Can Man Enter Kingdom of Heaven by Laboring for the Lord?
I believe that all true believers in the Lord expect the Lord Jesus to come to take them into the heaven soon. Some firmly believe that they will surely be taken into the kingdom of heaven by the Lord when He returns, if they work hard for Him, shepherd the church believers, and even give up their family and marriage, dedicating their all to Him.
In fact, such thought is wrong. Man’s sacrifice, expenditure, hard work do not mean that he is cleansed, because he is possessed of satanic dispositions of arrogance, self-conceit, self-rightness and self-importance and can still resist God.
To trace the root, originally when in the heaven, the archangel was the greatest of heaven’s angels and God authorized it to govern millions of angels. After God created mankind on earth, its ambitions were so inflated that it even desired to stand equal to God and rule over mankind on earth. In the end, it was cast into midair by God. As man was corrupted increasingly deeply, his nature became that of the archangel: arrogance and self-conceit, self-rightness and self-importance and having no place for God in his heart as well as no respect for others…. With such corrupt dispositions, man can contend with and fight against God at any time. When he first believes in God, he produces conceptions about God when seeing God’s work conflicts with his will, and even talks about and judges the Lord Jesus and His work carelessly. After he does services for a period of time, he can often testify how much work he does or how much he suffers, even regarding himself a holy man and one that pleases God because he can expound on the Bible, support the believers, work and preach for the Lord. And in the end, he thinks that he has finished his course and cast away what he should, thus he asks God for the glorious crown and a place for him in the kingdom of heaven just like Paul. … The more work one has done, the more easily he thinks highly of himself, feeling that he has the capital. As a result, he becomes more arrogant, self-right and unreasonable. The Jewish Pharisees are typical examples.
They served Jehovah God in the temple for generation after generation. Considering themselves to be well versed in the law, they frequently interpreted the law amongst the Jewish people, and thus often sat in the first place of the synagogue to receive people’s respect and worship. When the Lord Jesus came to do His redemptive work, their arrogant and self-right nature was completely exposed. They did not know God’s work, and used their brain and religious knowledge and theory to resist the Lord and His work. They thought that the One to come should be called Messiah rather than Jesus, and should be born in the royal palace or a noble family rather than in a poor carpenter’s. Therefore, they regarded the Lord Jesus as a man instead of God and thus spared no effort to condemn and slander Him. Even though they listened to the Lord’s preaching, they didn’t mean to seek the truth, but just tried to find a handle to hand Him over to the Roman government for condemnation. At last, they incited and deceived the Jewish people to nail the Lord Jesus onto the cross. When the Lord Jesus did His work, the Pharisees not only refused to seek His work themselves, but deceived and controlled the Jewish people and forbad them to convert to Him, fighting against God for His chosen people as well as status. Therefore, the Lord Jesus cursed them, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, you make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves” (Matthew 23:15) “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you shut up the kingdom of heavenagainst men: for you neither go in yourselves, neither suffer you them that are entering to go in” (Matthew 23:13). The Pharisees’ evil deeds of condemning and resisting the Lord Jesus, deceiving and controlling people reveal their devilish substance of antichrists thoroughly. Eventually, they paid the due price for their maleficence and were subjected to destruction of their nation.
We can see that if man does not get rid of the corrupt dispositions of arrogance, self-rightness, self-importance and conceit, they will never be able to be purified, much less will they be approved into thekingdom of heaven by the Lord even if they work hard and spend for the Lord all his life. In Leviticus 11:45, Jehovah God says, “you shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.” As God is holy, if the Lord receives man with satanic dispositions to His place, will He still be a God of holiness? It is also said in Hebrews 12:14, “without which no man shall see the Lord.” The Bible says that man can see the Lord Jesus only if he is cleansed. It doesn’t say that all those who can spend and throw things out for the Lord will see Him. Therefore, to be purified is the target that man should pursue in believing in the Lord. Only when man gets purified by God, no longer lives by his satanic dispositions of arrogance, conceit, self-rightness, self-importance, and can truly do God’s will in everything, can he receive God’s approval and be fit for the kingdom of God.
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