Bigger-than-expected paychecks are nice.
Real nice.
Imagine getting a check from the Boss that has no taxes or other deductions. A paycheck in the form of an all-inclusive, never-have-to-check-out worship conference guaranteed to thrill you and leave you talking forever about how you got the deal of eternity.
I want this check. I pray that you do, too.
This check will not come to us because of our accumulated merit, though. Instead, it will come to us by nature of our hearts, demonstrated by what we do in order to please the big Boss we know as Jehovah.
He uses the term “reward” when it comes to the good things that will be ours if we focus on doing good and godly things with our lives.
You see, salvation and blessings do not come to us as paychecks as if they were earned. But they DO come to us as promised blessings because we have trusted His promises and shared those promises of love, salvation and blessing with others.
Yes, we are saved by grace and not by works, Ephesians 2:8 says.
Yet, just two verses later, the Apostle Paul writes that our purpose for being saved is to work so that others might receive grace.
This devotion about rewards, works and grace was prompted by two passages read this morning. The first was in the One-Year Bible for today:
“God ‘will repay everyone according to what they have done.’ To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, He will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.” (Romans 2:6-8)
The second was in Proverbs 24:11-12, a passage I looked up as a cross-reference to the “repay” part of the above passage:
“Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’ does not He who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not He who guards your life know it? Will He not repay each person according to what he has done?”
Hmmmmm…….
In the second passage, it appears that God is warning believers against complacency when others around them are being led toward destruction. It’s clear that God was warning Old Testament believers against apathy when fellow Jews were being dragged away spiritually to lives apart from God.
Failure to attempt a physical or spiritual rescue because of claimed ignorance was a bogus excuse in God’s sight, if I read the above passage correctly.
In the second passage, Paul borrows the principle of Proverbs 24:11-12 and applies it to God’s examination of the hearts and individual behaviors of believers.
I pray that you will persist in doing good by seeking glory and honor for God and immortality for yourself. For if you do, God will make sure that you get that “gracecheck.”
And please look for every opportunity to share the soul-rescuing Gospel with the self-seeking people in your life who are being led away to death. For you don’t want to stand before God on Judgment Day and say, “But we knew nothing about this.”
For that might lead to a paycheck that you don’t want to get.
As always, I love you
Martin
