Can a prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City Nevada enter into heaven? Is it possible for the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse to reach the “pearly gates”? Is the businessman besieged by debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions a candidate for salvation? What about the clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love? What of the sexually abused teen who was molested by his father and is now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last “trick”, whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school? Or the deathbed convert who for decades had his cake and ate it, broke every law of God and man, wallowed in lust, and raped the earth?

How is this possible? Listen. There is a voice that echoes from the portals of heaven. It shouts the answer from the pages of the Book. “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

They are there. We are there – the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all hung on to the faith.

“It is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not of works, so that no one can boast.”

If this isn’t good news to you then you have never fully understood the gospel of grace.