“Heaven has strict immigration laws. Hell has open borders”

An Unholy Comparison

The meme proclaiming “Heaven has strict immigration laws. Hell has open borders” recently resurfaced on a church sign and across social media. It first appeared in February 2025, but it didn’t cross my radar at the time. I’ve been intentionally distancing myself from corners of Christianity that use theology to sanctify fear of outsiders. Its return, however, makes it worth addressing biblically.

To be clear: I understand the instinct behind the first half of the claim. Christianity does, in fact, teach that entrance into the Kingdom of God is not automatic. Grace is not cheap, repentance is real, and holiness matters. Heaven is not an anything-goes free-for-all.

But that is not what this meme is doing.

What it does instead is smuggle a crual modern political posture into a theological claim, implying that God’s holiness somehow endorses harsh, exclusionary immigration policies in the present moment. And that move doesn’t just fail the smell test of human decency. It collapses under honest biblical scrutiny.

Misusing Scripture to Justify Exclusion

Some defenders of the meme reached for the Bible, citing verses like “do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” (1 Cor 6:9-11). Well, longtime readers of mine will know to ask, "What's the context?" Paul was warning the church against persisting in sin, not giving a divine sanction to slam the gates of Heaven on certain ethnic groups. In fact, Paul immediately reminds the Corinthians that “such were some of you. But you were washed…you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus.” In other words, even those who once lived outside God’s will can be redeemed. The gate to Heaven is opened by grace, not by national origin or clean living alone. Heaven’s “immigration policy,” if we dare call it that, is merciful amnesty for repentant sinners, not a blanket ban on people we earthly citizens might dislike.

Another verse often twisted in these matters is Jesus’ saying that “the gate is narrow that leads to life” (Matt 7:14). True, following Christ involves discipline and not everyone chooses the path of life. But Christ’s teaching on the narrow way is a far cry from endorsing human border policies. The meme’s logic falsely conflates spiritual criteria with political criteria. Heaven’s “strictness” is about holiness, not about rejecting foreigners. 

And crucially, the offer of salvation is universally open: “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom 10:13). The Bible ends with an open invitation: “Let the one who hears say, ‘Come!’ And let the one who is thirsty come” (Rev 22:17). That’s God’s welcome mat.

What the Bible Really Says About Strangers

Far from advocating fear of foreigners, Scripture repeatedly commands extraordinary hospitality and justice toward immigrants and outsiders. A few examples make this clear:

“Love the foreigner as yourself.” God told Israel, “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.” (Lev 19:33-34) Rather than strict laws to keep outsiders out, God’s law taught compassion born of empathy. The Israelites had been refugees from famine and slaves in a foreign land; they knew hardship. God expected them—and expects us—to remember our shared humanity.

God “loves the foreigner” and defends them. “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.” (Deut 10:18) 

If God himself loves the immigrant, dare we spurn them?

Instead of strict immigration barriers, God’s people were to ensure foreigners weren’t exploited or denied justice. Prophets like Malachi included mistreating foreigners among the grave sins that incur God’s judgment. (See Mal 3:5; Jer 7:5–7; Ezek 22:7, 29; Zech 7:9–10; Deut 27:19)

Above all, we're reminded of the Christian principle that welcoming strangers = welcoming Christ. Jesus could not have been clearer in Matthew 25 when he described the final judgment. To the righteous he says, “I was a stranger and you invited me in,” and to the unrighteous, “I was a stranger and you did not invite me in.” As Jesus put it, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these… you did for me”. Our hospitality to strangers is a direct reflection of our love for Jesus. Turning our backs on the stranger is tantamount to turning our backs on Christ Himself.

From Old Testament law to New Testament teaching, the biblical witness is unambiguous: God’s people are called to welcome, love, and care for foreigners and exiles. There is no scripture that says, “Thou shalt build walls high and wide.” Instead we read, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it” (Heb 13:2). Every stranger at our door is a potential encounter with the Divine.

