepted' into heaven, may the grace of God start to deal with them in a saving way.

I suggest this is the position of Christians who understand and accept all that the Bible says about our sin, and God's grace in having done everything needed to deal with it, through the cross of Christ. Denomination does not come into it.

Answer 5

From Wikipedia:

Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that are concerned with the limits of provability in formal axiomatic theories. These results, published by Kurt Gödel in 1931, are important both in mathematical logic and in the philosophy of mathematics. The theorems are widely, but not universally, interpreted as showing that Hilbert's program to find a complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible.

The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure (i.e. an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of natural numbers. For any such consistent formal system, there will always be statements about natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that the system cannot demonstrate its own consistency.

If a moral system is sufficiently complex and can be expressed in a way analogous to mathematics, I expect that some moral truths cannot be proved. No finite being can grasp all morality and fulfill it.