Why do we need to be holy to get into heaven? One doesn't need to score A-grades to obtain a university degree - it's usually enough to coast one's way through the three years and get a safe but unspectacular degree at the end of it. Shouldn't the Christian life be the same?
In his Anglican days, Newman answered this question as follows:
Now some one may ask, Why is it that holiness is a necessary qualification for our being received into heaven?
Why is it that the Bible enjoins upon us so strictly to love, fear, and obey God, to be just, honest, meek, pure in heart, forgiving, heavenly-minded, self-denying, humble, and resigned?
Man is confessedly weak and corrupt; why then is he enjoined to be so religious, so unearthly? Why is he required (in the strong language of Scripture) to become 'a new creature'?
Since he is by nature what he is, would it not be an act of greater mercy in God to save him altogether without this holiness, which it is so difficult, yet (as it appears) so necessary for him to possess?
[...] To be holy is, in our Church's words, to have "the true circumcision of the Spirit;" that is, to be separate from sin, to hate the works of the world, the flesh, and the devil:
to take pleasure in keeping God's commandments; to do things as He would have us do them; to live habitually as in the sight of the world to come, as if we had broken the ties of this life, and were dead already.
Why cannot we be saved without possessing such a frame and temper of mind?
I answer as follows: That, even supposing a man of unholy life were suffered to enter heaven, he would not be happy there; so that it would be no mercy to permit him to enter.
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