The Law of Rewards by Randy Alcorn

Author:Randy Alcorn [Alcorn, Randy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Personal Finance / General, RELIGION / Christianity / Stewardship
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2013-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

WHAT GOOD ARE WORKS?

For those who have served Christ faithfully, the judgment seat will be a time of commendation and celebration. He will reward us for acts of love that no one else even noticed.

The five-hundred-year-old play Everyman is a picture of all people. As Everyman faces Death, he looks among his friends for a companion. Only one friend would accompany him on the journey through death to final judgment. His name? “Good Deeds.”

Some balk at such a picture. Yet it’s explicitly biblical: “Then I heard a voice from heaven say, ‘Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them’” (Revelation 14:13).

In Revelation 19:7-8, we’re told “‘The wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.’ (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.)”

Note that the parenthetical statement in the preceding verse is not mine but God’s. I once cited this verse in another book and the editor promptly “corrected” it, assuming it was my own interpretation. Why? Because it didn’t sound right. But it is—it’s Scripture!

We might expect to be told that Christ makes the bride ready, rather than she herself. We might expect that the fine linen would stand for “the righteousness of Christ,” or perhaps “the righteous faith of the saints.” But what we are told is that it stands for “the righteous acts of the saints.”

We’ve been deceived into thinking that works is a dirty word. God condemns works done to earn salvation and works done to impress others. But our Lord enthusiastically commends works done for the right reasons. Immediately after saying our salvation is “not by works,” Paul adds: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). The fact that we frequently quote the previous verses and not verse 10 demonstrates our imbalance.

God has a lifetime of good works for each of us to do, including many works with our money and possessions. He will reward us according to whether or not we do them.

Scripture ties God’s reward-giving to his character: “God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them” (Hebrews 6:10). The verses that follow in Hebrews 6 tell us that if we are to inherit God’s promised blessings, we must not become lazy but be diligent in our God-given works.

James repeatedly states that good works are essential to the Christian life (James 2:17-18, 22, 24, 26). “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom” (James 3:13).

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