What if I told you that Heaven is kind of overrated? I would be willing to guess that this would cause a lot anger with most people. "Heaven, overrated? Why this is an outrage." That is the response I picture, but I picture it coming from an old man in a cabby hat and cardigan sweater. The thing is, I am sure the demographic of people that would be upset about this statement is almost universal. Old and young, black and white, American and everyone else (figured that is how most Americans see the world).
But why is this? Heaven can't possibly be overrated because that is our reward for being Christians. In other words, Heaven is the reason that we serve God. If you step back from that, serving God just because Heaven is waiting is a really selfish reason to follow Christ. I don't think that Jesus ever made that case when trying to get people to follow him either..."Follow me and then you can go to heaven."
Sure he does make it ambiguously clear that if we reject him, hell is waiting, but he never poses that as a specific reason to follow him. So I will ask this question: Would you serve God if there was no heaven or hell? Now that is tricky. What if there is no punishment or reward for anything that we do?
Hebrews 9:14 says this:
14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (NAS)
This verse seems to suggest that serving is the point. You see, Christ didn't die so that we could go to Heaven. Christ died so that we could be brought back into a relationship with the Creator. It was all about the relationship. That is the true reward of Christianity. We have the privilege of knowing GOD. How cool is that. We can ask him things and we can simply talk to him.
We shouldn't serve God because if we do we get to Heaven. We should serve God because we get to serve God.
Christianity is in the relationship, not the reward.
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