Why Will Some of Us Get Fewer Rewards in Heaven?
00:00:00.000 | Well, some of us will get lesser rewards in heaven, and others will get more rewards
00:00:09.640 | in heaven.
00:00:10.640 | So why this discrepancy?
00:00:12.880 | And won't this disparity cause eternal remorse in some, and some level of strain and tension
00:00:18.520 | among all of us?
00:00:20.160 | Today's question comes from a listener named Alex, who lives in Germany.
00:00:22.840 | "Hello, Pastor John.
00:00:24.080 | You've talked about rewards in heaven in one of your answers to a listener's question.
00:00:28.860 | Question number 417, is God more happy with other Christians than me?
00:00:33.960 | There you mention that God rewards faithfulness, not fruitfulness.
00:00:37.440 | Does this mean that we may not be rewarded to a degree we could have been, depending
00:00:41.240 | on our faith on earth?
00:00:42.920 | This question has been plaguing me since I listened to that episode.
00:00:46.880 | Would that not mean that God shows bias towards those with greater faith?
00:00:51.080 | I am grieved because I am unlikely to live up to the reward God may have planned for
00:00:55.720 | me and forever will be called a lesser to those with greater faith.
00:01:00.280 | Those thoughts feel poisonous to me.
00:01:02.840 | Is it only my envy and pride speaking, or is this something to be concerned about?"
00:01:07.880 | Pastor John, what would you say to Alex?
00:01:10.080 | About 10 years ago, I recorded a section from Jonathan Edwards' sermon on Romans 2.10,
00:01:19.440 | which I think is one of the most beautiful, mind-expanding, heaven-displaying, Scripture-opening,
00:01:29.200 | hope-awakening passages that I've ever read anywhere outside the Bible.
00:01:36.680 | Wow.
00:01:37.680 | So, I want to do that again here and give it fresh exposure.
00:01:44.040 | This comes from Volume 2 of the works of Edwards published by Banner of Truth.
00:01:49.360 | I wasn't able to find it in the Yale works, so if it's there, maybe Tony can point you
00:01:55.320 | to it, but I looked for it today and I couldn't find it.
00:01:59.800 | The reason I think this may be a helpful response to Alex is because he says—I think this
00:02:07.720 | is the key sentence—"I feel grieved that I am unlikely to live up to the reward God
00:02:16.640 | may have planned for me and forever be called a lesser compared to those with greater faith.
00:02:27.080 | Those thoughts feel poisonous to me."
00:02:30.840 | Okay, that's what I want to change.
00:02:34.040 | I want a remedy, because I think there really are distinctions in reward in heaven, and
00:02:38.640 | they're not poisonous, and we're not going to feel envious or resentful.
00:02:42.960 | What this quotation from Edwards does is describe heaven with real differences between the saints,
00:02:51.680 | among the saints, because of real differences in holiness here, and yet a community of love
00:03:00.520 | in which those differences not only do not produce envy and regret, but actually function
00:03:09.080 | to produce the greatest happiness for the community as a whole.
00:03:14.560 | Edwards has just made a lengthy argument before this text I'm going to read.
00:03:20.280 | He's just made a lengthy argument that the New Testament teaches, and I think he's right
00:03:24.080 | here, that there will be different rewards for different Christians, and if that sounds
00:03:30.040 | questionable, I encourage you to read the whole sermon.
00:03:34.000 | It's free online.
00:03:35.000 | I just typed into Google a few minutes ago, "Jonathan Edwards' Sermon on Romans 2.10."
00:03:41.480 | That's what I typed into the Google search line, and bang, it was the first thing that
00:03:45.720 | came up, free online, right there in front of me.
00:03:48.760 | Now, here's the passage.
00:03:49.760 | I'll read it to you.
00:03:51.240 | So get ready.
00:03:52.320 | This sounds really different than anything you've ever heard, I predict.
00:03:57.680 | Christ tells us that he who gives a cup of cold water to a disciple in the name of a
00:04:04.160 | disciple shall in no wise lose his reward.
00:04:08.800 | But this could not be true if a person should have no greater reward for doing many good
00:04:15.720 | works than if he did but few.
00:04:18.600 | It will be no dampening to the happiness of those who have lower degrees of happiness
00:04:24.880 | and glory that there are others advanced in glory above them.
00:04:30.320 | For all shall be perfectly happy, everyone shall be perfectly satisfied, every vessel
00:04:36.920 | that is cast into the ocean of happiness is full, though there are some vessels far larger
00:04:44.720 | than others.
