Taken as a whole the song sends a very positive Christian message.
Perhaps so. However, I get more inspiration from tunes such as the great Methodist gospel song Over There, which covers the same subject as "Spirit in the Sky" but is both grounded in scripture and musically superior.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/fashion/24norman.html/partner/rssnyt/?_r=2&oref=slogin
“Oddly, the tune that’s turned out to be Mr. Greenbaum’s salvation is in part a shout out to Jesus, written and performed by a nice Jewish boy from Massachusetts. As one verse of “Spirit in the Sky” proclaims:
Never been a sinner, I never sinned
I got a friend in Jesus
So you know that when I die
He’s gonna set me up with
The spirit in the sky
Mr. Greenbaum claimed that he has received thousands of e-mail messages and letters about that verse. “A lot of them say, ‘We’re all sinners, we were born sinners, how dare you,’ ” he said. “O.K., so what do I know? ‘Sanford and Son’ was written by Jews and what did they know about being black?”
Mr. Greenbaum had a traditional Jewish upbringing. “My parents weren’t Hasidic, but they were almost Orthodox,” Mr. Greenbaum said. Growing up in Malden, Mass., he attended Hebrew school and was bar mitzvahed.”