the Weight of Glory

I found C.S Lewis’ description of the difference between a mercenary and proper reward to be a very touching and accurate way to describe our earthly end. For Lewis defines the terms for which we receive our reward of Heaven as an act of consummation when he writes:

“The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.”

Through Lewis’ examples, the way that I was able to understand the difference between a sole pursuit of the reward of Heaven and the enjoyment of the entire process of obedience to God, desiring our reward, and ultimately receiving it in consummation was through two illustrations. Regarding a mercenary reward, the purpose is purely selfish, with a cause and effect mindset where the process of achieving it is endured only to receive some sort of gain. You do a job, get the money, and that is the end of the transaction.  On the other hand, our reward of Heaven I imagined as a 3 course meal in which we are chefs who prepare the feast in which we ultimately sit down and enjoy with together with our God. Our diligent preparation and careful work towards preparing the meal is the first step of the process which is directly connected to the final outcome of sitting down and enjoying the feast with God. Unlike a mercenary reward where any arbitrary task could have been given and an unrelated reward was to be received, the work put into the feast lies in direct connection to the reward and is rather an act of thorough and righteous completion of a process. 

Just as Lewis writes that marriage is the act of consummation for love and that a developed relationship is part of the process and joy leading up to marriage, for the marriage would not be a reward if the relationship had not required work or  joy in the first place, so our “consummation” with God and our reward of Heaven can only be one completed act when we have developed our obedience to God.

Getting to Heaven and being with God is my ultimate priority, but the only way in which the reward will be received is if the right and true preparations are made to prepare our reward to be rewarding and finally find our consummation with God.

Thank God He’s helping us out with this entire process.

“I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection! But I keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be. No dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to Heaven.  I hope all of you who are mature Christians will agree on these things…we must be sure to obey the truth we have learned already.”

Philippians 3: 12-15