A now almost-famous question goes like this, “T/F We do not have to keep the Ten Commandments in order to get to heaven.” For many believers this is hard to answer. Christians care deeply what God says in His word. They have a fervent desire to serve Him. Of course they want to keep God’s word, and tossing out His commands is hardly acceptable. They want to say “FALSE” and come down on the side of God’s eternal goodness.

But they would be wrong.

If in fact we have to keep the commandments, who could have any hope of heaven? After all, we were born dead toward God, not able know Him, and in our very nature violating God’s command to love Him. As Paul writes, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14).

No, the fact is that while Christians love God’s law, it is not a way to heaven. His law can only condemn us. The law says that anyone who sins has no place in heaven. That law has never been repealed. If you have ever sinned, you fall under the curse of God’s punishment. The good news is not that God has repealed His law, or that He ignored it, or that He was just kidding after all.

The good news is that the law’s condemnation fell upon the One who was in our place under the law, our Savior Jesus Christ. Every sinner has already been damned, since Christ suffered damnation in the place of every sinner. Paul writes, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Every sinner has died, since Christ has died for the sins of the world.

Keep the commandments in order to get to heaven? Not hardly! Christ has kept the commandments for us, and by faith He has given us His righteousness. Scripture teaches us that I don’t have “a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith” (Philippians 3:9).

Keep the commandments in order to get to heaven? Not hardly! That would be like the guy who was climbing Mt. Rainier in Washington State and fell and broke his leg. Suffering from shock and hypothermia he was hours from death when a mountaineering team reached him, splinted his leg, and packed him in a litter. He was then removed to safety by a US Army helicopter. Meeting the rescue team leader in the hospital, the man said, “I’d like to give you a reason for saving me.”

The team leader replied, “You can’t give me a reason now that I didn’t have before. I saved you because I care about life. Because of that I have already rescued you. It’s a little late to think about giving me motivation.”

So if we try by keeping the commandments or any other means to induce God to take us to heaven, He will only say, as He already has said, “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit…” (Titus 3:5).

Edward Bryant is pastor of St. Timothy Lutheran Church in Lombard, Illinois.