Does Every Sin Cost Me an Eternal Reward?

00:00:00.000 | Well, do each of my sins cost me an eternal reward?

00:00:09.840 | Are we caught in a race to outweigh our sins by our good deeds in order to preserve any

00:00:16.280 | level of rewards that we may have in heaven?

00:00:19.560 | It's a question today from a listener named Brandon.

00:00:22.240 | "Hello, Pastor John.

00:00:23.280 | I know the Bible talks about rewards in heaven in the form of crowns.

00:00:27.480 | I want the most joy in heaven I possibly can in the life to come.

00:00:31.800 | But in this life, I feel like I'm constantly sinning.

00:00:35.680 | And every time I sin, I feel like my eternal rewards slip from my fingers.

00:00:41.160 | I can never get ahead, always returning back to a balance of zero.

00:00:46.280 | At this rate, there won't be any rewards for me in heaven left.

00:00:50.800 | Or is my thinking here backwards?

00:00:54.120 | Pastor John, can you help me understand this?"

00:00:57.000 | Well, it's right to want the most joy possible in heaven if the aim is to be satisfied in

00:01:08.440 | God himself supremely with the gifts of his grace as secondary echoes of his excellence

00:01:18.280 | that then we enjoy for that reason.

00:01:20.840 | So amen to that.

00:01:22.760 | And I can confirm to Brandon that he not only feels he is sinning every day, he is.

00:01:29.400 | I can confirm that analysis.

00:01:32.160 | And so are all of us.

00:01:35.280 | None of us loves God perfectly the way we should.

00:01:39.400 | In our best deeds, there is something to regret.

00:01:45.000 | So so far so good in Brandon's thinking.

00:01:48.040 | And then things start to go haywire.

00:01:50.960 | He says, "Every time I sin, I feel like my eternal rewards slip from my fingers.

00:02:00.080 | I can never get ahead, always returning back to a balance of zero."

00:02:07.720 | Hmm.

00:02:08.720 | Now, in this way of talking, I think he reveals a serious mistake in his understanding of

00:02:16.840 | the Bible.

00:02:18.160 | The mistake seems to be this.

00:02:21.680 | Rewards are given, he would say, he seems to imply, rewards are given not for each good

00:02:31.080 | deed but only for the good deeds whose number surpasses the number of bad deeds.

00:02:38.080 | In other words, if you do five good deeds and four bad deeds, you get a reward for one

00:02:44.440 | good deed.

00:02:45.840 | And if you do five good deeds and five more bad deeds, five or more, he says, these are

00:02:52.720 | his words, you're back to a balance of zero.

00:02:56.600 | Now, I'm not sure where he's getting this notion that rewards are parceled out this

00:03:03.440 | way.

00:03:04.520 | But let me cite some passages from the Bible to show I don't think that's right.

00:03:10.360 | There's a very different way of thinking about rewards for good deeds than in this

00:03:18.200 | kind of ledger approach.

00:03:21.040 | Let's start with Matthew 10, 41.

00:03:23.620 | The one who receives a prophet—that's P-R-O-P-H-E-T—the one who receives a prophet

00:03:30.880 | because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and the one who receives a righteous

00:03:36.440 | person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person's reward, and

00:03:41.760 | whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple

00:03:47.840 | because he is a disciple, truly I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.

00:03:55.280 | Now, there's no hint here that if later in the day, after you give the cup of cold

00:04:03.200 | water to a disciple because you love his Christ-exalting ministry, you speak harshly, say, to your

00:04:09.480 | child.

00:04:11.400 | No hint, I say, that you will therefore lose your reward for the good deed of giving a

00:04:18.240 | drink of water to the disciple.

00:04:21.040 | It says you will by no means lose your reward.

00:04:25.000 | Now, of course, if you prove yourself to be an unbeliever by a life of sustained lovelessness,

00:04:35.480 | then even your good deeds are not good deeds because they're not coming from faith.

00:04:40.280 | But if you are a believer, the good deed, the work of faith that you do in the morning

00:04:48.160 | is not canceled out by the failure of patience in the afternoon.

00:04:52.080 | That's not the way Jesus is thinking or anybody else in the New Testament.

00:04:56.680 | Or consider 1 Corinthians 3, 13, "Each one's work will become manifest, for the

00:05:02.240 | day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort

00:05:08.960 | of work each one has done.

00:05:11.800 | If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.

00:05:18.640 | But if anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved,

00:05:25.480 | but only as through fire."

00:05:27.480 | Now, what's plain here is that fire is not an accountant.

00:05:33.960 | Fire is not counting up numbers of good deeds and bad deeds, or in this case, solid teachings

00:05:42.480 | and useless teachings.

