Sept 15, 2026 Show with Brian L. Huizinga on “Crowning His Gifts: Gracious Rewards in the Reformed Tradition”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 15th day of September, 2026.

Before I introduce to you my first-time guest today and our topic, I want to remind you all that tomorrow, Wednesday, September 16th, we are featuring once again my dear friend, going back to 1996, Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, who, as you likely know if you listen to this program, is a brilliant, world-renowned theologian, Bible scholar, apologist, debater, author of numerous books.

He is going to be addressing the anti-Calvinism of Dinesh D'Souza, and I'm looking forward to hearing what Dr. White has to say about that, since Dinesh D'Souza is a well-known individual and has been making a lot of noise about his dislike, to say the least, of Calvinism, and he is revealing that he hasn't done much study into the issue.

So we will hear more of what Dr. White has to say about that tomorrow. We're also going to be joined by our most recent annual sponsor of Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor Brandon Myers, who is pastor of Christ the King Reformed Baptist Church in Niles, Illinois.

He'll be on the program with Dr. White and myself, so I'm looking forward to that as well. But today we have, as I mentioned, a first-time guest. His name is Brian L. Huizinga. He's professor of dogmatics and Old Testament studies at the Theological School of the Protestant Reformed Churches in Wyoming and editor of The Standard Bearer magazine, and today he's going to be addressing the theme of his book, Crowning His Gifts, Gracious Rewards in the Reformed Tradition.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Brian Huizinga.

Chris, my pleasure to join you. Thank you very much for the invite. And hearing you speak of James White coming on tomorrow, it's a great honor to be on this program with the likes of James White.

Yes, James is definitely quite a brilliant brother. Well, we have a tradition here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, whenever we have a first-time guest such as yourself, we have those guests give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised and what kind of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them closer to himself and saved them.

And we would love to hear your story.

Well, thanks for asking. It's certainly a privilege to speak of the great things God has done in my life. I would say that the Holy Spirit came into my heart early on in my earliest years, so that I do not remember a time I was not a believer, didn't believe in Jesus, didn't love God as the God of my salvation.

So I grew up as a child who knew and loved the Lord, had a wonderful Christian home with faithful parents, father and mother, went to a wonderful Christian school, brought up in a faithful Reformed church in Granville, Michigan, Granville Protestant Reformed Church, and had a very wonderful, blessed youth.

I would say the Lord brought significant spiritual growth and development in my life, advanced my personal faith later, especially in the early 20s after getting married, I should say my early 20s, after getting married and beginning to have children, and then wrestling with a call to the ministry, at which time also the Lord took my beloved father at an early age due to illness that had a profound impact upon me and my appreciation for the gospel.

But then just considering the ministry, and while I was becoming convinced the Lord was calling me, I remember being struck by John 21, 15 to 17, in Jesus' words, Simon son of Jonas, lovest thou me? And didn't think I had the requisite love for the Lord and for His people to be a minister, but the Lord wasn't finished working, and He kept working in my heart and my life, and eventually brought me into the ministry.

And it is just amazing to me how He expanded my heart and caused me to love Christ more and more, to love His people, to want to be a faithful servant, to serve and to feed His sheep and His lambs. And over the course of my life, I stand in awe how the Lord continually increases my gratitude for all that He has done for me, an unworthy sinner.

So a lot of work yet left for the Holy Spirit to conform me to the image of Christ, of course, still a wretched sinner, but so, so thankful, and more and more thankful as the years go by that He has seen fit to save me and use me in His kingdom.

Hallelujah. And tell us how you believe the Lord made it clear to you that He placed upon your heart to serve His kingdom as a teacher of His word, and eventually even to become an author, as we are going to be discussing in your book today.

Well, for most of my life, I never would have thought that the Lord would call me to the ministry, just a simple, ordinary man growing up. But through the providential circumstances that are always amazing, God increasingly began to show me He had given me gifts that I wasn't using in my present occupation and for which I went to college.

So I became increasingly frustrated. I had abilities I wasn't using, and He really used people, their voices to say to me what I would not have said of myself, that I had certain gifts for the ministry, gifts for teaching, for relating to people.

And so He used that to bring me into the ministry. I certainly never would have thought I had the ability to author a book, but it's like anything in life. You don't write a book from beginning to end.

It's bit by bit, piece by piece, word by word, sentence by sentence, and you put it all together by God's amazing grace, and you end up with a book. So it's His marvelous work.

