Do You Want Heaven for the Wrong Reason?
- Scripture: 1 Peter 3:17–22 Topics: The Gospel, Suffering
Would you die for a three-letter word?
The apostle Peter wrote a book to give Christians words to die on. At the foundation, it is “the good news that was preached to you” (1 Peter 1:25), the gospel of Jesus Christ. By understanding what’s “good” about the gospel, Christians fortify their souls to withstand even the most terrible suffering the world can produce. And that good news hangs on a three-letter word.
Peter tells us that “it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil” (1 Peter 3:17), and the reason he gives for this — the reason Christians should prefer suffering, pain, even death over evil — is signaled in the word “for.” It is better to suffer faithfully than to turn away from God for “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).
If we could slip away from God’s anger, or enter heaven, or get our sins forgiven but still not get to God, the Christian hope would be worthless. Suffering pain or death would not be worth doing good and remaining faithful to God. Yet this is precisely what God gives us in the gospel: Christ suffered to open a way to God.
I wrote just yesterday about Hell and various doctrines related to it. I’ve met pastors who want to frighten you away from Hell.
You might know, some of my life has been involved in advertising writing and sometimes we debate whether we should present “fear of loss” or “desire for gain.”
I think when it comes to WHY you should want Heaven for the right reasons, it should be for desire for gain. Desire to gain your entry to eternal happiness in God. That is what He wants for you. He wants your friendship, eternal happiness, and He wants us to work with him to make great things happen. Finally He wants to reproduce himself in each of us – in you. And so one day “We shall be like him.”
1 John 3:2 (NIV) NIV
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
Gaining God just to avoid his wrath is the wrong reasoning. Seek God so that we might gain all He plans for us.
Inspirational Notes from:
Resource by John Piper https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/do-you-want-heaven-for-the-wrong-reason
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