It is not a political slogan but a biblical fact that Jesus Himself was forced to flee state violence as a child, living for a time as a refugee in Egypt. (Matthew 2:13–15) The Holy Family lived as displaced immigrants until it was safe to return. How painfully ironic that some who claim to follow Jesus would slam the door on people in desperate need of refuge today! Our Lord Jesus “gets” the refugee experience. He lived it.

The Kingdom of God: An Open Invitation

What about the meme’s portrayal of Heaven as a gated community for the few? It’s true that not everyone enters the kingdom of God, but the deciding factor is one’s heart before God, not nationality or status. In fact, Scripture gives a beautiful vision of Heaven’s inclusivity: “After this I looked and saw a multitude too large to count, from every nation and tribe and people and tongue, standing before the throne” in worship. (Rev 7:9-10) Far from a xenophobic country club, Heaven will be a celebration of diverse humanity redeemed, every color, language, and ethnicity represented in unity. The scene around God’s throne is the ultimate open-border gathering, where the only passport is the Lamb’s blood.

Throughout the New Testament, the early church had to learn that God’s grace ignores the borders we draw. St. Peter, a Jew, was astonished when the Holy Spirit led him to a Gentile (non-Jewish) household and saved them. Peter exclaimed, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism… but welcomes those from every nation who fear Him and do what is right.” (Acts 10:34–35) In God’s eyes, there isn’t a preferred nation or ethnic insider track. “There is neither Jew nor Greek… for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28) Our labels of “native” vs. “foreigner” carry no weight in the Kingdom. As the Apostle Paul told the Ephesians, “you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people.” (Eph 2:19)

Through Christ, outsiders become insiders.

And how does one gain that entry? Grace through faith alone (Eph 2:8-9). If anything, Jesus taught that the so-called “insiders” —the self-righteous who thought they had a guaranteed heavenly visa —are in for a surprise. He warned that “many will come from east and west” (the far-off foreigners) to sit at God’s banquet, while those who assumed they were sons of the kingdom may find themselves on the outside (Matthew 8:11-12). In Christ’s kingdom, the first are last and the last first. That is a far cry from “strict immigration laws” favoring the privileged. It is radical welcome for “the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame” (Luke 14:21), the very people often shut out by worldly systems.

Let’s also consider the second half of the meme: “Hell has open borders.” In a sense, Scripture agrees that the road to destruction is broad (Matt 7:13). Hell’s yawning open gates are certainly a tragedy to prevent. But Jesus didn’t gloat about hell’s openness; he wept over those who refused God’s grace. (See Luke 19:41–42; Matt 23:37; Luke 13:34; Luke 15:4–7; John 3:16–17; Matt9:36) 

The meme’s smug tone (“open borders = hell”) only exposes the cruelty in the speaker’s heart. As Christians, our mission is to rescue people from destruction, not to boast about how many are damned because they didn’t meet some standard. The Gospel is literally good news for those far off: “you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” (Eph 2:13) Heaven’s doors aren’t guarded by capricious immigration officers. They are flung wide to anyone who will humble themselves and walk the narrow way of Christ’s love.

Hospitality: A Hallmark of True Faith

If the meme’s attitude is the opposite of Christ’s, what is the Christian attitude toward immigrants, refugees, and “outsiders?” The answer, anchored in Scripture and church tradition, is hospitality. The early Christians understood this well. The Church Fathers often emphasized seeing Christ in the stranger. St. John Chrysostom, the fourth-century archbishop renowned for his eloquence, repeatedly taught that Christ is encountered in the poor and the stranger, urging Christians to make room in their lives—and their homes—for those in need (cf. Homilies on Matthew 50; Homilies on Hebrews 10). 

Chrysostom also warned—often paraphrased as, “If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find Him in the chalice”—reverence for the Eucharist cannot be separated from care for the poor. You can’t truly commune with Jesus in church if you ignore Him in the suffering person outside. How can we claim to love God, whom we haven’t seen, if we do not love our brother or sister whom we do see (1 John 4:20), pleading for help at our doorstep? And anyone who attempts to carve out exceptions here is simply reenacting the lawyer’s old question—“And who is my neighbor?”—hoping, like him, to narrow the field enough to evade the costly obedience that the cross demands. (Cf. Luke 10:25–37)

To offer sanctuary, friendship, and aid to those who come seeking refuge isn’t a partisan stance; it’s holy work, deeply rooted in our identity as God’s people. Conversely, to slam the door in a stranger’s face is to slam it on Jesus and to betray the very faith we profess.

