God’s Word is a book, not a cudgel. It’s guiding principles and lines on the highways of life are not a license to boss others. God’s Word’s rules are for your own self-enforcement.
God’s Word doesn’t have all that many rules, it mostly teaches about understanding how God thinks and works. The more we understand God and His ways, the more we will understand whatever happens in our lives—both why God does what He does and what we can do as His Image by responding in this life. The best way to know what God would do as a human on Earth is to study the life of Jesus. As you slowly transform to understand how God operates, hold yourself to the “God standard” of how to think and operate.
There are rules in God’s Word, of course, but they too must be studied and contemplated in order to be understood. A classroom can familiarize one with the words and their locations in God’s Word, but actually understanding God’s Word is a personal, life journey. This takes time, both regular dripping and intense downpours.
God’s Word’s rules are paradoxically simple; remember this every day. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” is an overly simple concept to grasp, but implementing it can never be perfected, even in a thousand lifetimes. You are certainly going to fail and transgress.
Keeping God’s rules does not mean “never breaking” them; it means that we keep pressing toward the destination. God’s Word is an ethics compass, a moral orientation. You know in what direction you must go; go there! When you stumble on the jagged terrain, get up and keep going. Don’t lie down for dead under the misconception that Heaven only accepts those who never fall down.
Heaven accepts everyone who can stand it. Heaven is awesome, partly because everyone loves everyone else as themselves, also because everyone there knows that God loves them. That’s a hard law to lay down. But, if you lay down Heaven’s law in your own life every day—love others equally, worship God only, and keep going—you’ll prepare yourself to enter Heaven, be transformed there, and then usher Heaven throughout the universe.