Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. You all send us some really good Bible questions. And to ask a really good Bible question, you have to send us perplexing texts. And that's what you do with great frequency. Thank you. I've said in the past that our most asked about text in the entire Bible in our history as a podcast is

Romans 922. We talked about that in ABJ 1720. Romans 922 is a text just rife with questions.

Well, the third most asked about Bible text in our inbox is 2 Corinthians 510, a text about

some form of final judgment for believers

that says we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive

what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. We're reading that in our

Bible reading tomorrow, and we know that rewards will be unequally distributed in

heaven. That's been well covered on the podcast over the years, as you can see in the APJ book,

pages 363, 364, that section. But Carolyn has another angle in mind to this question about

how rewards ebb and rise in an angle we have not looked at yet on the podcast based

on this text. Pastor John, hello, Carolyn writes, based on 2nd Corinthians 510, can we lose rewards in

heaven that we previously accumulated in life? Like, let's say I have a great year and serve the Lord

joyfully. But the next year I sin grievously, like sexual sin,

for example. As I understand my Roman Catholic friends, those past rewards would get washed

away by the later sin. Or more subtly, I've heard elderly people in my life suggest something

similar, not for sin, but in becoming intellectually incapacitated in later age

in being unable to really live a fully fruitful life for Christ, that the works they did

all their life would slowly ebb away. Would the incapacities of later years, or the sins of future year negate or cause to wane the rewards earned from previous years?

My answer, and I'll try to show that it's biblical, is no.

The good works of a true Christian will never be canceled out,

not by anything. The good deeds will always have their reward that God considered fitting

when we did them.

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