Of Wages and Rewards - 2

Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. (John 4:36)

Last time I looked at the issue of how easy it is to make assumptions about how or when God does things and planning our lives based on our assumptions instead of on learning to check with God continually. This is one of the most pervasive problems that I see in Christianity today and I am certainly affected by it as well. Just because I can start to see this is no guarantee that I am free of its deceptive influence in my own thinking. I pray to be delivered from this kind of assumption-based living and to know the Shepherd's voice and depend on it much more consistently in my life.

But there is much, much more in this verse that I also want to explore. I touched on the issue of wages and rewards last time and the difference that needs to be seen between the two. It is not only confusing but even dangerous to mix up these two things when trying to know how to properly relate to God. Wages are earned; a gift is not earned. Eternal life is a gift and we must strip ourselves of every notion that we can do anything whatsoever in the slightest to earn this gift. When we fall into that trap we actually insult the grace of God offered to us.

But this creates yet another trap that may be even easier to fall into as well. When people begin to grasp the truth about God's incredible gift to us of eternal life, there is a subtle temptation that is exploited by many religious teachers and leaders to believe that there is nothing we are have to do after accepting this gift. This has led many to embrace the dangerous doctrine of “once saved, always saved.” This is actually a distortion of the truth that all the world has indeed been saved by the death of Jesus and is waiting to become aware of it and embrace it. It is also a problem of not understanding the real meaning of the terms we are using, but that is a different subject dealt with elsewhere.

In this verse can be seen some incredibly important clues about the true nature of wages as viewed from heaven's perspective. Sin has wages and God gives wages, but as would be expected, the wages that sin deals are a counterfeit of the kind of wages God has for those who work with Him. The promises of rewards that sin entices people with are always inherently deceptive while initially very alluring and attractive. But the results always end up in pain and death even though that was not disclosed initially.

When people contract to work for wages, they generally expect to be paid in something that is useful and beneficial for their life. We don't go sign up to work for a job that promises us that we will be piled up with only debts or will only receive abuse and torture as the reward for our work; no one is crazy enough to want to work for those kinds of wages. That is why sin is so incredibly deceptive, because it could never succeed and expand and attract so many if the real results were properly represented up front. Thus it has always been that sin is presented as something that will make us feel better, that will bring us pleasure and satisfaction, that will elevate us to a higher level in some way, maybe in power or excitement or satisfaction or whatever area where we feel lacking.

Sin's wages are usually presented in a very glittering, alluring light that can be overwhelmingly appealing. It has to appear attractive or it could not have the success that it does. But sin is inherently based on lies and deceptions which means that it is very difficult to discern for ourselves the real truth, the ugliness, pain and death that hides behind the alluring exterior. We have to depend on a reliable Source of truth and choose to believe that objective Source without leaning on our own understanding. That is called faith and is absolutely crucial to escaping the lust that will draw us into the deadly trap of sin.

But heaven has a system of wages too, which may come as a surprise to some. But because we are so used to the world's system of wages and works and the motives we have for earning wages, it is very easy to miss the real truth about heaven's kind of wages and what constitutes those wages. We almost always tend to project at least some of our distorted assumptions about work and wages into what we read from God's Word and then come to mistaken conclusions about heaven's rewards. We must be extremely careful and try to lay aside our assumptions and preconceptions so we can listen to God's Spirit to discern what should be our main incentive for wanting God's kind of wages.

If we project our desires for wages into heaven's system of payment, too often we end up mingling selfishness and pride into our assumptions about what we want to get paid for wages. Jesus touched on this in some His parables involving wages that tend to expose and disturb us if we get the real point of the parable. I think particularly about the parable where various people who worked very different lengths of time all received the same amount of pay. This understandably incensed some who had worked much harder and longer and caused them to protest against the actions of the boss. And while this parable was not dealing directly with the kind of wages heaven uses, it does expose our distorted perspective and motives about why we want wages to start with.

