Jamin Bradley

“I don’t want to live my life trying to get rewards in Heaven,” a fellow seminary student told the teacher when the topic came up. “I’m not trying to get something out of my relationship with God.”

This is the classic “holier-than-thou” response I’m used to hearing when Christians get into such topics. Even those who are willing to believe in reward in Heaven settle for a humble Christianized response like, “I’ll have more gifts to give to God.”

But the Bible doesn’t request that we think so lowly of Heavenly reward. Jesus tells us to store up such treasures and recognizes how great the treasures of the persecuted will be. In Revelation, Jesus intentionally reminds his persecuted followers that he’s coming to reward them for their actions.

“But isn’t our reward us getting into Heaven?” you might ask. “Aren’t we all rewarded exactly the same there?”

That’s not exactly what I see in the Bible. When Heaven and Earth merge into one unit, and we put on immortal bodies to live in the new creation, there seems to be an array of reward. While we can all celebrate that we are a part of the new creation, we can also recognize that in the Heavenly society, the last are first and the first are last. Furthermore, we can see a few very specific rewards in the Bible. Because Jesus made himself the lowest/last of all, he was exalted to the highest/first place. The twelve disciples were given thrones in Heaven to rule over the twelve tribes of Israel. Some are raised up to be kings in the new creation. And the martyrs who gave up absolutely everything in this life to follow Jesus are given a thousand-year head start on the resurrection while other Christians seemingly have to wait. It’s no wonder that Paul saw some reaping great rewards on the day of judgment, while others got in with great tribulation because they did very little with their commitment to Christ.

Honestly, I think it would do Christians some good to live as though treasure in Heaven is a real thing. Doing so would cause us to hold our belongings loosely in this age, and we would be far more open to giving things away and making sacrifices to help others. Indeed, I fear that the reason we don’t value reward in Heaven later is that we aren’t really making any real, weighty sacrifices for Christ in the here and now.

May God eventually ask us for something weighty enough that we finally understand why this kind of thinking matters—and may our faith be strengthened by that moment when it comes.