Rewards in Scripture and the Reformed Confessions

Amen. Well, we are addressing a topic that has been disagreed upon in the body of Christ. And not every Christian theologian, even if they are in most ways a block step with the scriptures, they're very sound and so on, but they don't necessarily agree at least 100 on the issue of rewards in the afterlife.

And why is this an important topic worthy of a book, in your opinion?

Well, first of all, I came to discover that there really is a gap in Reformed theology in this particular area. I don't think it matters what seminary library you enter. If you walk down the aisles of shelves of theological books, you're not going to find a book on rewards, at least not a significant work that comprehensively treats the subject.

So there seemed to be something lacking here, and that caught my attention. In the second place, it's important because the scripture gives a surprisingly large place to the word and the concept of rewards.

And there's no one who taught rewards more than Jesus. You read the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 -7. He's constantly referring to a reward for his disciples. And then you go later in the Bible to the book of Revelation, the letters to the seven churches, Revelation 2 -3.

If you carefully read those letters, time and time again, there's a promise of a reward to those who are faithful, who hold fast. And that's just a brief example. Even look back at the Old Testament. So many times the Lord called his people to obedience, and he encouraged them to it, the performance of it, with a promised reward.

So it's all throughout the Bible that makes it worthy of concentrated study. I would say, in addition, being a Reformed man, I live out of the Reformed confessions, and they definitely address the reward of grace, as it's called, Lord's Day 24, Belgian Confession Article 24.

But the treatment is very concentrated. It's somewhat and mostly polemical in defending the doctrine of justification by faith alone from the attacks by the Roman Catholic Church. And of course, Rome would like to look at the appearance of rewards in scripture, rewards for obedience, and say, that's proof that our good works are meritorious, and they can contribute something to our justification.

So it's in that context the Reformed creeds were written, and they really emphasize, no, not of merit, the reward is all of grace. But there's a lot more that could be said positively, and the confessions don't work everything out.

So that's another reason there's a need for a book. And then finally, I would say, often an unhealthy fear in conservative circles, Reformed churches, of rewards, that maybe we're bringing back a Roman Catholic system of merit if we start teaching rewards.

And maybe the teaching will make people selfish and greedy and no longer live for Christ, but just start living for themselves and what they can get. What? God promises a reward? Okay, now the whole of life becomes one of obsession with earning some reward that God has promised.

And the fear is, it'll steer us away from proper motives and proper devotion to Christ. And so we need to flesh out the scriptures and in harmony with the Reformed confession, give a positive explanation of this important biblical truth.

Eternal Life as the Reward of Grace

Tom, what are we to understand by an eternal reward?

Tom. The eternal reward that God promises for believers in Christ Jesus is the full reality of eternal life. What Scripture calls the inheritance, or Matthew 25, the kingdom that was prepared for you before the foundation of the world.

And that's the teaching of the Reformed confessions as well, that the reward is eternal life. So in Reformed theology, we could think of the ordo salutis, the order of salvation, and it climaxes in glorification.

And so the full glory that the individual believer receives in the new creation, that's the reward. Now, some theologians have tried to make a distinction between eternal life and the reward and start teaching that eternal life is one thing.

Every believer receives it freely by grace in Christ. You have a right to it in justification. We all get eternal life. But then the reward is something additional that God gives according to works. And some people may get a reward, some people may not get a reward.

And unfortunately, that way of thinking starts veering off into the idea that while eternal life is earned by Christ, this so-called reward is really something that we earn by our obedience. But that's been a minority position in the Reformed churches the vast majority of theologians teach.

The reward is nothing less than the full reality of eternal glory in the new creation. And John Calvin, I found, is especially helpful in explaining that God gives to eternal life the title reward. He calls it reward, and then He holds that out in front of us.

And that's to encourage us and incentivize us to be faithful in obedience when obedience is very difficult. So, what is the eternal reward? It's the full reality of eternal life. But now there's more that can be said about that if you want to talk at some point about degrees of glory in the eternal reward.

Degrees of Glory and the Parable of the Workers

Yes, definitely. Because as you were bringing up earlier, the Church of Rome will scoff at, especially Reformed theology, and act as if there is a certain unfairness by God towards humanity in that you can have the person who has been a vile and wretched sinner in many scandalous ways throughout their entire life, could be decades of living in complete and utter rebellion.