All of this is to try to expose the fact that we need to have a much more open mind when trying to understand the true nature of what may constitute heaven's kind of wages. If it is likely quite different than earthly wages and definitely very different than sin's wages, and if heaven's wages are not paid in the currency of eternal life which is only a gift and is not wages, then just what might be left that would be so desirable for a true follower of God to earnestly want to earn – what would be of supreme value to him or her?

I believe that it can be found right here in this passage and especially in this verse. That is one of the reasons why this passage is so exciting for me; it actually is one of the places in the Bible where we can see more clearly the kind of wage arrangement that heaven loves to deal with, the kind of wages that the angels are constantly working to earn and the wages that every true follower of Jesus will come to crave. In fact, this kind of wages is revealed clearly in Hebrews 12 to be the wages that Jesus sought most to earn by His own life, and He will receive the greatest amount of wages when it all becomes clear in the end.

I believe that the easiest way to discover the real truth about heaven's kind of wages is to study what Jesus worked for and looked forward to when He worked to earn heaven's wages. I have dealt with that in a separate writing so I will not repeat it here. But given that context it can be seen that this passage strongly reinforces that truth and helps to expose what heavenly-oriented people want to earn for wages. The disciples were having serious perception problems so they not only could not understand or appreciate the kind of food Jesus wanted but also didn't appreciate the value of the kind of wages that could buy that kind of food. But notice what we find here in the passage.

He who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together!

There is far more hidden in these last two words than meets the eye unless one has learned the true definition of joy. I have thought and written about this extensively and what I have learned from James Wilder has been a tremendous help and blessing for me to unlock this most important concept in the Christian life. Those who truly enter into the spirit that motivated Jesus and begin to experience the desires that consumed much of His life will begin to understand that the wages most valued in the eyes of all of heaven is intimate fellowship with other hearts. Joy is when someone is glad to be with me. That is about as short a definition as can be produced but has much broader implications within it. If we don't sense the inherent, immense value hidden within that definition it is likely because we have never been truly loved in our life. The effects of sin are so pervasive in suffocating the heart God created us to live from that we desperately need a heart transplant as described in Ezekiel 33 and other places.

In the last two words of this verse can be found the essence of this definition. Rejoice is really just another term for joy, and together is actually an extremely abbreviated version of the definition of that very joy. This verse is like an acorn that contains the seed from which a mighty oak tree can be produced. Rejoice together is like shorthand for the kind of wages that lights up the eyes and captivates the interest of everyone who has come to appreciate what heaven values the most.

Some other terms closely associated with this kind of wages – the wages of joy – are things like community, the body of Christ, fellowship of the saints, and many other concepts scattered all throughout Scripture. When the Bible is read with a corrected definition of joy and a better appreciation for the kind of wages God's true children want to work for, suddenly everything we read takes on a whole new light. And the more wages we begin to enjoy and spend right now in our work for God the more eager we will be to seek ways to earn more and more of this infinitely valuable currency.

When I stop to think about it, something very significant comes to my attention about eternity. If one views eternal life only from the dimension of time and not quality, then to live forever, but to have no joy in the life would be very much like the descriptions of hell that are entertained by many false religions today. To live forever without love, without heart fellowship and compassion and connectedness with other people would become supreme misery. And to believe in a God that might impose such a punishment on those who reject Him is to believe in a god who is actually the demonic, sadistic Satan himself. This is why so many people have become atheists after hearing about the popular teachings of hell as presented by most Christians; they cannot accept that such a monstrous God could even exist, much less truly love them.

But God is not at all like we have made Him out to be based on Satan's misrepresentations of Him. God is the ultimate source of joy because He is the greatest lover – the very essence of love itself. Because of that God craves to be connected to the hearts of all the intelligent beings that He has created, both the saved and those who will be lost by rejecting the truth about His feelings towards them. As I have explored extensively in my web site on this subject, hell is literally the ultimate torture of experiencing God's passionate love from a mind and heart that has destroyed all it's capacity to enjoy and respond reflectively to that love. They will perceive that passion as being wrath. That is the greatest torture that any being can ever experience who was created to live and thrive in love.

