SUPREME MOTIVATION:
LOVE OR HATE
Will a person serve God more readily from an attitude of love or from an attitude of hatred? Strange question? Not really. As a matter of fact, this unthinkable question, this almost-never-asked question goes right to the heart of the most important issue that saved people ever face.
There is only one important question for the unsaved person to ask, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?," or, to put it another way, "Where am I going to spend Eternity?" There is only one answer; "Believe on (trust in) the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved" (Acts 16:31). One receives eternal life when he or she stops doing and begins to trust in what Another has done (Hebrews 4:10; Romans4:4-5). Eternal life is a totally free gift, bought and fully paid for by Another (Romans 6:23). A gift is not earned, worked for, or merited...or it would not be a gift! (Romans 11:6). Grace cannot ever be "cheap" -- it cost God the life of His Son! -- but it must always be free. God’s justice does not collect a debt twice!
Similarly, there is one vital question for the saved person to ask. It is not, "Lord, what will You have me to do?" As important as that question is, there exists just one that is greater in importance..."Lord, why would you have me to do it?" When Paul asked, "Lord, what will You have me to do? (Acts 9:6)," he already had a motive for doing, and so must we. Paul, before Damascus, had heard countless testimonies to the saviorhood of Christ from those he had arrested, chained, tortured, imprisoned, and for whose death he voted. These testimonies stung him like the barbs of an ox-goad. When Christ identified Himself to Paul in the suburbs of Damascus, Paul had instantly all the motive he would ever need for serving Christ...the Love from Calvary (2 Corinthians 5:14-15). He had a purpose; all that he lacked was a plan.
The plan would have been meaningless without the purpose; the service worthless without the motive, for service that is selfishly motivated is not service at all.
When one hears Christians talk of material rewards from God in this life or the next, one must wonder if the material blessings themselves aren’t the reason for the service, in which case self is being served and not the Lord. If I am doing something in the hope of receiving a bigger house on a wider street in Heaven, am I really serving God or myself? If what I do, I do to keep from having God give me a flat tire on a country road in a rainstorm at night, do I serve His interests or my own?
Are there then, no rewards? Of course there are! "Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap" (Galatians 6:7). If a man sows wheat in the spring, in the fall his harvest will surely be wheat and not barley. No farmer ever planted corn and reaped rye. It is a scientific certainty that any planting of oats will produce a crop of oats and nothing else. What then does one reap who sows the glory of God? If a man plants God’s glory, will he reap immunity from disaster in time, a larger mansion in eternity, or will the mature plant agree with the seed in kind? If a man plants the glory of God, will not the result of this sowing be that God is glorified?
Paul’s desire, to be achieved through imminent martyrdom or through continued life and ministry, was that Christ be magnified! (Philippians 1:20). Paul was planting the glory of God, and the result we all know; God was glorified. Could Paul have asked for more? Could you or I? If the supreme desire of the heart is that men and angels be exposed to the truth about who and what God is through your ministry and mine, what could reward that desire but its fulfillment?
There is an old story that some preachers use in a vain attempt to motivate Christians to serve Christ. It goes something like this: a Christian died and was being shown around Heaven by an angel. After touring Park Avenue with its twenty-two room mansions, he was taken to Front Street, down by the railroad track, and shown the house in which he was to reside for eternity future. It was a fallen down tar-paper shack in a field of ugly weeds. When the new arrival complained to the angelic guide that he didn’t think he should spend eternity in this slum dwelling while others would live in luxury, he was informed that this was the best that Heaven could do with the materials that he had sent up while he was on Earth. While it is true that those who enter the Millennium Kingdom will differ in influence and affluence according to their faithfulness under Law, heaven is the ultimate end of grace! There will certainly be bigger houses on wider streets when Messiah begins His reign on Earth, because divinely energized law-keepers will have earned them, but in Heaven??? Everything in Heaven has been earned by Christ Personal and, through Grace, is shared by the members of His Body, Christ Mystical!
If these legalistic preachers really did get mansions and I a tar-paper shack, would they invite me over for dinner once in a while? Is there a caste system in Heaven as there is in Boston where "The Cabots only speak to the Lodges, and the Lodges only speak to God?" Would the mansion-dwellers hob-nob with the slum-dwellers or stay in their country clubs? Will I be able to prevail on these preachers to share their plenty with me in my penury or must I forever make do? May I ever add a room to my shack...central heat...air conditioning...a shed for my old bicycle with help from the Millionaires Club, or shall I plan just to "tough it out?"
I don’t believe there are any tar-paper shacks in Heaven, and I don’t really care whether there are any mansions. If you are serious about Christ and positive toward Doctrine, you don’t either! Only the glory of God is important. Heaven was built by God’s true Grace and not by man’s imagined merit, and all noble desires will be gratified there, I’m sure.
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