00:04:46.680 | And there shall be no such thing as envy in heaven, but perfect love shall reign through
00:04:52.920 | the whole society.
00:04:55.320 | Those who are not so high in glory as others will not envy those that are higher, but they
00:05:02.760 | will have so great and strong and pure a love to them that they will rejoice in their superior
00:05:10.880 | happiness.
00:05:12.160 | Their love to them will be such that they will rejoice that they are happier than themselves,
00:05:20.180 | so that instead of having a dampening effect on their own happiness, it will add to it.
00:05:27.600 | They will see it to be fitting that the ones who have been most eminent in works of righteousness
00:05:36.960 | should be most highly exalted in glory, and they will rejoice in having that done that
00:05:43.560 | is fittest to be done.
00:05:46.080 | There will be a perfect harmony in that society.
00:05:50.660 | Those that are most happy will also be most holy, and all will be perfectly holy and perfectly
00:06:00.400 | happy.
00:06:02.540 | But yet there will be different degrees of both holiness and happiness according to the
00:06:10.220 | measure of each one's capacity, and therefore those that are lowest in glory will have the
00:06:17.540 | greatest love to those that are highest in happiness because they will see most of the
00:06:23.380 | image of God in them, and having the greatest love to them, they will rejoice to see them
00:06:30.060 | the most happy and the highest in glory.
00:06:33.100 | And so, on the other hand, those that are highest in glory, as they will be most lovely,
00:06:40.860 | so they will be fullest of love.
00:06:43.680 | As they will excel in happiness, they will proportionally excel in divine benevolence
00:06:50.180 | and love to others and will have more love to God and to the saints than those that are
00:06:56.020 | lower in holiness and happiness.
00:06:59.440 | And besides, those that will excel in glory will also excel in humility.
00:07:07.500 | Here in this world, those that are above others are the objects of envy because others conceive
00:07:15.700 | of them as being lifted up with it.
00:07:18.620 | But in heaven, it will not be so.
00:07:21.080 | But those saints in heaven who excel in happiness will also excel in holiness and consequently
00:07:27.420 | in humility.
00:07:29.460 | The saints in heaven are more humble than the saints on earth.
00:07:34.220 | And still, the higher we go among them, the greater humility there is.
00:07:39.640 | The highest orders of saints who know the most of God see most the distinction between
00:07:46.120 | God and themselves and consequently are comparatively least in their own eyes and are so most humble.
00:07:55.180 | The exaltation of some in heaven above the rest will be so far from diminishing the perfect
00:08:03.700 | happiness and joy of the rest who are inferior that they will be the happier for it.
00:08:12.180 | Such will be the union of their society that they will be partakers of each other's happiness.
00:08:20.500 | Heaven will be fulfilled in its perfection, that which is declared in 1 Corinthians 12:22,
00:08:28.140 | if one of the members be honored, all the members rejoice with it.
00:08:35.820 | So, my encouragement to Alex is that you read the whole sermon, meditate on God's infinitely
00:08:45.700 | wise and loving ability to make you perfectly happy and perfectly holy in an age to come,
00:08:56.300 | even though some saints will be more and some less rewarded than you.
00:09:03.100 | It will be a perfectly happy world.
00:09:08.620 | What a gem of an excerpt.
00:09:09.820 | Thank you, Pastor John, for finding that and reading it for us.
00:09:13.460 | And you're right, this sermon is in the Banner of Truth two-volume edition of the works of
00:09:18.420 | Jonathan Edwards.
00:09:19.420 | It's in volume two, pages 888 to 905.
00:09:23.500 | But you're also right, it's not in the Yale editions of the printed works and it's not
00:09:28.180 | even in the free Yale archive online.
00:09:31.220 | Seems a little bit odd to me, but it is available online.
00:09:33.820 | Just Google, just Google search what Pastor John used, Jonathan Edwards' sermon on Romans
00:09:38.420 | 210, and you should find it fairly easily.
00:09:42.460 | Thanks for making the Ask Pastor John podcast part of your day.
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00:10:06.260 | It seems the Apostle Paul traveled at least 15,500 miles in his ministry and around 8,700
00:10:15.980 | of those miles were on foot.
00:10:19.260 | Incredible range for the first century.
00:10:21.580 | And we can Google map all those travels, but what can we learn from his travels for our
00:10:25.820 | missionary work today?
00:10:27.300 | It's a question next up on Wednesday.
00:10:29.860 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:10:30.860 | We'll see you then.
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