For what do we hope?
Captivating Sentence
CAPTIVATING STORY
MACARTHUR SERMON START
Paul is reminding the Corinthians that dead men do and shall rise from the dead. This is not a new truth. It is a cardinal truth in Christianity. It is also a key truth in Judaism. It is both in the Old and the New Testament. As far back as the ancient book of Job in Chapter 19, in verse 26. Job said, “Though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God whom I shall see for myself and not another though my reins be consumed within me.”
In other words, Job said though my body rots in the grave, somehow in some way, yet in my flesh, I’ll see God. That is the belief in a bodily resurrection. When you come into the New Testament, Jesus begins early in His ministry to promise a literal, physical, bodily resurrection. For example, in John 5 and verse 28, “Marvel not at this for the hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall here His voice and shall come forth.” “All that are in the grave,” said Jesus, “shall hear His forth and come forth.”
In John 6:44, Jesus said, “No man can come to me except the Father who hath sent me draw him and I will raise him up at the last day.” In John 11:25, Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life, whosoever believes in me so really never die, but have life that is eternal and everlasting.”
So Jesus promised physical resurrection. Additionally, to the Old Testament hope and the promise of Jesus, the New Testament apostles also preached the resurrection of the dead. In fact, it got them into trouble in Acts 4, “And as they spoke under the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came on them. Being grieved that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection from death,” or from the grave.
They were preaching physical resurrection. This was the message of the apostle Paul. In 2 Corinthians for example, Chapter 4 and verse 14. “Knowing that he who raised up the Lord Jesus will raise up us also.” And Paul preached this repeatedly. In Colossians 3:4, he said, “When Christ who is our life shall appear than shall ye also appear with him.”
In 1 Thessalonians, he said that the dead would come out of the graves and be united with Christ and that we who were alive and remaining should be united with Him. In Philippians 3, he said, “Our citizenship is in heaven,” in verse 20. And in verse 21, he said, “The Lord will change our vial bodies into glorious bodies like unto His body.”
Jesus said in John 14, that He was going away to prepare a place for us and that He would come again and receive us unto Himself. In John 17, He prayed that we would be with Him in the presence of the Father. So there is the statement of the Old Testament, the word of Jesus, the word of the apostles, the word of Paul to the fact that there is resurrection bodily from the grave to be with the Lord for those who are believers.
This is basic to our faith. And I think it’s important to note that in that resurrection form we will still be ourselves. For example, in Revelation 20, in verse 12 it says “that God called them to Him and out of the graves they came and John says I saw standing before the Lord the dead both small and great.”
What’s interesting about that is that there was still a difference in the people when they were there in the vision of the future judgment as when they were here on earth. Some were smaller or insignificant and some where greater. That is they maintained a personality and a personhood somewhat like that which they had in life. We’ll be ourselves in a real way.
But in spite of the clear word of the Old Testament and in spite of the clear word of Jesus, in spite of the clear of apostolic preaching, in spite of the clear word of the apostle Paul, the Corinthians had come to the place where they were denying bodily resurrection. They had bought the bag of Greek philosophers and you remember the Greek philosophers taught that the soul was immortal, but the body was not.
That the soul would go on forever, but the body rotted in the grave and it was good-bye forever. So that immortality had only to bear on the spiritual. We would live spiritually forever not in any kind of corporeal sense. In fact, verse 12 of 1 Corinthians 15 has basically the statement these critics were making. “Now if Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?”
In other words, they were flatly saying dead men don’t rise again. That was the statement of Greek philosophy and that was being parroted by the Corinthian church, at least a few in the church. Now remember, Paul has already told them in the first 11 verses that that’s an impossible view for them to have. And the reason it’s impossible is because they already believe that Jesus rose from the dead, right?
In other words, if you go back to Chapter 15 in the first few verses, Paul says, “Remember the gospel,” folks, “the gospel you received and on which you stand and by which you are saved.” And what is the gospel? It’s verse 3, “That Christ died according to the Scriptures.” Verse 4, “That He was buried and that He rose again.” In other words, he’s saying look, you already believe in resurrection. You already believe in bodily resurrection because you’ve already accepted it, received it, stand on it, and are being saved by it. And it’s the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Now verse 12, “If Christ is already being preached that He rose from the dead, and you’re already believing that, then how could some among you say that there’s no such thing as resurrection from the dead.” You already believe it. You’re already committed to it. You’ve already been saved by that confidence and that faith.
