Salvation and Future Rewards

During my last 2 years or so at Irving Bible Church, I attended the Single Minded class, taught in large part by Dan Lee. We spent a good portion of those years going through the book of Hebrews. Dan's thesis as we went through the book was that the church has conflated the idea of salvation and reward. That is to say, there will be a future reign of Christ when he returns, which will be a physical reality. Even though we can be saved, in the sense of not being eternally damned, that doesn't mean we'll inherit any reward in the future reign of Christ. Abraham bi-passed his first two sons and gave his blessing to Judah instead. The first two sons were still considered sons of Abraham, but they didn't reap the reward their brother did. In the same way, we can be saved, but "as one who barely passes through the flame." Dan argued that much of the "Free Will vs. Predestination" argument has arisen because people have read scripture about the freedom and loss of rewards, and applied those scriptures to the gain and loss of eternal salvation instead. Furthermore, Dan advocates that the reward we will receive is to reign with Christ in His government. He quotes several of the church fathers, and maintains that this concept of reigning with Christ went by the wayside once the Roman empire embraced the church, and asserted that the church itself, through Rome, had become the Kingdom of God; but instead, we should believe that Christ's physical rule on earth is still to come, and a great motivation of ours should be to receive the great reward of ruling with him in his reign.

After studying the scriptures as well as researching the writings of the early church fathers, Dan has finally published an article that articulates the ideas he shared with us in our class. (It's a scholary piece of work, so if you read it, prepare to have your vocubalury expanded by several good words.) You can read the article here:

Hermeneutics: The Distinction Between the Gift of
Salvation and Future Rewards by Dan Lee