Loving the Least

When a slogan like “Heaven has strict immigration laws” is used to rationalize cruelty, Christians must respond with the higher authority of God’s Word. And God’s Word says, over and over, “love your neighbor as yourself,” which emphatically includes the neighbor who wasn’t born on our soil. We are called to advocate for just and compassionate treatment of immigrants and refugees. That might mean challenging policies that dehumanize people made in God’s image. It definitely means refusing to allow our faith to be co-opted by racist or nationalistic agendas. 

There is nothing loving about a quip that effectively cheers for keeping desperate people out and leaving them to suffer “open hell.”

We can acknowledge a nation’s right to have laws and borders, while still insisting those laws be merciful and fair. But the Church’s role is distinct: our “nation” is the Kingdom of God, and its law is love. When earthly laws destroy families or treat the stranger unjustly, Christians have a duty to oppose them and offer an alternative witness. In fact, a coalition of Christian and Jewish groups recently sued the U.S. government for violating their religious freedom by targeting immigrants in churches because such actions interfere with their “religious mandate to welcome and serve immigrants.” (Mennonite Church USA et al. v. United States Department of Homeland Security. Complaint filed Feb. 11, 2025) As people of faith, we cannot worship freely if some among us live in fear. We stand with the vulnerable, not with the Pharaohs and Herod's who oppress them.

To conclude, let’s dispense with pleasantries. If you’ve read this far and still think Christianity exists to flatter your sense of superiority, then let me disabuse that notion. Christianity is not a faith for the smug and self-satisfied; it’s for the humble and the humane. Jesus forever identified Himself with the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner (Matt 25:35-36). These are precisely the people our world often dismisses and precisely the people memes like this deride by implication. 

And we most emphatically and empirically shouldn't,  Because if Heaven really operated like some earthly immigration offices, none of us would get our paperwork cleared. 

Thank God, His ways are not our ways. In God’s economy, “mercy triumphs over judgment” (Jas 2:13). Heaven isn’t populated by those who earned their way in—it’s filled with those who admitted their need and accepted God’s grace. The only “extreme vetting” at Heaven’s gate is a test for the humility to confess you need saving. 

Prideful gatekeepers will find they barred themselves out.

The “Heaven has strict immigration laws, Hell has open borders” meme fails as theology and as moral teaching. It cherry-picks Scripture out of context and contradicts the overwhelming biblical call to love and welcome the stranger. It portrays Heaven in terms that sound more like a dystopian bureaucracy than the joyous homecoming for all nations that the Bible describes. And it portrays Hell in a way that betrays an unseemly glee at the idea of an “open borders” free-for-all for the damned, a stance utterly foreign to the God who “desires all people to be saved” (1 Tim 2:4).

The follower of Christ is called to rise above cheap memes and return to the radical hospitality of the Gospel. Instead of sharing that meme, they ought to share a meal with an immigrant family in their neighborhood. Instead of posting snarky slogans, they should post up at the local shelter or border ministry and lend a hand. In doing so, they’ll be much closer to the heart of Jesus than any edgy church sign could ever take them. 

Remember, our Lord said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Matt 5:7). May we be found among the merciful—those who open wide our hearts and churches to others—rather than among the merciless who would lock the gates of Heaven behind themselves. Heaven doesn’t need our border control; it calls us to borderless love. As Jesus told His disciples, “Freely you have received; freely give” (Matt 10:8). That includes giving welcome, compassion, and the good news of a Kingdom big enough to embrace whosoever will.

In the end, the only immigration status that matters is being a citizen of Heaven. And citizens of Heaven are called to love on earth’s shores without fear. Let’s get on with that holy work.