But if there’s no resurrection then He didn’t conquer sin. Sin conquered Him, it killed Him and kept Him dead. There’s no reconciliation. There’s not justification. There’s no salvation. There’s no life. If Christ is still dead, then every believer is still dead in trespasses and sins and there’s no deliverance, none at all.
As long as Christ our surety was held by Satan, as long as He was held by death and not released, then the debt was never paid and we’re still liable. But in Romans 4:25, bless God, it says “He was raised for our,” what, “justification.” He came out of that grave. The Bible says when you put your faith in Christ you’re united with Him. “If He died and stayed there, we’d die and stay there too. But if He came out of the grave so we come to walk in newness of life.”
“Only as the living Christ,” Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:30, “can He be made unto us wisdom and sanctification and righteousness and redemption.” He couldn’t keep us. He couldn’t save us. He couldn’t do anything for us if He wasn’t alive. And there’s nobody else to turn because Acts 4:12 says, “salvation is in Him.” And if He couldn’t pull it off we’re dead folks, we’re dead. And what Jesus said to those leaders in John 8:21, “You will die in your sins,” was true of Him and of everybody else if He didn’t rise.
There’s two elements here. If Christ doesn’t rise, number one, He didn’t pay the penalty for sin in full and come back to grant us life. Sin killed Him if He didn’t rise. Secondly, if He didn’t rise, He’s not alive today to intercede for us and to keep on cleansing on us and to keep on forgiving us. And His life is not there. Romans 5:10, “To hold us and keep us.” He couldn’t save us and He can’t keep us if He didn’t rise.
That’s why it’s so important that we believe that He did rise. That’s why Peter said what He did in Acts 5:29. Peter and the other apostles answered and said, “we ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our Father raised up Jesus whom you slew and hanged on a tree and Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be a prince and a Savior and give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.” God did raise Him and God made Him a prince. And the word in the Greek is archagos. That’s the word that means front runner, pioneer.
Seamen … seamen had a guy on the ship who was the archagos. And he was the strongest swimmer and when he would come to shore and he would get into the billows and the waves and they didn’t know whether they could get the ship to shore and how they would get the people safely, this guy would take the rope and he would tie it around his waist and he would dive in and he would swim through the turbulent waters and because he was a strong swimmer, he would get to the shore and he would take rope and he would tie it around a rock or a tree and the rest of the people would come along that rope to safety on the shore. But it was the archagos who took the rope and anchored it.
And Jesus is the prince, the archagos. He swam through the waters of death and death couldn’t hold Him and death couldn’t drown Him and He got to the shore and He anchored the rope and the rest of us have come along behind. That if Jesus drowned, then we’re going to drown too.
If He’s doomed, we’re doomed. If Jesus didn’t rise, then sin killed Him and sin will kill us. And there’s nobody interceding for us now to make it any different. If Jesus didn’t rise and He didn’t rise if dead men don’t rise.
HORTON’S SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY
For what do we hope? What happens when we die, and what do we mean when we confess our faith in “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting”? In spite of the failures of Adam and Israel, “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Heb 4:9).
For what do we hope? What happens when we die, and what do we mean when we confess our faith in “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting”? In spite of the failures of Adam and Israel, “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Heb 4:9).
B. THE FALL VERSUS THE NATURALNESS OF DEATH
Biblical eschatology moves forward, from promise to fulfillment, not in cycles. Already in Paradise creation is merely the anteroom for a fuller human purpose and destiny for creation. In this intervening time between the fall and the consummation, there have been various periods of God’s direct intervention in history and nature, as we have seen. However, during most of this history (including our own), nature is governed by God’s providence. Believers share in the common curse and in God’s common grace.
Furthermore, death is not “passing away,” and it is certainly not an illusion. For believers, it is “the last enemy” that must be destroyed (1 Co 15:26). We share in Christ’s death and therefore also in his life (Ro 6:1–12; Php 3:10). Therefore, by looking to our head, we already know the outcome of this struggle, and so there is no reason for believers to fear death’s ultimate triumph (Ps 23:4; Heb 2:15; Ro 8:38–39; p 911 1 Co 15:55–57; Php 1:21–23; 2 Co 5:8; Rev 14:13). For unbelievers, this death is merely the harbinger of “the second death”: everlasting judgment (Rev 20:14).