00:05:43.480 | I think that's the context of what good deeds he's talking about.

00:05:47.480 | Fire doesn't work that way, right?

00:05:49.680 | It doesn't count.

00:05:50.960 | Fire doesn't count.

00:05:52.760 | It just consumes wood, hay, and stubble.

00:05:55.200 | It consumes useless, harmful works or teachings, which by implication means it does not consume

00:06:03.600 | useful, good, righteous works or teachings.

00:06:08.320 | They survive the fire.

00:06:10.160 | And presumably, they survive no matter how many bad works got burned up in the fire.

00:06:16.560 | If we're true believers, the good works survive.

00:06:22.040 | The biblical picture of the judgment of Christians is not like Brandon's picture of counting

00:06:29.160 | up bad deeds and counting up good deeds and only rewarding the good deeds if there are

00:06:35.680 | more of them than bad deeds.

00:06:38.040 | That's not a biblical picture of judgment.

00:06:42.040 | Or consider Ephesians 6:8, "We know that whatever good anyone does, whatever good anyone

00:06:49.160 | does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or free."

00:06:57.040 | No mention here that he really won't receive back for doing the good deed if there are

00:07:02.440 | more bad deeds.

00:07:03.440 | He won't.

00:07:04.520 | Or consider Luke 14:13, "When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the

00:07:09.600 | lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid

00:07:16.160 | at the resurrection of the just."

00:07:19.040 | So if one Thanksgiving dinner, one Thanksgiving, you invite lots of international students

00:07:25.960 | and maybe some older folks who don't have any family nearby and maybe a homeless man

00:07:30.160 | that you met on the street, you invite them to Thanksgiving dinner and you share your

00:07:36.800 | bounty joyfully with them in the name of Jesus, it says you will be repaid at the resurrection

00:07:44.360 | of the just.

00:07:46.800 | And that is true, even if the next Thanksgiving you are in a bad place spiritually and selfishly

00:07:55.700 | let the opportunity go by.

00:07:59.720 | Thanksgiving number two gets burned up.

00:08:03.580 | Thanksgiving number one is rewarded at the resurrection.

00:08:08.480 | Here's the principle behind this way of thinking.

00:08:11.960 | Good works in the life of a Christian are rewarded because they are beautiful and their

00:08:19.960 | beauty is owing to the beauty of God's regenerating and sanctifying grace in the life of the Christian.

00:08:29.520 | We are able to do what is truly good only because God caused us to be born again, made

00:08:37.320 | us spiritually alive, and because his Spirit goes on working in us what is pleasing in

00:08:44.000 | his sight, Hebrews 13:21.

00:08:46.820 | The rewards are God's way of confirming that we are truly born again, truly in Christ,

00:08:56.520 | truly the children of God.

00:08:59.240 | It's so crucial never to forget Ephesians 2, 8-10, "By grace you have been saved through

00:09:07.040 | faith."

00:09:08.040 | It is not your own doing.

00:09:10.920 | It is the gift of God, gift of God, gift of God, not of works, so that nobody will boast

00:09:18.720 | when the rewards are passed out.

00:09:22.220 | For we are his workmanship, not ours.

00:09:25.080 | We're not writing our own poem.

00:09:27.360 | Created in Christ, created by God.

00:09:30.440 | We don't create ourselves for good works and even the good works God prepared beforehand

00:09:35.880 | that we should walk in.

00:09:36.880 | I mean, the point of that text is to get God, God, God as the source and goal of all of

00:09:43.180 | our good deeds.

00:09:45.080 | So when we are rewarded for those good works, it is the workmanship of God that is being

00:09:52.880 | celebrated, and that workmanship does not cease to be properly rewarded because there

00:10:01.240 | are other remaining sins in our lives.

00:10:06.920 | Amazingly freeing word, Pastor John.

00:10:09.360 | Thank you.

00:10:10.360 | And Brandon, thank you for the clear question.

00:10:13.100 | And thanks to everyone who listens.

00:10:15.240 | If you want new episodes of this podcast delivered to you, subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your

00:10:19.600 | favorite podcast app, in Spotify, or by subscribing to DG's YouTube channel.

00:10:25.480 | And to find other episodes in our archive or submit a question to us, do that online

00:10:28.960 | at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:10:34.720 | Well on Monday we're going to return with a question about quarantine habits.

00:10:40.720 | We've all had a lot of time at home these days, and this question coming up is searching.

00:10:46.400 | It's a searching question from a young woman who wants to know what her quarantine entertainment

00:10:52.480 | habits are revealing about the state of her own soul.

00:10:58.880 | Why when she's most afraid of what's going on in the world, why does she most often turn