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2 Co 5:1-10
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The Judgment (and Rewards) Seat of Christ 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2 Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, 3 because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. 6 Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7 We live by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. I have a good friend who is an officer for the Chicago Police Department. He has seen his share of bad things and bad people. He told me that the state of Illinois recently passed a law that gives police officers the right to pull over any vehicle and write a ticket to anyone who is not wearing a seatbelt. Currently, Wisconsin has what is known as a secondary enforcement seat belt law. It allows law enforcement to ticket a driver for not belting up only after the person has already been stopped for some other violation. But in Chicago my friend can stop anyone at any time if simply for not wearing a seatbelt. He likes the new law because it gives him an excuse to pull over known troublemakers simply because they are not wearing a seatbelt. Guess what has happened though since this new law was passed? The bad guys are wearing their seatbelt more often so they don’t get caught doing something worse!
This raises an interesting question: Why should we be good? What motivates anyone to be good and to do good? Why do people obey the laws of the land? Why do children obey their parents? Why do Christians seek to obey God? There are actually three basic reasons people are motivated to be good and to do good. One reason that we obey is to avoid negative consequences. Bad guys in Chicago who decide to start wearing their seatbelts can avoid the negative consequences that would come if the police officer found their stash of marijuana or crack cocaine. Children who obey their parents avoid the negative consequences of various forms of discipline. And Christians who obey God avoid the negative consequences of judgment and discipline from God. Is it wrong to obey God just to avoid punishment? No it is not wrong because the Bible uses negative consequences as a motivation for obedience. The passage we are studying this morning from 2 Corinthians teaches us that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad”. Every believer will have to give a final accounting to Jesus for every action in their entire lives. We will all individually stand before Christ as he recounts all of the good things and all of the bad things throughout our entire Christian life. The judgment seat of Christ is a motivation for obedience. We don’t want to be ashamed in the presence of Jesus later so we seek to obey him now. This is a Biblically valid source of motivation for Christians. The second motivation for obedience is love. Most of us would agree that this seems to be a higher source of motivation for obedience. As a parent, would you rather have your child obey you because of their love for you or so that they don’t get a spanking? Love seems to be a higher source of motivation that avoidance of punishment, but both are valid reasons to obey. But there is also a third motivation for obedience—rewards and positive recognition. Children often choose to obey their parents because they know that their parents will be proud of them. Tell me why most of you show up at your job every day. You work because you are rewarded with a paycheck. If you stopped receiving the reward of a paycheck, do you love you job enough that you would keep working anyway? Clearly, it is not just children who are motivated to do good by receiving rewards. Everyone is motivated to do good by receiving rewards and this is precisely what happens at the judgment seat of Christ—we are judged upon good deeds and sinful deeds. If we have done more good works then we will receive a greater reward. If we have done fewer good works then we will receive less reward from Jesus. How many of you have ever heard the judgment seat of Christ portrayed in this way—as a place of final reward? The teaching on heavenly rewards is rarely mentioned in churches, but as I have been saying, it is a powerful source of motivation for obedience to God.
What did Jesus mean when he said, “store up for yourselves treasures in heaven”? Listen to what Randy Alcorn, author of the Treasure Principle thinks about storing heavenly treasures. “Where we choose to store our treasures depends largely on where we think our home is. Suppose your home is in France and you’re visiting America for three months, living in a hotel. You’re told that you can’t bring anything back to France on your flight home. But you can earn money and mail deposits to your bank in France. Would you fill your hotel room with expensive furniture and wall hangings? Of Course not. You’d send your money where your home is. You would spend only what you needed on the temporary residence, sending your treasures ahead so they’d be waiting for you when you got home.” (p. 45) This illustrates two of Alcorn’s treasure principles: heaven not earth, is my home”. And if heaven is my home, then the treasure principle that Jesus is commanding is this: “You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead.” By the way, I am in debt to Randy Alcorn for helping me to see this important Biblical concept of heavenly rewards..
Is this not what Jesus meant when he commanded us to store up treasures in heaven? As Alcorn says in his book, it’s not just a warning against storing up earthly treasure, but also a command to store up heavenly treasure. In case you hadn’t realized, I plagiarized Jesus when I titled this series—Hoarding Heavenly Treasures. As Christians, everything we do either stores up treasure in heaven or it doesn’t.
Last week someone mentioned to me that the word “hoarding” might bring up the negative connotation of hoarding food and water in times of crisis because there is an insufficient supply. This is not at all the sense of hoarding I am using. I looked up a definition of hoard in the American Heritage Dictionary and this is what I found. Hoard: a hidden fund or supply stored up for future use. Isn’t that a perfect definition of a heavenly reward? It is hidden—we can’t see our heavenly rewards, but that doesn’t mean they don’ exist. Wealthy people hoard their money in off-shore bank accounts and tax shelters. As far as the tax man goes, these hoards of money don’t exist—they are hidden to the IRS. But just because they are hidden doesn’t mean they do not exist.
As you know we have been searching for hoards of WMD’s in Iraq—Weapons of Mass Destruction. I certainly cannot say whether or not this hoard will ever be found, but I do know that another hoard will be found one day---RME’s—Rewards of Mass Enjoyment. These RME’s are hidden. I don’t care how man rewards inspectors you deployed you will never be able to locate them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. At the bema seat of Christ all of our years of hoarding rewards by doing good works will be revealed by Jesus Christ. The rewards of mass enjoyment will be revealed.