Part of the curse is the separation of soul from body (Ge 2:17; 3:19, 22; 5:5; Ro 5:12; 8:10; 1 Co 15:21). Death is an enemy, not a friend (1 Co 15:26) and a terror (Heb 2:15), so horrible that even the one who would triumph over it was overcome with grief, fear, and anger at the tomb of his friend Lazarus (Jn 11:33–36). Jesus did not see death as a benign deliverer, the sunset that is as beautiful as the sunrise, or as a portal to “a better life.” Looking death in the eye, he saw it for what it was, and his disciples followed his example. After the deacon’s martyrdom, we read, “Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him” (Ac 8:2). The reason that believers do not mourn as those who have no hope (1 Th 4:13) is not that they know that death is good, but that they know that God’s love and life are more powerful than the jaws of death. Although believers, too, feel its bite, Christ has removed the sting of death (Jn 14:2–3; Php 1:21; 1 Co 15:54–57; 2 Co 5:8). That is because “the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Co 15:56–57). Downplaying the seriousness of the foe only trivializes the debt that was paid and the conquest that was achieved at the cross and the empty tomb.
1. IMMEDIATE, CONSCIOUS EXISTENCE IN THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD
In the intermediate state, believers are not simply in contemplative repose. Nor are they lost souls wandering throughout the realm of shadows or crossing back and forth over the river Styx ferried by Charon. Rather, they are made part of the company assembled at the true Zion, with “innumerable angels in festal gathering” and “the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Heb 12:22–24). Admittedly, we know very little from Scripture about the intermediate state. Nearly all of the passages cited concerning heaven refer to the everlasting rather than the intermediate state.
2. OPPOSITION TO IMMEDIATE, CONSCIOUS EXISTENCE IN THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD
Several views have been put forward against the immediate, conscious existence of believers in the intermediate state.
(a) Soul sleep. Advocates of soul sleep, also known as psychopannychism, hold that upon one’s death the soul enjoys neither heaven nor hell during the intermediate state, but unconsciousness until the final judgment. A similar belief is thnetopsychism, which teaches that the soul also dies along with the body and both are raised p 912 together. Some who hold this position adopt an anthropological monism, denying the existence of a soul distinct from the body.
Although these views found few champions in church history, soul sleep of the first type seems to have enjoyed a revival at the time of the Reformation. In fact, Calvin wrote his first theological treatise against this view, defending the position most closely associated with early Jewish and Christian teaching: namely, that at “Abraham’s side,” the soul does survive the body at death, which is neither the new heavens and new earth of the consummation nor a place of suffering, but a place of intermediate joy in the presence of the Lord with his people. The Scriptures speak of the intermediate state as conscious existence, not soul sleep (Ps 16:10; 49:14–15; Ecc 12:7; Lk 16:22; 23:43; Php 1:23; 2 Co 5:8; Rev 6:9–11; 14:13).
A variation of thnetopsychism is defended by Wolfhart Pannenberg as the restorationist theory.13 A similar perspective was suggested by G. C. Berkouwer.14 According to this view, Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus cannot be considered historical even if one adopts the traditional view, since the existence of the one in hell and the other in heaven presupposes that the final judgment has already taken place. Accordingly, as George Eldon Ladd concluded, the scope of this parable is not the intermediate state but “the hardness and obduracy” of the Pharisees who “refuse to accept the witness of Scripture to the person of Jesus.”15
In my judgment, Ladd’s exegesis is entirely sound. Jesus’ parables are never historical narratives or doctrinal descriptions, and they all concentrate on the kingdom as it is dawning in Christ’s person and work. Yet the fact still remains that even in Sheol, believers are “gathered to [their] fathers” and are conscious of being in the presence of God and the saints, even when their body lies in the grave. The contrast between the wicked and believers is that the latter will be brought out of the pit of death (Sheol) and see the light of life (Ps 49:7–15), “for you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption. You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps 16:10–11). Jesus told the believing criminal, “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk 23:43), even though Jesus himself would not be raised until the third day, and when he died he called out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (v. 46).