And then during a final moment on their deathbed, perhaps a minister or just a faithful Christian sitting by that bedside is presenting the gospel to that person, and the Lord awakens them, and the Lord gives them a new heart, and they receive the message of the gospel joyfully and pass on into eternity into the arms of Christ and the Roman Catholic and even certain varieties of Arminianism and, of course, the cults.

They will find great objection to a belief that a person such as that is going to be in eternity with Christ, and they'll be in the same eternity with Christ as the missionary who dies a martyr's death or just the faithful, ordinary Christian that has lived a godly and moral life from their earliest years of even being able to consciously understand anything about Christ and his word.

And people who have labored much and sacrificed much and those who reject the doctrines of sovereign grace find it outrageous that we would have these two different categories of people being in the same eternity.

But we do believe there are different levels of rewards in the afterlife, correct?

Certainly. To speak to the illustration you just laid out, it's grace. Salvation is by grace alone. What you presented reminds me of Matthew 20, verses 1 through, I'm not sure how far it goes, but that parable of our Lord where you have these workers and some work all day, some work three quarters of the day, some work a half a day, some only work one hour of the day, but in the end, they all get the same amount.

They get one penny, and there's great objection to that. But the Lord is showing he's sovereign, and especially that he's gracious. He does not save according to our thinking, but he saves according to his benevolent heart.

So yes, you could have someone who's a faithful missionary their whole life, and you could have someone who was living in sin their whole life, like one of the two thieves on the cross next to our Lord, and right toward the end of life is remarkably saved by God's grace.

And yes, both go to heaven because salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And the blood of Christ can cover all of our sins, and even a lifetime of sins by one who lived almost his entire life as an unbeliever.

But in addition to that now, the aforementioned passage in Matthew is not denying what virtually all Reformed theologians teach, especially John Calvin and the other great Reformer, Martin Luther, and that is that there are variations of the reward in heaven as far as the blessedness that one experiences and the glory that one displays.

Thinking of the new creation as a new kingdom with various positions and responsibilities and tasks in the new world, we will all be fully glorified. Everyone will experience unspeakable blessedness. There will be no lack anywhere among anyone.

The illustration often used is that of glasses of water. Every person is represented by a glass. I think Jonathan Edwards was the first one I could find who uses this illustration, and many after him.

Every believer like a glass, and every glass is full, even running over. But not every glass is the same size. And God has given to some people a greater capacity for service. He has led them through more and deeper suffering and tribulation like the apostle Paul.

And so, through the whole course of Paul's lifetime, as he's given incredible tasks and responsibilities and made to suffer so much for the gospel, God gives him a certain capacity. And there's an organic connection between that and his capacity for blessedness in the new world.

And he will have a very large cup that is completely full. And then you take maybe another person who lived in sin their whole life like the thief on the cross, and he's saved at the last moment. He didn't live his days suffering for Christ's sake.

He never carried a cross for year after year. He wasn't waging fighting the good fight of faith year after year. He didn't have a position in the kingdom of arduous labor. Right at the end, he's saved and he's brought to heaven.

He gets the reward, but his glass, comparatively speaking, is smaller than that of the apostle Paul. He'll be fully blessed, fully glorified, fully happy, but he won't experience the same measure of blessedness as the apostle Paul, for example, because of how God expanded his capacity.

And the theologians of the Reformation speak about this at length. Martin Luther himself saying that the apostle Paul will be arrayed in far more glory and be a star much brighter than I.

Yes. And just so that our Roman Catholic listeners don't think that I was misrepresenting them, I know that they even offer a hope, although you and I would say it's a false hope, but they offer a hope for people who have deathbed conversions and so on.

But when those people enter into eternity before ever reaching the glorious presence of Christ, they are going to a place that they call purgatory and where their sins must be purged completely before they are worthy of heaven.

And that is a mystery as far as how long that could take, but it could take thousands and thousands of years and requires the payment to the church to lessen the time in purgatory, either by the person themselves before they die or the family of the person.

And we find that teaching atrocious and a robbery of the perfect work of Christ on the cross. And you brought up the believing thief on the cross who repented during his last hours of life. There is no mention of him having to go to a place such as purgatory after he died.

Jesus said, on this day, you will be with me in paradise. So I just wanted to make sure that any Catholic listener did not think I was misrepresenting them. Yeah, very good. And we're going to go to our first commercial break.

