THE REWARD FACTOR

Matthew 6:4 "your Father, who knows all secrets will reward you."

What is the place of the reward motive in the Christian’s life? Are we good for goodness sake or are we good in order to get the carrot at the end of the stick or are we good in order to avoid getting the end of the stick. Three times in the portion of scripture Christ speaks of rewarding those who give him the service he expects. In Matthew 6:4, 6 and 18 Christ speaks about "The Reward Factor"

Now I realize that there are some who would hold that the reward factor should have no place in the Christian’s life and should have no bearing on the Christian’s behavior. They would tell us that yes we should be good simply for goodness sakes. They tell us that virtue is its own reward, and that this whole concept of the reward factor should be banished from the Christian’s life. They are like one old saint who said "I wish I could quench with water the fires of hell and burn with fire the joys of heaven so I could serve Christ out of pure motives."

Now on the surface that is all very good and noble, but it is not the view that Christ held. Instead he told us that if we had the right kind of charitable giving, the right kind of prayer habits and the right kind of fasting that there would be a reward for us. A mansion just over the hilltop so to speak. And these are not isolated instances, In Matthew 5:12 Christ tells us that is we bear persecution in His name, we will be rewarded, in Mark 9:41 He says if we give a cup of cold water in His name there’ll be a reward for us and in Luke 6:35 He says if we love our enemies, you guessed it we will be rewarded.

Paul talks about rewards, Peter talks about rewards, John talks about rewards. The reward factor in the Christian experience is a fact of life, and it was recognized and promoted by the Lord himself. It is abundantly clear that Jesus did not hesitate to speak in terms of rewards and punishment, so let’s not become more spiritual on the subject then Jesus was.

The first thing that we need to know is that it is an obvious rule of life that any action which achieves nothing is futile and meaningless. The second thing is that to remove the concept of sin and punishment from the idea of religion is to say that injustice has the last word. It cannot be reasonably said that the life of both the good man and the bad man will have the same outcome. Because that would simply mean that God didn’t care. That He didn’t care if you were good or if you were evil. And there would be no point in being good, and no special reason why a man should live one kind of life or another. To eliminate rewards and punishment is to say that in God there is neither justice nor love. We need the reward factor just to make sense out of life.

But here’s what is tricky about this reward factor. The rewards that Christ promised are neither material nor physical. Christian service is not a system of brownie points designed to earn us health and wealth. If it were, then we would surely spend our time keeping a checklist off all that we had done. A Christian may lose his money, his health and his friends. He may end up in a cancer ward or an asylum or a prison but the rewards of God are beyond a price tag. The things he offers can’t always be felt or seen or measured. Yet it is always there. Rewards such as satisfaction, fulfillment, and hope are plentiful for the faithful.