Well-Done

2 Tim 4:1 I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: 2 Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. 5 But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. 6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.

Incentive. We work for incentive. We are motivated by incentive.

Paul, if nothing else, is a man with GREAT and GOOD incentive. He super-blesses me by his example. It is hard for me to imagine a better example among men to follow.

I know that when I work, I desire some kind of reward. Some kind of fairly immediate reward. The more I work, the greater I desire that reward to be. Now.

Paul’s reward, on the other hand, was prison. A Roman dungeon. Worse, he was abandoned by all of his friends except Luke - as a direct result of the trouble he found himself in.

For Paul’s leadership in the church, he was arrested and falsely charged. Sentenced to death. Rather than be identified with Paul, his friends abandoned him.

Now there’s a reward for you, eh? Paul finds himself in about as backwards a situation as you could possibly expect considering his strong moral courage and conviction.

Yet, in his last extant communication prior to his beheading, all Paul speaks of is his reward. He has allowed himself to be poured out as a drink offering before God, he has run his race - it is finished! – Now he finally looks up to his reward.

Of which he is certain.

Sometimes it really bothers people that Christians are SO certain of their reward. They think it arrogant to make this kind of “presumption.” They sort of extrapolate their own uncertainty upon everyone else, and chafe at the one who “thinks he knows.”

But hey, Paul does know for certain. Paul does KNOW his reward – the crown of righteousness – which the Lord of Righteousness will give. The reason he knows is because he never sought reward in this world.

-  Pastor Bill