An atheist once told me that while he did not believe in Hell, he thought there ought to be one. Most human beings believe that the grave is not the end and that judgment follows death. Bible believers would agree, basing their view on the Scripture which says, "It is appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgment." But who goes to Hell and who goes to Heaven? Is Heaven a reward for "nice" people? And is Hell the wages of nastiness?

One of the nicest people that I ever knew was a Jewish man who was for many years president of the Board of Education for the State of Connecticut. Let’s call him Lewis Cox. I spent the first twenty-five years of my life in Connecticut and Mr. Cox was the most popular person I knew. He was acquainted with thousands of people and everyone I met who knew him liked him. Lewis did a lot of work with the YMCA. Often he was asked to handle "devotions" at camp or at some other "Y" activity. Since most of the men and boys were Gentiles and at least nominal Christians, he used the New Testament almost exclusively.

Our paths crossed frequently and I had numerous opportunities to speak to him of the saving work of Christ on Calvary. He never took offense, never resented viewpoints that differed with his, or those who held them. He was modest and unassuming as well as kind, patient, and loving. I realize that niceness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. People are only "nice" in our perception, and it is possible for us to consider people to be nice for years only to have them disappoint us, and then we consider them less than nice...maybe even nasty. But Lewis Cox just might have been the nicest person that I knew. He was nicer than most of the born-again Christians of my acquaintance and certainly nicer than I by a country mile. But he did not know Christ as his personal Savior. He believed that Christ was a good man and a great teacher but, to my knowledge, never trusted His crosswork for salvation.

Do men like Lewis Cox go to Heaven when they die? He had a lifetime of good works and no visible crimes that would be objectionable to society. Would God not honor his relative "goodness" and admit him to Heaven at the moment of his death? Compare him with Adolph Hitler whose hate-filled life drew a world into war, devastated Europe, and forced death, injury, hunger, disease, pain, and suffering on countless millions of men, women, and children.

To ask these questions is to beg the real issue. The issue is not: That some people are better than other people, as men measure goodness. The issue is: That the entire human race is lost and in need of a Savior. The issue is: That one sin, however small it may appear as men measure sin, is a monstrous crime against Infinite Holiness. The human race committed one initial sin--small by man’s standards--when Adam, our original Federal Head, failed a simple test at the beginning of history. When Adam sinned, the race sinned for he was the human race when he fell. When Adam fell, the race fell for we were seminally present in his loins. Adam was the totality of the race when he sinned and fell and incurred the consequence of spiritual death for himself and his progeny. This is the teaching of Romans, chapter five.

Adam’s sin from the human perspective was minor. He ate a piece of fruit that had been forbidden him by his Creator. But, from the Divine viewpoint, Adam knowingly disobeyed his Creator. Adam defied God, joined hands with God’s arch enemy Satan, despised the right, embraced the wrong, and declared war on Heaven! Adam’s sin was the only sin open to him, God protecting him from all others, and he chose to commit it. He willingly trampled on the revealed will of the God of the Universe...the Ruler of Eternity.

You and I, in our flesh, are as much a part of Adam as his hands and his feet. When the sentence of death fell upon him it fell upon us, and justly so. We may not be able to comprehend this, probably we will not. It is much more profound than the most complicated problem possible to mathematics. But we can apprehend it, we can believe it, even as we believe in mathematics though we do not begin to fathom it all.

When Adam sinned you and I sinned. When Adam fell the race fell. When Adam died Lewis Cox died, and Adolph Hitler died with him! The issue has never been what choices fallen Lewis and fallen Adolph made in life, what sin preferences they had, or to what influences they yielded. Society, at least most of it, approved the lifestyle of the one and rejected that of the other. But Lewis was not less lost, nor Adolph more lost. Both were spiritually dead, wrongly related to God, guilty of rebellion before the bar of Heaven!

Sin is sin! Rebellion is rebellion! Dead is dead! Lost is lost! You and I might prefer Lewis Cox to Adolph Hitler but we would be favoring one lost man over another. Understandably, I would rather my daughter marry a Cox than a Hitler but my preference would not make one of them one foot taller nor one inch less lost.

It takes perfect righteousness to enter Heaven. The Law was given to Israel to show all mankind that if we wish to stand before God in our own righteousness, our righteousness must be perfect. If it were possible for a man to live a sinless life for ninety-nine years, but then he committed one sin on his death bed on the final day of his life, that man would be lost. Justice would ignore the ninety-nine sinless years and search out and punish the one sin. Courts have no interest in how well one does prior to committing a crime. The court is only interested in the crime that has been committed. The business of a court is not to commend men for righteousness but to punish unrighteousness.

This is the reason that Christ had to die. Christ in His death answered to all of our sins on Calvary. God collected our debt from Him--from Christ Who acted as our Substitute. God is righteous and never collects a debt twice. But there was another reason for that substitutionary death. Christ, through death, provided a "gift" righteousness for the believer. While we cannot stand before God in our own righteousness, we cannot but stand before Him in His. The righteousness of Lewis Cox cannot get him into Heaven! The righteousness of God can! But permit me to shock you more. The same righteousness of God that can get Lewis Cox into Heaven can get Adolph Hitler in too! And all that a Hitler would have to do to have this gift righteousness is what a Cox would have to do to have it. Nothing...only believe! Believing is the only thing that you and I can do without "doing" anything. Faith is a non-meritorious activity. Romans 4:16 shows us that since salvation can only be by Grace (God doing all the saving), it can only be through faith (trusting in what Another has done).

Eternal life is not a reward for good people...it is a gift for bad people! A gift is always and only something received totally free by one party because fully paid for by another. Anything other than that is not a gift. Let me repeat, a gift is always completely free to the recipient because completely paid for by the donor.

Heaven will contain some surprising denizens! Former prostitutes, murderers, liars, thieves. Hell will too! Humanitarians, ascetics, altruists. No one, no matter the magnitude of his sin, will be excluded from Heaven who has accepted the free gifts of righteousness and life. Nor will anyone escape the terrors of Hell who has trodden under foot the Son of God, considered His blood an unholy thing, rudely rebuffed the Holy Spirit, and offered the filthy rags of his own "righteousness" to God for salvation in place of the crosswork of God’s Son!

Those who doubt that a Lewis Cox would be eternally lost but for the death of the Son of God, and those who doubt that His death alone can save an Adolph Hitler are in the same camp. To both the preaching of the cross is foolishness. To those who believe that the worst people can be saved and that the best people need to be saved the cross is both the genius and the power of God.

"Good" people do not go to Heaven for being good, because "good" people are simply the top ten per cent of a completely ruined race of rebels. "Nasty" people are not beyond the Savior’s reach because when Christ died for sinners, He died for all!