Houses and Crowns

Today I received a request from a friend to explain a bit of the Scriptual teaching on rewards. Will we have mansions of glory and jewels in crowns? What follows below is the bit of wisdom I attempted to pass on to this friend.

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As for your question about rooms in the house or jewels... Take a look at John 14:1-2 - Jesus here talks about preparing a room for each believer. This is for each person who trusts in Christ, it's not a graded reward as you read about in other places.

Regarding rewards in general the best author on this topic is not me. Randy Alcorn has written extensively on this topic. Below are some links to things he's written that will help you gain a Biblical perspective on rewards for the believer.

This is not an easy topic. In fact I've never taught on it for that reason. It will take some thought to get your arms around it. Let me give you my couple of sentence answer and you can read the details in Alcorn. Here goes ... for some reason (I believe that it is to motivate us to do good works out of gratitude for grace) God has chosen to crown His work of grace in us with rewards when we choose to take the grace He supplies and serve sacrificially in His Kingdom. It's not as though we'll get to heaven and look at our rewards and say, "WOW! Didn't I do good, look at my haul." Instead our response will be gratitude and wonder that God would crown our pitiful response to His grace.

When you asked if "the closeness of our walk" is what will gain rewards I think you were on the right track but not quite there yet. What God is interested in - as I read the Scriptures - is that Eph 2:10 results because of our in-depth appreciation of Eph 2:8, 9. What I mean is this ... love is a feeling whose existence is proven by action. Our love for God is proved by our responding in gratitude to His grace by doing good works. It is our worship of God (perhaps that's what you meant by "a close walk") both in our hearts and with our lives that He's looking for.

What you want to avoid is thinking about it like this ... I'm not going to get any rewards because I didn't do anything "notable" for God. For example I think it would be very common that a mom could think like this, "Oh the preacher is going to get a greater reward than me because all I did was run kids around, do laundry, keep a house, and cook meals all while supporting my husband." But what I just wrote is absolutely wrong. I think it is likely that my wife (and likely you!) will receive a greater reward than me as you do those good works God prepared beforehand (i.e. Eph 2:10) that come up in your daily life as you pursue your calling as wife and mother. Again what God is looking for is that you seek daily to reflect upon His grace and show forth your gratitude for it by the way you live.

http://www.epm.org/articles/rewards2.html - basics
http://www.epm.org/articles/qaeternalrewards.htm - questions answered