The body, apart from the soul, is dead (Jas 2:26), yet for believers, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Co 5:8). Neither the everlasting consummation nor unconsciousness, this intermediate state is God’s preservation of p 913 the personal consciousness of believers in his presence awaiting the resurrection of the dead. In the book of Revelation, “the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne” cry out from before God’s throne, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ ” (Rev 6:9–10). Conscious of their blessedness, the souls of the martyrs are also conscious that their complete salvation has not yet been fully realized.
At the same time, it should not be surprising that the resurrection of the body was especially pushed to the forefront with “the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Ti 1:10). Christianity therefore does not build on the pagan ruins of the immortality of the soul, but brings “immortality to light through the gospel.” It is an immortality that is bestowed as a gift in the resurrection, not a given of our nature as such. In other words, immortality finds its definition in eschatology and soteriology rather than anthropology.
(b) Postmortem salvation. Another challenge to immediate, conscious existence in the Lord’s presence is the concept of postmortem salvation. Since the ancient church there have been those who have argued that the intermediate state offers the opportunity for condemned souls to repent and be saved. This view is increasingly attractive especially among Christians who want to affirm both the possibility of salvation for non-Christians and the necessity of hearing and responding to the gospel.16 However, this position is also contradicted by passages that teach explicitly the decisiveness of repentance and faith in this life, followed by judgment (Lk 16:26; Heb 9:27; Gal 6:7–8).
(c) Purgatory. Also at odds with immediate, conscious presence of the soul with God is the Roman Catholic dogma of purgatory. According to this teaching, even if the guilt of sin is forgiven, the punishment for particular sins must be suffered before entrance into paradise. Purgatory is but an extension of the doctrine of penance, which denies the sufficiency of Christ’s active and passive obedience. If the guilt of our sins has been fully remitted, then punishment would be capricious and unjust. Besides contradicting central doctrines of the gospel, the idea that after people die they enter a state of purgation has no biblical support. Rather, the idea can be traced through Origen to the speculations of Plato and the Greco-Roman belief in three levels of existence in Hades: the lower region Tartarus (hell), a middle region for those who were neither good nor evil, and the Elysian Fields, often identified with the Isles of the Blessed.
p 914 The wide evidence of belief in a period of probation—of testing—before attaining everlasting glory in many religions may be considered a relic of the original covenant given to humanity in Adam. However, the Bible identifies this probation with the representative headship of Adam, recapitulated and fulfilled by the Last Adam. Non-Christian religions, however, place this trial in the hands of every person, to be fulfilled personally by works, if not in this life then in the next.17
By contrast, some in early Judaism taught that the soul at death goes to Gehenna, a holding place for final resurrection and judgment, and, as we have already seen above, Jesus taught that while unbelievers go to Gehenna at death, believers are with him in paradise. Roman Catholic theology bases the idea of purgatory on 2 Maccabees 12:42–45, which speaks of Judas Maccabeus having “made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.” However, this act of Judas Maccabeus was a large sum of money that he sent to the temple “for a sin offering.” This is precisely the background of the temple worship that the writer to the Hebrews (among others, including Jesus) says has come to an end with Christ’s sacrifice of himself. By using this apocryphal (i.e., noncanonical) verse as a proof text for purgatory, Roman Catholic interpretation returns to the shadows of the law after the reality has come. Those who die in mortal sin go directly to hell, but with few exceptions all believers die with some venial sins that must be atoned for.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven. The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. The Church formulated her doctrine of faith on Purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence and Trent.… The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead.18
As for those who die in mortal sin, “the teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, ‘eternal fire.’ ”19
The clear teaching of Scripture, however, is that every believer goes to be with the Lord upon death. Therefore, there is no point in praying for the dead, much p 915 less for purchasing indulgences, or otherwise expending effort on behalf of securing an earlier release of the departed from their punishments in purgatory. “Just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes the judgment …” (Heb 9:27). Furthermore, it is just as clearly and centrally taught in Scripture that believers do not “achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven,”20 but are clothed in the righteousness and holiness of Christ’s sufficient merit.
It is striking that the Apostles’ Creed insists upon our ultimate hope as “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting,” not “going to heaven when I die.” This is not to say that we do not go to heaven when we die, nor that this is not an obvious gain, especially since the Scriptures expressly teach otherwise.21 However, it is important to remind ourselves that as wonderful as it is to be in God’s presence, even separated from our flesh, it is the intermediate rather than the final state.
