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"If you repented your sins last month, and got saved. But you then ended up dying suddenly, today, without fresh repentance for any sins you may have committed over the past month. Will you go to heaven?"

Your question brings me back to our Q&A sessions in Catholic school, back in the 3rd grade during catechism class.

"Sister Mary Jean, if you were walking to confession, and you had committed a mortal sin, and you were going to confess but you were hit by a car outside the church, would you go to hell for eternity?"

We were obsessed with legalistic questions such as these.

True ~ the question is almost peculiarly Catholic in form and structure, but Moslems ask the same sort of questions all the time.

One big difference, of course, is that Moslems are many times advised that it's OK to kill somebody ~ and for Catholics and Protestants, that answer is simply not acceptable.

Protestant theology (for the most part) is less legalistic than the competition ~ and I think that's as simple an answer as I can come up with.

see, this is the problem in my opinion with the RCC. The legalism ovverides the grace of God. Another way of saying it is that you are trying to make the Gospel the Law, which it is not. The Gospel is the Gospel, and the Law is the Law. The Law convicts, it never saves. the Law shows you how hopeless your condition is and there is nothing you can do to correct it by yourself. Once the person understands this, naturally he is brought to a point where he says “What can I do to be saved?” This is when the Gospel is given to that person, who is face to face with the reality of their eternal punishment. Hopefully they receive the Gospel message. The Law no longer condemns them, but serves to remind them of where they were, and to also help them continue to live a better life. But as long as they believe the Gospel message (and God says He will give them the strength to continue believing (No one takes them from my hand) ) they can have confidence in the promises God has made to them ot save them because of what Christ has done for them. The law is still how Christ wants us to live, and the Christian who begins his walk with Christ will start to change things in his life to live a more Christ-like life. The maturing Christian will live and want to live a more Christ-like life. God will help him to because God also promises that He will cause him to bear good fruit, and God will prune out the things in our lives that are not good. It may not be pleasant always to go through these processes, as there may be changes in our lives that won’t occur if we do not go through some kind of pain or trouble, but we know also from God that He makes all things good for those who love Him, that He disciplines His sons and daughters not for punishment, but so that we may bear more fruit.

Nobody goes to hell for sin. Look in Revelation at the bema seat and the Great White Judgment Seat.

Sin was already paid for on the cross.

We are already condemned, faith alone in Christ alone places us in position where God by His grace gives us salvation.

Once we are in the Book of Life, nothing we can ever do will ever remove it. Only if we reject Him and His work does He not know us might the name be scratched out. Once we are His, we are part of His family and His body. We might not live up to the rewards predestined for us in heaven and they remain as an eternal memorial, on the shelf, as it were, fall all to witness for all eternity, but it isn’t called eternal life for merely a temporary ordeal.

Confession and repentence are issues regarding post salvation sin and how we walk with the Spirit in fellowship with Him.

If we sin after salvation, and we do, then until we confess and repent per 1st John 1:9 our sanctification process halts and we begin to backslide in our living. Our thinking gets scarred in sin and we stop advancing by His Plan for us.

So if we get hit by a car, we still go to heaven after salvation, but if not in fellowship, we simply leave some rewards on the table which He will never give us for we failed to win that portion of the race as it were.

Your question brings me back to our Q&A sessions in Catholic school, back in the 3rd grade during catechism class. "Sister Mary Jean, if you were walking to confession, and you had committed a mortal sin, and you were going to confess but you were hit by a car outside the church, would you go to hell for eternity?" We were obsessed with legalistic questions such as these.

That's funny!

Two thousand years on and 3rd graders are easily able to make the whole body of Catholic "scholarship" look absurd!

(I hope you are not trying now to dismiss your 3rd grade critique as childishly legalistic. Catholic doctrine is, after all, built on endless "scholarship" trucking in arcane, legalistic arguments. And -- for the record -- I will observe that the question with which this thread is launched is one that ought to give Protestants a huge headache.)