Thus none of us is good within himself or herself.

Next, it is important to understand that Jesus is entirely good and holy. There is no evil or bad in Him at all. To go to Heaven, one must be perfect as Jesus is perfect. But that is impossible--except through Jesus as we read in Matthew`s biography of Jesus: "Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26).

Read this verse in its context in the story of the rich young ruler here in Matthew`s Gospel.  

The truth is that however good we try to be, we`ll never be as good as Jesus. Never!  We`ll always fall short of the mark. And since God is perfect and holy, He cannot accept what falls short of the mark. Furthermore, whenever we think we can contribute something to God that makes us seem better in His eyes, He shows us we`re far from being righteous, pure, holy, perfect . . . That is what He was teaching the rich young ruler in the above quoted passage--that He`d have to give up everything to follow Jesus. And this He just could not do. So, he couldn`t do what was good in the end. And neither can we. We cannot do enough good to outweigh our sinfulness. But the good news is: we don`t need to. Jesus did it all for us.

Jesus died on the cross to pay the price of our wrongdoings (sin) so that we could believe on Him and be saved (John 3:16). It is a gift of grace, not something we did to merit this gift (seen in the New Testament epistles in Ephesians 2:8). So, although our attempts to do good things so that we merit God`s salvation are in vain, what Christ did on the cross was not in vain. If we receive Him as Lord and Savior, we are saved on the basis of His merit, of His goodness and perfect righteousness.

If we could do good things to outweigh the bad and thereby save ourselves, Jesus would not have needed to come to earth and die for our sins. It is because we cannot save ourselves--because our efforts to do good will never be enough--that He came and died in our stead, so we could believe in Him and receive eternal life. That is the Gospel.