In yesterday’s post, I said, “It is a cause both for thanksgiving and holy fear, that our good deeds would be found to be primarily for our glory not His, and we will have small rewards in heaven.”
A few months ago, I offended a wise and godly sister in the Lord and friend. The primary source of her complaint was that in a presentation, I had remarked something to the effect that the, or one of the, primary motivations for New Testament martyrs and saints was the rewards of heaven. She passionately maintains that our primary motivation is Christ Himself, and not the promised rewards.
I’m not here to use the bully pulpit of my own blog to trumpet my view louder than hers. I largely agree with her. As I wrote the above quote yesterday, it reminded me of the issue, and I wanted to clarify to any who might react similarly to my friend that I do view eternity with Christ as our primary reward, though not our only one. I find it interesting that the Bible does spend a rather large amount of time on various heavenly rewards and mansions, so they must be important.
Throughout Scripture, we do see, in both Old and New Testaments, that one of God’s biggest desires is to dwell with us that He may be our God and we may be His people. When you think about it, that is probably one of the most profound and amazing statements in all of Scripture. Consider how we get tired so easily of our favorite people sometimes, so how much more the ‘vast, unwashed masses?’
Yet God desires to be with us so much, He went to the extraordinary lengths of crucifixion so that He could bring us together with Him. The cynic calls it a psychosis. God calls it Love.
SDG
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