No reward with your Father in heaven.
Interestingly, the word used is ‘with.’
No reward with you Father in heaven.
Not no reward from you Father in heaven.
The idea of the reward is the fellowship.
First, though, not practicing before man is obvious. We need to eliminate pride, ego, and inferiority from our lives, not do things because of hurt or vulnerability, and not be power-hungry.
Any number of things can possess us, such that we do things to be seen, to be recognized, to gain influence. And that is the problem. Our ego, our need for recognition, possesses us. We are no longer our own; we react to the needs of our ego.
Being in God
If maturity, being in God, and not reacting is NOT practicing our righteousness before man, why even mention a reward in heaven?
For even the idea of a reward in heaven is a folly, base, and carnal.
We have missed the point if we do what we do for a reward in heaven. We are in heaven.
If we die, go to heaven, and have a reward, so what? We Are In Heaven.
Can a reward in heaven add anything to being in heaven?
Jesus, playing a mind game.
Did Jesus create this passage in the Gospels as a test?
Is this a classic rabbinical mind game?
That people take the idea of a reward in heaven seriously is kind of sad.
Yes, life here, living in Jesus, can be really hard and costly.
A child murdered because you will not deny Christ. Getting your own head cut off. Sickness, famine, pestilence.
Yet when our tears are wiped away when we walk into eternity with Jesus, when we no longer see dimly, then heaven, fellowship with God is the reward.
The reward, now.
I would say that the reward promised to us in heaven, for those who do not practice their righteousness before man, is something we can walk in now.
We can realize now that the greatest possible reward in heaven is not some extra gold, seeing how the road outside my house will be paved with gold, nor some extra food, as there are banquet tables, nor fine cloths, having robes of righteousness.
Suppose we realize that our greatest reward in heaven is fellowship, mutual fellowship, and spousal fellowship as if we were the fourth part of the Trinity. In that case, any drive for a reward, now, on earth, or in heaven becomes void or null as we already have the greatest possible reward.
While we do not have the full cognitive awareness of heaven’s fellowship with God, we do have it now.
We have it now.
We have the Holy Spirit in us.
As if we were the Holy of Holies.
As far as God is concerned, the separation of sin is gone.
We just have a hard time conceptualizing this and walking in it.
Death, where is your sting?
It is gone.
It is true that each one of us is yet to walk through that door, but death has no dominion over me. This does require an act of faith. Like sky diving, which I have never done, yet if I were to do it, I would have to trust the pilot, the instructor, the chute packer, and the chute itself, and do the jump. I will only die once, and when I am on the other side of death, I may wonder what all my drama was about.
If I think working now for a reward(a thing) in heaven is a good idea, am I missing out on a far greater reward now? (a person)