Trump Is Right: Nothing He Does Will Get Him Into Heaven

Twice in the past week, President Donald Trump has spoken with unusual candor about his uncertainty over heaven; most recently during the Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony for Charlie Kirk. Earlier, aboard Air Force One, he told reporters, “I don’t think there’s anything that’s going to get me into heaven.” In that moment, he may have spoken truer words than he knew. Whatever one thinks of the president, his admission cut through the moral fog of our age: No one earns heaven.

In a culture that peddles false gospels as moralistic merit badges (“Do better”) and therapeutic prescriptions (“Feel better”), Trump’s words landed like a thunderclap. For some evangelicals, it was a red flag: See, he doesn’t get it. No one is “good enough” for heaven. For others, it was a glimmer of light breaking through the fog of a lifetime spent building empires. 

What to Make of His Words

As Andrew Isker put it on X, there are two ways to hear this. The first is, while rightly acknowledging the moralistic false gospel, to target the president’s theological failings and dismiss what could be real conviction needing humble help from the theologically astute. The second — and the one we should pray for — is that Trump might be hearing the effectual call. For a man whose top-tier willpower has reshaped nations, this could be the Holy Spirit cracking open his heart to the one truth that levels every king: Salvation is not earned. It is received. Repentance and faith are not prerequisites we perform, but gifts of God’s Spirit.

Trump’s half-joking humility echoes one of Jesus’ parables. The prodigal son who blew his inheritance on pigs and parties, only to slink home with a scripted apology, only for the father to smother him in a robe and ring before he could finish his lines. 

Imagine the world’s greatest architect, the guy who sketches skyscrapers that kiss the clouds, staring at his blueprint for eternity and realizing it is off by a millimeter. No amount of revisions or subcontractors will fix it; the foundation is cracked from the start. That is us — all of us — measuring our lives against God’s perfect plumb line and coming up short. As the prophet Isaiah reminds us, even our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment (literally, period rags). Trump is not alone in this; he is just the latest high-profile soul to peek over the ledge.

But here is the good news that turns despair into doxology: Heaven is not a gated community for the self-made, an eternal awards show for the elite. It is a feast thrown open to sinners who know they have no business crashing it. Heaven’s joy is not merely in escape from punishment but in communion with the Triune God — the Father who receives, the Son who redeems, and the Spirit who renews.

Jesus told a parable that cuts straight to the chase, one that feels tailor-made for a dealmaker like Trump. Two men went up to the temple to pray. The Pharisee — picture the ultimate Type A, the guy with the corner office in the kingdom of the self-justified — strutted in, thanking God he was “not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers,” or even like that wicked tax collector over there. He fasted twice a week, tithed mint and cumin and all. Spotless ledger, right?

Then the tax collector, beaten down by a life of fleecing his neighbors for Rome’s cut (and his own, of course), stood at a distance. He would not even lift his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Jesus did not mince words: “This man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Dear Mr. President

Mr. President, if you are reading this — and who knows, in God’s economy, stranger things have happened — hear the Savior’s voice in that story. You are the builder of walls and the broker of peace, the man who has stared down tyrants and assassins, and turned economies on a dime. You have “made life better for a lot of people,” as you said, and for that, saints across this land thank God. But none of it — not the hostages freed from terror’s grip, not the wars you have starved of oxygen — will tip the scales in your favor on Judgment Day.

But if you come to Him humbly — confessing and repenting of your sin and trusting in Christ alone — you will find grace greater than all your sin. Jesus promises, “Whoever comes to Me I will never cast out.” Come to Him as that tax collector did, beating your chest not with false bravado but with the raw ache of a soul stripped bare for the holy God, and you will find mercy, forgiveness, and eternal life. It is not a transaction to negotiate; it is a transfer to cry out for — from death to life, from self to Savior. The same grace that felled Saul on the Damascus Road and turned a persecutor into a preacher can hunt you down in the Oval Office or on Air Force One. 

Pray for our president, saints.

Objections Abound

Of course, not everyone is interceding for our president. Some replies to my own plea on X dripped with the sour grapes of superiority: Trump’s too wicked — adulterer, enabler of wars, a pedophile even. Fair enough; the man is no saint, and neither am I. But that is the point. The tax collector was not a choirboy; he was a collaborator, a traitor to his people, skimming off widows’ mites for an empire that crucified his Messiah. If grace could reach him mid-prayer, why draw lines in the sand for Trump? 

Or others sneered, He’s Jewish, so this doesn’t apply. As if God’s mercy stops at bloodlines; tell that to Ruth the Moabite or Rahab the Canaanite, woven into the Savior’s genealogy by faith, not pedigree.

Then there were the whataboutists: Why not beg prayers for Biden the same way? Touché. We should. Every knee will bow, every tongue confess, from Mar-a-Lago to the White House bunker. I have prayed for Joe Biden’s salvation and will continue to do so, because the gospel is not a partisan weapon — it is salvation in the storm. And the ignorance charge? Surrounded by evangelicals, yet clueless on heaven’s entry fee. Pride goeth before a fall, friend. Billy Graham himself preached to presidents who nodded along but never knelt. Knowledge puffs up; conviction breaks down.

One wag even quibbled that the tax collector’s sins were “just” tax fraud, not Gaza’s toll or USAID cuts. As if God grades on a curve. Our wickedness before the Judge of all is not a spectrum; it is a chasm, and we are all dangling over it. The wage of every sin is death — white lies or red-handed betrayals. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, no fine print. Trump’s quip about not being heaven-bound? It is the first step for any prodigal: Admitting the self-designed pigsty is no palace.

The elites mock such talk as superstition because they cannot imagine a kingdom they did not build. But Trump’s confession, however accidental, touches the one truth that no empire can spin: Eternity in heaven or hell is not negotiable.

Dusty Deevers is a pastor at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Elgin in Elgin, Oklahoma. He is also the state senator for Oklahoma Senate District 32 and a small business owner. He lives in Elgin with his wife and six children.