“Guaranteed Investment”

Thursday, August 23, 2018

When we die and go to heaven or hell, will there be different degrees of reward or punishment depending on our degree and length of service to our Lord?  Or in the case of those who refused to serve but rebelled against God, for their degree or length of disobedience?  I am part of a ladies’ Bible study group that picks topics or questions to research each week.  We asked this question and could find nothing in our study of the Bible that showed such a thing but have heard it taught that we store up our treasure in heaven.  The assumption being that one who stores for a long time and with great diligence will have more stored than, let’s say, the thief on the cross who had but a few minutes to serve Christ.  Can you give us some Bible verses to consider that might help tell us what God thinks on this question?

Sincerely,
Delving Into Degrees

Dear Delving Into Degrees,

Yes, some will have a greater reward in heaven than others – though we 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 heavier judgment than the average unbeliever (Jas 3:1).  Probably the clearest verse on the subject of hell's degrees of punishment is Lk 12:46-48 which teaches that someone who knows the truth and rejects it will suffer a worse punishment than the servant that did not know.

The 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 we 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 dip their buckets in the river… whose bucket is fuller?  Both buckets are equally full, are they not?  We 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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