Rewards in the Gospels

I recently read The Vision of God by K. E. Kirk who served as a professor and bishop of Oxford. This book, first published in 1931, is filled with deep insights about the Christian life.

Kirk argues that the goal of human life is the vision of God— “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God” (Matt 5:8). In this life we see God in part; in the next life we will see God in fullness. As John says, his servants “will see his face” (Rev 22:4). By “vision of God” Kirk is not only imagining an encounter between one individual and God. According to Augustine, the goal of human life is the vision of God in the city of God. Hence, the vision is deeply personal and corporate.

But how can we achieve the purity of heart required to see God?

The entire book expounds on the tension between the rigorous or world-denying approach versus the humanistic or world-embracing approach. Kirk writes, “Within the womb of the Christian Church these two children—rigorism and humanism—have striven for the mastery from the moment of their conception” (6).

Both approaches have a legitimate claim on believers. Jesus fasted in the wilderness for forty days and he feasted with his disciples. Additionally, God is both immanent, meaning within the world and transcendent, meaning above and beyond the world so believers should have an other-worldliness ethic and a this-worldliness ethic.

“Renunciation, detachment, self-denial must have their permanent place in every Christian life, however much at the same time we set ourselves to live in the joyous fellowship of human society, and as the beneficiaries of God in things both great and small. Other-worldliness . . . must stand, alongside humanism, as a permanent witness to an aspect of the doctrine of God which separates Christianity for all time from naturalism and pantheism” (200).

Adhering to naturalism and pantheism would involve committing ourselves entirely to this world because either nature is all that exists or God is identified fully with the physical universe. Either way God’s transcendent nature is lost.

The book contains many more things worth highlighting. I will focus on one concept below.

Rewards in the Gospels 

“At first sight it would undoubtedly appear that the ethics of the synoptic gospels are dominated throughout by the idea of recompense” (70). Among the verses listed to support this point, Kirk includes the following:

• But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. (Lk 6:35 NIV)
• But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Lk 14:13-14)
• When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Lk 18:14)
• But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. (Matt 6:3-4)
• But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. (Matt 6:17-18)

Four Qualifications

This sounds like Jesus’ teaching may inspire a type of self-centeredness—encouraging believers to seek rewards. But Kirk offers the following qualifications:

1. Jesus primarily taught about God and teaching about God encourages self-forgetfulness. Jesus came preaching the good news of God and teaching parables of the kingdom of God. Kirk writes, “Jesus, though he spoke little about ‘seeing God,’ brought God more vividly before the spiritual eyes of His contemporaries than any other has ever done. He gave a vision of God where others could only speak of it” (46). Consistent with this emphasis on God and self-forgetfulness are “demands for service in the gospel to which no promise or hint of reward is attached” (71). For example,

• • “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. (Lk 14:26-27)
  • Follow me. (Lk 9:59)
  • Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God. (Lk 9:60)

2. “Jesus constantly promised reward only to those who were prepared to follow and obey Him from some other motive. Even in the great summons this is the case. ‘For My sake and the gospel’s’ is to be the motive of the Christian’s renunciations; if he renounces the joys and associations of this world merely for the sake of blessedness in the next, his blessedness will be forfeit.” (74)

• • For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. (Mk 8:35)
  • Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. (Matt 10:39)
  • And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. (Matt 19:29)
  • And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. (Matt 18:5)
  • Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward. (Mk 9:41)
  • “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.” (Matt 10:40-42)

3. “It is only those who did good in complete unconsciousness, not merely that it would be rewarded, but even that they were doing good at all, who were set on the right hand, and entered into the joy of the Lord (Mt 25:31-46)” (74). Notice how the righteous answer the Son of Man after they are invited into the kingdom of God:

Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? (Matt 25:37-39)

4. There is a “bewildering rejection of all human conceptions of merit in the divine assessment of reward. There is, in our Lord’s teaching, no exact apportionment of higher reward for greater effort—the prodigal and the labourers of the eleventh hour are blessed beyond all their deserts, as compared with the elder son and those who had borne the burden and heat of the day. S. Luke records a saying of Jesus which makes all heartburning about these two parables superfluous. ‘We are all unprofitable servants’—even the best of us has done nothing which deserves reward. Reward, in fact, is ‘not reward, but grace.”’ (74-5)

This is a powerful point. Kirk uses two examples to support the concept of a “bewildering rejection of all human conceptions of merit”—(1) The lavish party thrown for the prodigal son and (2) the workers who labored in the vineyard for one hour and received the same pay as those who worked the entire day (Matt 20:1-16). But Kirk saves the dynamite for the end. Jesus makes a statement which seems to dismiss the entire idea of rewards: “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty’” (Lk 17:10). And then he adds, “Reward, in fact, is ‘not reward, but grace.'”

So Jesus taught about rewards in the traditional way, but he also:

1. Gave demands with no promise of reward
2. Promised rewards for those who obeyed from a non-reward motivation
3. Promised rewards for those who were not even aware they were serving
4. Overturned typical human conceptions of merit

Kirk concludes, “These sidelights—if we may so call them—upon our Lord’s completely novel evaluation of the traditional ‘reward’ material make it clear that He employed the idea in a manner and for a purpose wholly His own. As interpreted by Him, it could fit into no existing ethical scheme” (75).

It’s easy to hear “reward” in the Gospels and run with the common meaning, but faithful theology involves incorporating all the data. I especially love the idea that, in the end, our rewards are not really even rewards, they are grace. As Paul says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph 2:8-9).