“Eternal Rewards”

Tuesday, June 02, 2015

Does everyone who goes to Heaven get the same reward, or will some people have a bigger or better reward based on how good their works are in this life?

Sincerely, Preparing For Eternity

Dear Preparing For Eternity,

Yes, some will have a greater reward in heaven than others – though I don’t want you to misconstrue this as meaning heaven won’t be entirely perfect for everyone there. The most important verse on this topic is Matt 6:20. The implication is that heaven uses more than just a pass/fail entry system, but that there is a way to ‘invest’ in heavenly rewards. Jesus reiterates this idea of storing treasures for yourself in heaven when He talks to the rich young ruler (Mk 10:21).

The idea of heaven having various rewards shouldn’t be too foreign to us because God is clear that its counterpart, hell, certainly does. Heb 10:28-29 makes it plain that there is an especially dark corner of hell for those who were christians and rejected Christ later. False teachers also are condemned under a stricter judgment than the average unbeliever (Jas 3:1).

It is easy to see that verses do say that heaven and hell have varying degrees of reward and punishment, but the problem is envisioning how that works. If everyone will be completely happy in heaven (Rev 21:4), how can some have more rewards than others? At this point, we must accept our weakness in envisioning spiritual concepts. Any analogy we make is purely an attempt in our feeble minds to explain a realm too glorious for us to grasp. So take the following analogy with a grain of salt.

The example I use to explain the varying degrees of heaven uses two men with buckets. Two men go down to a river with buckets; one man has a five gallon bucket, and the other has a one gallon bucket. They both dipped their buckets in the river… whose bucket is fuller? Both buckets are equally full, are they not? I liken heaven to filling our buckets. Everyone’s bucket will be full. The only question is -how big will your bucket be?

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