Matthew 19:16-30; 2:1-16. Earthly and Heavenly Rewards

These are my thoughts on the story of the rich young man.  


After the Lord told him that the last thing he needed to do to enter into the Kingdom of God was to share his riches with the poor, he got sad because he had a lot of earthly material riches that he didn’t want to give away.  The Lord explained that it would be easier to for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.  I remember from my seminary classes, my instructor explained that the eye of the needle refers to a narrow entrance at the beginning of Jerusalem, where camels had to be unloaded in order to pass through.  Now imagine a rich man trying to enter through the eye of a needle with so many possessions?  He would never finish.  This is why the Lord said that.  


The Lord promised to those that follow him eternal life.  To those that decide to give up material things in order to have a Christ centered life will receive blessings in return.  How can we put Christ first in our lives?


Well, there are a lot of things that we can do to have Christ first in our lives.  From reading the selected passages in the scriptures, the first thing we need to do is obey his commandments.  He has said that if we love him, we will keep his commandments.  To anyone that wants to keep Christ first in their lives, obeying the commandments will show our true intentions.  The second thing we need to do to have Christ first in our lives is to serve others.  When we give of our tithing, offerings, and fast offering, we are essentially helping someone in need.  We can also serve others with little things.  For example, giving someone a call to check on that person, cooking a family dinner, and there are other things that we can come up with.  


This if from the parable found in Mathew 20:1-16

From this parable we learn that when serving in the Lord’s kingdom, we will all be rewarded the same.  In this case we are talking about eternal life.  This parable can comfort our converts in the church with assurance that they will be rewarded with eternal life as long as their live righteous lives according to the gospel.  I know that there might be people that feel is unfair for each of the laborers to be paid equally.  I would tell this person that God is fair.  We are all working for eternal life, and it doesn’t matter when we started.  What matters is the work put into that goal from the day we started.  There are people that are born in the church and others that are converts later after adulthood.  If they are both worthy in the end of eternal life, they will have it regardless of when they started it.