If you are a grace believer—unlike many people in Christendom—you are not worried about being judged for your eternal salvation because Jesus settled that issue the moment you believed in Him for eternal salvation:
“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life” (John 5:24).
However, there is a matter of your standing in Messiah’s future kingdom, i.e. of the rewards, treasure, and inheritance it is possible to “lay up” there. “Am I living a rewardable life?” is a reasonable question for you to ask.
What does living in light of those future rewards look like? Here is a helpful quote about George Müller (1805-1898), and how the doctrine of rewards influenced how he lived his life (thanks to Bill Fiess for sharing):
He kept continually before him his stewardship of God’s property; and sought to make the most of the one brief life on earth, and to use for the best and largest good the property held by him in trust. The things of God were deep realities, and, projecting every action and decision and motive into the light of the judgment-seat of Christ, he asked himself how it would appear to him in the light of that tribunal. Thus he sought prayerfully and conscientiously so to live and labour, so to deny himself, and, by love, serve God and man, as that he should not be ashamed before Him at His coming. But not in a spirit of fear was this done; for if any man of his generation knew the perfect love that casts out fear, it was George Müller. He felt that God is love, and love is of God. He saw that love manifested in the greatest of gifts—His only-begotten Son: at Calvary he knew and believed the Love that God hath to us; he received it into his own heart; it became an abiding presence, manifested in obedience and benevolence, and, subduing him more and more, it became perfected so as to expel tormenting fear and impart a holy confidence and delight in God (Pierson, George Müller of Bristol, p. 299, emphasis added).
When Pierson says that Müller received the love of God in his heart, and it became an abiding presence in him, Bob worried some people might think that is the condition of salvation. I do not think that is what Pierson meant, or what his message communicates. But to clarify, Pierson is talking about how Müller grew in his relationship with God. We are called not only to believe in Jesus’s promise (John 3:16), but after, to abide in His love:
“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love” (John 15:9).
Love begets love. And when you live your life out of love for God, expressed in love for your neighbors, as Müller did, you will certainly not be ashamed when the Lord comes.