The judgment seat of Christ is not a place of wrath, but a rewards seat. Maybe you have heard it called the bema seat. A bema seat is where the magistrate or judge would sit and render a verdict. It is not the usual word for judgment which is an outpouring of God’s wrath or a meting out of Godly discipline. If I were to appear before an ancient Roman bema seat I would present my case before the judge and defend my actions, but when Jesus sits on the bema seat, we will not be able to defend ourselves or say anything at all. We won’t be telling him anything—he will be telling us what we have done. Based on a lifetime of good deeds, we will receive our reward.
Is this clear to all? We don’t receive punishment at the bema seat of Christ, but we do receive eternal rewards. But not everyone will receive a reward or the same reward. Turn back to 1 Cor 4. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames. This is a vivid picture of a refining fire. All of our actions will be sent through the purifying flames of the justice of God. Lord willing, some or many things will survive the awesome heat. Good deeds and acts of obedience which remain, like gold, silver and priceless jewels. Sinful acts—sins of commission and omission, will burn up in the fiery heat of God’s justice. Anything that stands up to the heat and remains will be equivalent to an eternal reward.
Several more passages clearly support the presence of and motivation of eternal rewards. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Luke 6:35
Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does. Ephesians 6:7-8
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for his wrong, and there is no favoritism. Colossians 3:23-25
The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great. Revelation 11:18
“Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. Revelation 22:12
Doesn’t this motivate you to live your life in such a way as to please God? Paul thought so. He said in v. 9, So we make it our goal to please him. Why was it Paul’s goal to please the Lord? As he said in v.10, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.. God wants us to be motivated to perform acts of obedience so that we will receive eternal rewards from Jesus Christ. If you recall from last week’s study in Romans chapter one that every sin of commission or sin of omission is an exchange of the glory and grace of God for a piece of garbage. Each piece of garbage will be burned up at the bema seat of Christ. But when we choose to do good and to obey God we not only get the glory and grace of God in this life and for all eternity, but we also hoard a treasure in heaven.
I wonder how many of you are hearing this concept of eternal rewards for the first time in your life. If you are like me, this idea of heavenly rewards may be troublesome. If heaven is a place of eternal joy, how can some people have a greater reward than others? If others receive a greater reward than me, will I be jealous of what they have? Will I be less joyful or less content than other Christians? Professor Wayne Grudem lends us much insight on the topic of heavenly rewards from his Systematic Theology. He wrote, “Many passages likewise teach or imply degrees of reward for believers at the final judgment. But we must guard against misunderstanding here: Even though there will be degrees of reward in heaven, the joy of each person will be full and complete for eternity. If we ask how this can be when there are different degrees of reward, it simply shows that our perception of happiness is based on the assumption that happiness depends on what we possess or the status or power that we have. In actuality, however, our true happiness consists in delighting in God and rejoicing in the status and recognition that he has given us. The foolishness of thinking that only those who have been highly rewarded and given great status will be fully happy in heaven is seen when we realize that no matter how great a reward we are given, there will always be those with greater rewards, or who have higher status and authority, including the apostles, the heavenly creatures, and Jesus Christ and God himself. Therefore if highest status were essential for people to be fully happy, no one but God would be fully happy in heaven, which is certainly an incorrect idea. Moreover, those with greater reward and honor in heaven, those nearest the throne of God, delight not in their status but only in the privilege of falling down before God's throne to worship him.” (pp. 1144-5) Another thing that might bother you is the thought that we can earn anything in heaven. Salvation is a free gift and we cannot earn it with good works, so how can we earn heavenly rewards? First, let me make an absolute distinction between the gift of salvation and the gift of heavenly rewards. Please don’t misunderstand me—salvation cannot be earned! I have not turned into an apostate here. No amount of good works could ever earn anyone eternal life in heaven. Salvation is by grace through faith alone. Our only responsibility is to surrender ourselves to God in order to receive God’s free gift of salvation.
Salvation cannot be earned, but eternal rewards can be stored in heaven. I did not say that rewards can be earned as if we are all in a competition to earn brownie points in heaven, or that God owes us something in heaven when we do something good on earth. We store up treasures in heaven because God is a giver of good gifts. Let me ask you a question. Do you receive good gifts right now from God other than salvation? Yes, salvation is the greatest of all gifts from God, but it is not the only gift, is it? So if God gives his children good gifts here on earth, why would he not give good gifts in heaven? The apostle Paul was motivated to serve the Lord because he knew greater rewards would come.
We use rewards in our parenting, don’t we? A good parent has a system of rewards and privileges for children who are learning to obey. We mistakenly think that once children grow up that rewards are no longer necessary, but this is not true. As I said before, how many people would work 40+ hours per week without receiving the reward of a paycheck? Rewards and incentives are built into all areas of life. I am not saying that storing up heavenly treasures should be the only motivation for doing good. The Bible says that we love because he first loved us. Grace and love flow into our lives and makes us want to obey God and to do good. Love for Jesus Christ is a primary motivation for obedience, but it is not the only source of motivation for obedience. If the apostle Paul was motivated by heavenly rewards then why shouldn’t we? IF Jesus commanded us to store up treasures in heaven then why should we doubt whether or not this is true? Let me close by reminding you what Paul said in 1 Co 4, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames. Is that how you want to enter heaven—suffering loss and being saved is one escaping through the flames? Do you want to squeak your way into heaven? Do you expect to just barely make it? Or, wouldn’t you rather enter and hear Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come share your master’s happiness.” Obedience to God brings us joy and happiness in this life, sometimes rewards in this life, but a guarantee of rewards in the next life. Rich Maurer October 10, 2004 |