In the consummation, not only the earth but heaven itself will become new. As human bodies will be reunited in everlasting joy and integrity with their souls, so too earth and heaven will become one cosmic sanctuary of everlasting joy. Jesus spoke of it as a palingenesis (re-creation) in Matthew 19:28. For believers, at the resurrection the whole person—embodied soul and ensouled body—will be granted the gift of everlasting life (immortality). It is remarkable that Job longed to be in God’s presence even in the same flesh that was wasting with pain and disease: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!” (Job 19:25–27). Similarly, Paul observes that although we groan in body and p 916 spirit now, “we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved” (Ro 8:23–24).
A lodestar for the Christian hope is 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul not only treats the resurrection of believers as belonging to the same event (though in two stages) as that of their forerunner, Jesus Christ,22 but also considers the way in which the renewal of all things takes place. Even now, the resurrection of the dead in the age to come is being partly realized in the present by the renewal of the inner person (regeneration). Those who were “dead in the trespasses and sins” are already raised spiritually and are seated with Christ (cf. Eph 2:1–6; Ro 6). In 1 Corinthians 15:26, 51–55, Paul makes it clear that there is an order to this renewal: first spiritual resurrection, and then bodily resurrection, completing the total renewal of believers. As is also taught in 2 Corinthians 4:16–18, the “outer self” is wasting away while the “inner self” is being renewed day by day in the image of Christ (cf. Ro 8:9–30; 2 Ti 1:10; Col 3:1–17). In 1 Corinthians 15:50 Paul says, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” Yet notice the comparison: “As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust.… Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (v.v. 48–49).
Is Jesus raised bodily? Not only is that answered affirmatively in the Gospels, where Jesus eats with his disciples and even invites Thomas to inspect his wounds; it is answered affirmatively in this same chapter. In fact, Paul’s whole point in 1 Corinthians 15 is to challenge a sect that is teaching that the resurrection has already happened as a “spiritual” event. If Christ is not raised bodily, then we will not be raised bodily either. If this is Paul’s argument, it would not make any sense that he should turn the resurrection into a nonbodily event after all.
As with his flesh/Spirit contrast more generally, Paul is not thinking in terms of an ontological dualism (bodies/spirits) but an eschatological dualism (this age/the age to come). The powers and potentialities of this present age (such as modern medicine) may keep us from dying as soon as we might, but they cannot raise us to immortal glory. In its present condition, this body cannot withstand the glory of the heavenly city; it must be glorified, as Christ’s body was, in order to participate in the age (such as modern medicine) to come. Flesh and blood in its present, fallen condition cannot endure the joys of Zion. Nevertheless, our bodies will be changed (1 Co 15:51), not replaced. “For … the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (v.v. 52–53, emphasis added). We cannot imagine the glory of our future existence, but we can look to Christ as our forerunner: “He p 917 who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies …” (Ro 8:11), and Christ “will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Php 3:21). So the contrast is not between this body and another body but between this body in its lowly condition and this body changed into the glorious condition of Christ’s own body.
There is something to be noted about Paul’s analogy in 1 Corinthians 15:42–44 of the seed that is planted in the earth and rises as a plant. Whatever the apparent discontinuities between an apple seed and an apple tree, it is the same substance. Paul does not contrast embodiment with disembodiment; rather, he contrasts being with not being in the presence of Jesus Christ. The Platonist longs to be stripped not only of sin and death but of the body itself, while Paul longs to be “further clothed” (2 Co 5:4). As Robert Reymond observes, “What Paul would most prefer would be that he might be alive at the return of the Lord and be clothed with the resurrection body without laying the mortal body down in death (vv. 2–4). But even the intermediate state is better by far than this present existence, beset as the present is with sin in which we have less direct communion with the Lord (v. 6).”23
Just as Jesus ate and drank after his resurrection, there will be eating and drinking in the new creation, although this time at the consummated marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:9), with Jesus drinking wine with us (Lk 22:18), it is his eager expectation to feast with us when he returns (Mt 26:29–30). The prominent theme of eating and drinking in the presence of the Lord that one finds in the Old Testament historical books, recapitulated in the ministry of Jesus, is consummated in the new order. In the closing chapter of John’s Apocalypse, there is a river flowing (Rev 22:1), with the Tree of Life “yielding its fruit each month” (Rev 22:2). Although the consummation is expressed in this powerful apocalyptic imagery, the purchase of such imagery is lost if there is no physical creation. We are creatures of time and space, and we will not transcend our humanity but the bondage of our humanity to the conditions of sin and death. Wayne Grudem is exactly right when he argues, “Although a popular hymn speaks of the time ‘when the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more,’ Scripture does not give support to that idea.”24 Rather, all of our times will be gathered together in the fullness of God’s Sabbath rest: everlasting joy.