On the other side, all those who will be found in heaven will have entered into the experience of what life was really designed for – intimate joy-bonds with other hearts that have formed connections through which love can flow to bless the lives of others around them. Thus, when we cooperate with God in forming bonded connections with others and draw them into experiencing a direct bond themselves with their Creator and Father in heaven, we put into place the very connections through which we are going to receive heaven's kinds of wages all throughout eternity.

When this system of payment or wages is properly perceived, then we will begin to appreciate the passion that motivates all who are learning to cooperate with God in the saving of as many souls as possible. Our motivations for evangelism will be dramatically transformed and look very different. We will not be trying to see how many numbers we can add to our church membership lists or how many people we can claim to have baptized (and then abandoned like orphans while we rush away to find more), but we will be seeking to find every way possible to connect with the hearts of people the way that Jesus did in order to form a connection through which we can start a blood transfusion to bring their hearts to life.

Now isn't that a radical concept? If we viewed ourselves as needles looking for the veins of everyone around us in desperate need of love so that we could inject them with the blood of Jesus who is love incarnate, then our whole basis for soul-winning, evangelism or whatever we might call it, would be turned completely upside down. Instead of focusing on large campaigns with expensive outlays for advertising targeted at a public uninterested in hearing answers to questions they are not asking, we would see that the real way to earn heaven's wages is to cooperate with God and follow the lead of His Spirit to have Him connect us personally with people who are ripe to be harvested.

And what does it mean to be a harvester? That is a whole topic that needs much more exploration as well. But in the context of wages here, I believe that it means, at least in part, that we spend most of our focus on connecting with people's hearts (instead of trying to change their intellectual beliefs) and allowing the love and truth and attractiveness of God to flow through us so they will want to become part of the body of Christ and connect with Him directly.

So just from the wages standpoint, a word picture comes to my mind. Think of a three-dimensional picture that contains balls and tubes. Each of us is a ball, a sphere that has infinite numbers of available connection points around its surface. When we connect with others at the heart level we connect a tube between our ball and their ball. Through that connecting tube can flow whatever is inside of our heart.

Of course, if we want to use heaven's way of “working” we will need to make sure that our ball is pressurized daily with a strong, open tube directly to the heart of God through which we are filled with God's passionate love for us. Then as we work with God to establish more and more connections to other balls starving for love, the love that fills our own hearts can be pumped through these tubes and will inspire and bring hope and life into other lives and hearts.

Now think about the fact that some spheres may have hundreds or thousands of tubes that they have attached to other spheres. But then there are many balls that have hardly any tubes connected anywhere. After sin has been annihilated and eternity begins in earnest, all of these connections formed on earth are going to still be intact. It is then that it will become much more clear what our real purpose was supposed to be as Christians while living in this sinful world. Because those who worked with God the most to initiate as many attachments as possible in this life are going to have the most joy-bonded attachments in the life to come. And it only makes sense that the more openings you have to your heart through joy-bonded connections with others the more joy you are going to be capable of experiencing through all of eternity.

This is precisely why there are differences in the amount of rewards that will be seen in heaven –because heaven's reward system is based totally on relationships and those relationships are primarily formed or initiated while still here on earth. So the choices we make now in how much we are willing to cooperate with God's work of saving souls determines proportionately how much in the way of wages we will have capacity to enjoy throughout all of eternity. For those wages will all flow into our hearts through the number of bonds that we chose to form with other hearts while we lived during this time of probation and those wages can best be defined as joy itself.

This understanding gives a whole new context and perspective to the idea of witnessing. Witnessing then becomes not an obligation or duty that must be performed to keep God from being upset with us but becomes an incredible wage-earning opportunity by cultivating as many heart connections with others as we possibly can so that the wages of joy will fill our lives for eternity. The more we value and appreciate the wages of joy, both now and in heaven, the more motivated we will become to work for souls the way God designed us to do instead of our largely fruitless methods we use now.

Father, train me to cooperate with You in using my heart to form connections with other hearts so that Your love can attract them to connect directly with You. Take away my fear of making those kinds of connections. Heal my heart with Your love and then make me a source of healing love for others – for Your name's sake.