On a “Missions Sunday” I was speaking at a church, sharing about our ministry when a woman approached me and said, “I can’t imagine all the rewards you’ve stored up.” It was a nice thing to say—I hope it’s true—but I think she was imagining eternal rewards being given in a few standard categories like the Oscars: number of conversions, time spent in ministry, hours logged in prayer.

But the metrics of ministry are not the metrics of rewards. In Jesus’ teaching on rewards, it is faithfulness with what we’ve been entrusted (our gifts, our limitations, our trials, our blessings, our failures, our history) that serves as the criteria. But there may be more to it—or less to it—than that. It all depends.

In Jesus’ parables on stewardship (The Sower, The Talents, The Faithful Steward, The Moneylender) he is speaking primarily about our stewardship of his Word entrusted to us. The question being asked in the Parable of the Talents is not “What did you do with your talent for calligraphy or gardening?” but “What did you do with Jesus—His Word, His commands, His mission, His grace, His love, His forgiveness, His guidance, His gifts … ?”

This is what stewardship is really about, and it answers the question, “On what will we be judged?” Pretty much everything. In the judgment to come, reward will be given and with great disparity, to the extent that we’ll know that even a “cup of water” given in Jesus’ name did not fail to “lose their reward” (Mark 9:41 NIV).

Get Rich or Die Trying

While encouraging the Philippians to support him in ministry, the apostle Paul says something very surprising. Essentially he says, I don’t need your help. I’m not looking for a reward from you. I’m actually trying to help you get your full reward from the Lord. “Not that I seek the gift,” wrote Paul, “but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit” (Philippians 4:17 EVS).

This is a good note to end on. Understandably, there is much speculation here––– we want to know, and in the absence of “enough” detail, we begin to imagine––– and therefore much to agree or disagree with, but the prayer and devotion behind the writing is simply this: that we would not fail to live in such a way as to be fully faithful—and so fully rewarded.