iv. “The reward which God gives in recognition of the doing of His will.” The OT and Jewish idea of an earthly reward is now abandoned. μισθός belongs wholly to God’s world. It is God’s affair, and as such comprehensive (πολύς), Mt. 5:12 == Lk. 6:23. In this is seen the unbridgeable gulf between the attitude of God to His children and the attitude of the world. The disciples of Jesus are persecuted by the world. God’s dealings are the direct opposite. He shows to them, not the rejection and hatred of the world, but the acceptance of His love. He has for them a reward in the heavens, so that there can be only joy and gladness (Mt. 5:11 f. == Lk. 6:22 f.). The distinctiveness of the divine reward is so radical, however, that if a man seeks human recognition and earthly gain for his acts he thereby forfeits the acceptance which God wills to grant him in the μισθός. Those who seek a human reward will be paid in full (ἀπέχειν),15 Mt. 6:2, 5, 16. Those who make their right conduct toward men a matter of reckoning place themselves outside the divine sphere: “You have no reward from your Father in heaven” (Mt. 6:1).16 For God’s rewarding generosity is only for pure obedience which is free from all selfish calculation or external display (Mt. 6:2, 5, 16). Only thus does man obey in conformity with the absoluteness of God, and only in such a case does God reward as He alone can. Even then man receives a reward only when his obedience is supreme. Only the man who in love does what is unusual and unheard of may hope for God’s reward: ἐὰν γὰρ ἀγαπήσητε τοὺς ἀγαπῶντας ὑμᾶς, τίνα μισθὸν ἔχετε (Mt. 5:46);17 only where love shows itself to be without limits will there be the great reward of heaven (Lk. 6:35). This reward is not a future depicted in individualistic terms. As ἀγάπη is relationship to the neighbour, so its reward is connected with the final destiny in the kingdom of God of those to whom it refers. Thus he who receives a prophet because he is a prophet, or a righteous man out of regard for the greatness of the obedience which he demonstrates (Mt. 10:41),18 or he who in the burning heat of the eastern sun simply gives a disciple a cup of cold water because he is a disciple (Mt. 10:42), will have a place with him in the kingdom of God (μισθὸν λαμβάνειν).
Paul speaks no less clearly of the reward which God gives. It is evident to him that each man who busies himself in work for the Christian community19 will receive a reward which corresponds to his inner commitment20 and activity and which is allotted to him (as distinct from others), 1 C. 3:8. That this has nothing to do with recognition or success or joy in achievement,21 but refers to reward in the last judgment, may be seen plainly from what follows. In 3:14 Paul is certain that the builder of a congregation whose work endures, i.e., that he as the apostle and father of the church, will then receive a special reward from God as distinct from the missionary whose work perishes and who is himself saved only by the skin of his teeth, as one who tottered on the edge of perdition.
The distinctiveness of the Pauline concept of reward may be seen fully in R. 4:4, where we find the unique combination—a model of the almost misleading pregnancy of the apostle’s polemical slogans—ὁ μισθὸς … κατὰ χάριν. It would be the very opposite of the apostle’s attitude of faith if this were a matter of achievement, if the reward were not of grace but corresponded to merit—a possibility which Paul has to reject out of hand as Judaising aberration.22 In 2 Jn. 8 also a full reward23 for one’s own works is expected as self-evident. And the classical book of martyrs, the Revelation of John, sees the time coming καὶ δοῦναι τὸν μισθὸν τοῖς δούλοις σου τοῖς προφήταις καὶ τοῖς ἁγίοις …, 11:18.
God’s judgment is in full correspondence with man’s conduct. Hence it will reward the righteous, and especially martyrs, with the salvation of the kingdom. It will also punish and destroy the wicked and the enemies of God.