Full Contact Christianity

I was part of a discussion of heavenly reward recently. The Bible speaks quite a bit about heavenly rewards for faithfulness here on earth, but most Christians don’t teach on the subject. Some skip it because they foolishly think only the faithful will be in heaven to start with, so they conflate conditional rewards with the gift of eternal life. Others skip it because it seems to debase obedience: “We ought to serve out of love,” they will say, “not to fill up some celestial piggy bank for ourselves.”

Jesus does not agree: He directly taught people to lay up treasure in heaven.

Paul does not agree: He encourages us to compete for “an imperishable crown.”

The author of Hebrews does not agree: he holds up Moses as an example to follow, “for he looked to the reward.”

Why, though? God could simply command our obedience: certainly we owe it to Him. Why does He bother to offer reward?

First of all, because rewards move us. This is basic to human nature; from the very beginning God built us to tend and keep the Garden; we’re supposed to notice what generates a return and what does not, and do more of the former. God wants us to know the good results that come from our labor, so the better we understand the rewards God has in store for us, the more we are moved to do what He has for us.

There’s more to it, though:

• People climb Everest every year; at this point enough people have done it that there’s little prospect of meaningful reward, but people keep doing it. It’s a magnificent achievement, and that’s enough.
• Soldiers run into enemy fire to drag a wounded buddy to safety; it’s not like they’re gonna get a Nike sponsorship out of that. Everybody I know who’s done that gives the same reason: “He’d do it for me.”
• Farmers work like nobody in the world at harvest time, to get the crop in ahead of the storms. Random people at the beach will dive into dangerous surf just to pull a total stranger out of the water. Why? In both cases, they say the same thing: “It had to be done.”

Rewards are not arbitrary; they’re coupled to God’s mission in the world. It’s a bit like a car salesman getting the “Salesman of the Year’ trophy for selling more cars than anybody else. There’s no point in false ‘humility’ about it (“I don’t want the trophy; I just want to sell cars.”) The trophy is happening because he just wants to sell cars; the bonus is happening because he made a ton of money for the boss; it’s a share in the spoils of victory.

God crafted our psyches; all our basic motivations come from His hands. We labor for a return. We attempt crazy, ridiculous, enormous tasks because He does, and we’re like Him that way. He likes it, and so do we. We risk ourselves for each other because He loves, and we love after Him; we risk ourselves for outsiders because Jesus did the same for us. We do difficult and necessary work because God does; when we fell; He set about the mending of the world because it needed to be done, and only He could do it. At our best, we’re like Him that way; we do it because someone has to, and we’re there. God loves all of that, and rewards are designed to ‘cut with the grain’ of the motivations He implanted in our natures to start with.

Thanks to the controversy-mongering of a certain fellow up in Michigan, heaven and hell are in the news of late.  I don’t intend to spend much time on that here; suffice it to say I take a C. S. Lewis-esque view, myself.  Hell is real, eternal, and utterly horrifying, and nobody is going to enjoy being there.  But I believe they will find it infinitely preferable to being in the presence of the God whom they have hated and avoided their whole lives, in whose presence their cherished illusions must die.

What I’m interested in, in this post, are similar implications of judgment for believers.  1 John presents a picture in which this life is an opportunity to learn to walk in the light.  If we avail ourselves of the opportunity to face God and have our sins exposed by Him now, then when He appears, we will not be ashamed before Him at His coming.  This will not be because we will have arrived at some sort of sinless state — “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves” — but because we will have parts of our lives for which there is no reason for shame, and even more important, because we will have acquired the habit of standing in the light and being exposed for who we are.  When Christ is finally revealed and the last illusion is dispelled, the last self-deception uncovered, we will not be ashamed, but relieved.  It is a process we will embrace, because we have been embracing it all along.

By contrast, a believer who spends this life skulking in the shadows is doomed.  The darkness is passing away, and the true light is already dawning; the time will come when it is full day and there are no shadows left to hide in.  When day fully comes, the believer who has spent all his time in the shadows will be caught unprepared, and will shrink away in shame before Christ at His coming.  The Sun of Righteousness will be risen with healing in His wings — but this man cherishes his sickness and will have to be healed against his will.

Now consider how this will matter when it comes to eternal rewards.  The doctrine of rewards is often presented as motivation, as a heavenly profit-sharing program.  Good boys get a city; bad boys get a push broom.

Roughly speaking, that would appear to be true as far as it goes, but it’s a long way from the whole story.  If you have kids, or you’ve ever worked with kids, then you’ve seen them do astonishingly stupid things with the best of intentions.  In the resurrection, we will all be morally perfect, which is to say that our intentions will be good.  But it takes more than good intentions — even perfect intentions — to govern a city.  Results matter, and to achieve good results, you need wisdom.  To whom can Jesus hand the administration of a city?  To whom can He say, “Here, run this city the way I would,” and be confident that it will get done?

To someone who has spent this life growing in the wisdom of the Kingdom.  To a person who has walked in the light, and grown mature through a lifetime of dwelling in Christ, and Christ in him. This is the ethical dimension of the doctrine of rewards.  If the prize is to rule by Christ’s side, then the task today is to make the choices that will cause you to become someone who rules as Christ would rule.

Here, by the way, is how we dodge the classic dispensational foolishness vis-a-vis the Sermon on the Mount.  Now the old folly about how the Sermon is ‘Kingdom law’ and therefore not for today ought not even be considered seriously; the Great Commission is sufficient to refute it completely.  But just to be talking about it, let’s suppose that the Sermon is Kingdom Law, and can’t be applied fully in this present sin-filled age.  Nonetheless, this age is our training ground for the next, which means that we can’t afford to defer all application of the Sermon to later.  If we would be ready to apply Kingdom Law in the Kingdom, we have to begin by doing the best we can to apply it now.

Happily, it turns out that when we do that skillfully, the result is compelling evidence in this world for the reality of the world to come, along the lines of the witness chronicled in Hebrews 11, or the witness Jesus prayed for in John 17.  We are already the citizens of a Kingdom that has not yet come.  But all authority is committed to Jesus, sitting at the right hand of the Father, and we are already His subjects.  By living as His subjects in a world at war with Him, we walk in the light and carry that light out into the dark places of the world, that the kings of the earth may be rebuked and kiss the Son before it is too late.

By words and water, bread and wine, by the sacrifices of praise, by remembering to do good and to share — by New Covenant sacraments and sacrifices — we make war on the powers of this world.  The weapons of our warfare, although not carnal, are weapons, and they are weapons for which God’s enemies have no defense.  Let’s use them, that we might be priests in this life, and joint heirs with Christ as priest-kings in the life to come.