There are two different types of mistake which people make about how to get into heaven. The first mistake is to assume that it’s a matter of whether your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds. These people think that God will one day do a giant balancing act, and everything that you’ve done good will be stacked up on one side, and everything that you’ve done bad will be stacked up on the other side. If the balance tips in favour of your good side, then you get in. Most people are used to a 50% pass mark in exams, so they assume that if they live their lives better than 50% of the other people in the world, then they should have no problems with Heaven’s entrance test.
The mistake made by another group of people is to think that you get into heaven as a result of voting correctly in the deity popularity contest. If you vote Jesus number one ahead of the Muslim God or the Jewish God or the Hindu gods, then you’ll get into heaven because you’ve voted correctly. These people seem to think that getting on the right side of God is simply a matter of intellectually embracing the correct theological propositions, and that heaven’s entrance test is simply a check for theological orthodoxy. Unfortunately many of the people who attend churches fall into this category.
According to Jesus, both of the belief systems which I have just described are wrong. Firstly, Jesus makes it clear that you can’t get into heaven unless you are perfect, so no amount of good deeds will balance out the stains left by your bad deeds. The only way to get into heaven is by believing in Jesus and accepting the gift of cancellation of your sins which Jesus made possible by dying for your sins on the cross. But secondly, believing in Jesus isn’t something you can do with your mind alone. As Matthew chapter 25’s message about the sheep and goats indicates, believing in Jesus is something you do with your life. If you’re choosing to be a follower of Jesus, then you’re choosing to dedicate your life to doing his work, and an important part of that is caring for the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner.