#DailyDevotion God Does Not Forget Your Good Works Of Love To Him & The Saints

Heb. 6 ⁹Although we say this, we are convinced that for you, dear friends, there are better things that mean salvation. ¹⁰God is righteous to remember your work and the love you showed for Him as you helped His holy people and still help them. ¹¹But we want every one of you to show the same zeal to make certain of your hope until the end, ¹²and not get lazy but be like those who by believing and being patient inherit what is promised.

So after the severe preceding warning about falling away without repentance we have a very nice encouragement from the author. While “those” people may fall away, he is convinced you will not. He believes there are better things that mean salvation for you. He has better things to speak of that lead to salvation. Those things we shall see are the work and person of Jesus Christ, whose person and work gain for us a free salvation.

For the moment though, he focuses on us. We live in such a communistic/socialistic era of thinking, we look at our works of faith like they are nothing. We dare not think God will regard them or reward them lest others not be rewarded and/or granted something better than anyone else. To correct this thinking he says, “God is righteous to remember your work and the love you showed for Him. . .” It is righteous to reward good works. It is a righteous thing to treat those better who are diligent and abundant in good works. It is an unrighteous thing to treat and reward everyone the same even if others have been lazy in the faith and who while they may not have been committing active sins, they have been busy living in sins of omission.

We are all rewarded for our faith (which itself is a gift of God) with the resurrection to eternal life. In this we are all the same. None of us earns salvation more than another. However, the Word of God is replete with statements indicating those who do more in faith will be rewarded more in the world to come. Those who are faithful in little will be given greater things to do in the world to come and those who are unfaithful, even what they have will be taken from them.

So it is important for us, because God is righteous, He is also impartial, and will reward each of us according to our works, to show love for Him and His holy people. We probably need to talk about that a little. Another nice little socialist streak that has infected the Christian Church is that we treat all people the same. Everyone receives should receive the same love of action from us as anyone else. However, St. Paul says in Gal. 6, ” ¹⁰So whenever we have a chance, let us do good to everyone but especially to the household of believers.” In 1 Joh 3 it says, “¹¹This is the message you have heard from the beginning: Love one another.” One another in this context is our fellow Christians. We are called to love our neighbor as ourselves, even if they are not Christians. Jesus commanded us to love our fellow Christians though as He has loved us. We should therefore pay special attention to members of our congregations to love them with the love of Christ.

We are also reminded here not to get lazy in these acts of love. We called in patience and faith to be busy showing love for our fellow Christians and therefore to the Father in these works, trusting we will inherit the kingdom of God and God Himself in the world to come, believing we will be rewarded if we do not give up.

Heavenly Father, grant us such faith in Your promises, that our faith impels us to show You love by loving all Your children in our midst, and grant unto us patience and endurance until the end. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.