The early Church came to think that the crucial prerequisite for salvation was acknowledging Jesus as Lord. This made sense to early Christians because their confessing Christ as Lord was the turning point of their lives, the beginning of their conscious life in grace. Jesus tells us. Once a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. Love, then, is the will of God.
Love is the key that unlocks the door to eternal life.
Of course there is no physical door. There are no literal pearly gates. To be in heaven is to have eternal fellowship with God. God created us mortal but with eternal possibilities. The human spirit has a limited lease on life but a capacity for being infused with the divine, eternal Spirit, God s very own, eternal, life force.