If anybody listening has a question of their own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside of the USA.

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Matthew 25 and Humble Service

White on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back, if you just tuned in. Our guest today for the entire program is Brian Huizenga, professor of dogmatics and Old Testament studies at the Theological School of the Protestant Reformed Churches in Wyoming and editor of The Standard Bearer magazine.

And we are addressing the theme of Brian's book, Crowning His Gifts, Gracious Rewards in the Reformed Tradition. And we do have Kyle in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York. And Kyle says, you were speaking earlier about how some Reformed folks are leery to emphasize the rewards that await us in heaven as faithful Christians.

But isn't it true that according to Matthew 25, 31 through 46, the classic passages about the judgment with the sheep and the goats, that the sheep have maintained their humility and don't even realize these wonderful deeds of goodness that they have accomplished in the name of Christ?

Brian Huizenga, Professor of Dogmatics and Old Testament Studies at The Theological School of. Very good. Did you say Kyle? Yes. Well, thanks for that question, Kyle, and that observation of Matthew 25.

I think what's really being emphasized there in Matthew 25 by our Lord is that while there certainly is a gracious reward for all of the good works of obedience performed by the children of God, we don't go through our lives focusing on our good deeds and counting up our good deeds and registering them and dwelling upon them.

We just live for the Lord out of gratitude for what He's done and in love for Him. And by the time we get to the end of our life, we will be able to say with the sheep on His right hand, I don't even remember this or that work, because we didn't live our life so focused on what we were doing, but on what the Lord has done for us.

Amen. And by the way, Kyle, if you give us your full mailing address in Mastic Beach, Long Island, you will receive a free copy of the book that we are addressing, Crowning His Gifts, Gracious Rewards in the Reformed Tradition, compliments of Reformed Free Publishing Association, who has given us a limited number of free copies to give away today to those who have taken the time to submit questions.

And is your study that you have written about in your book about rewards, is it only related to rewards in the afterlife, or does it also involve rewards already in this life?

The latter. It examines rewards in this life, which is required by the Reformed Elohim because of the Lord's Day 24 of the Heidelberg Catechism, which says that God rewards our good works, not only in eternal life, but in this life, which God will reward in this and in a future.

Life is the exact wording. So, yes, we have to take up the study of temporal rewards. I found this to be the least treated of all the subtopics in this whole broad subject of rewards. So, it was exciting to read some of the theologians and pull out of their works their helpful thoughts on God's rewarding good works already in this life.

So, the book certainly covered that.

And we do have a listener question that providentially relates to that very issue that you discussed. Let's see here. Madison in Minneapolis, Minnesota, says, one of the confusing things for believers to grapple with is that people who live vile and greedy and wicked lives very often have many blessings on this earth, live comfortably and happily.

Of course, not after they die. We all agree without Christ that they will be in an eternity in hell, but it seems that God has blessed them very often greatly. Of course, I know that some die tragic deaths due to their wickedness and their abuses of drugs and things like that, but not all of them do.

And yet, there are those that live very horrible lives as far as an earthly standard of life and have very arduous trials and even are martyred. How do we explain that to others when we are discussing the rewards in this life?

It's a very good question, and it actually reminded me of many of the Psalms, when David, for instance, crying out to God because he sees an injustice, the wicked prospering, and so on. But anyway.

Yeah, that's an excellent observation by Madison. I appreciate the question. A couple of things. What comes to mind immediately is the perplexion of the psalmist Asaph in Psalm 73, and that was exactly the issue.

Asaph's entire expectation as a child of God, a believing child of God, was defied by what he observed, what he witnessed. It appeared that the wicked who hated the Lord were prospering, their eyes standing out in fatness, they have so much wealth.

And he's looking around and he sees the righteous like himself, suffering, being plagued all the day long, and he was perplexed. What is this? Does the Lord bless the wicked? Does the Lord punish the righteous?

Until the pivot point of Psalm 73, I believe it's around verse 16 or 17, until he went to the sanctuary and God restored him and the understanding of his faith by the Word, and he came to see that actually, though the wicked appear to be blessed, they're not being blessed at all.

But they are the objects of God's wrath, and they're on a slippery slope that is leading to their everlasting destruction. And God is revealing the perversity of their hearts and their ingratitude by giving them so many good things.

He doesn't do that in his love for them, or as we in the Protestant Reformed churches would say, he doesn't do that because he has a common grace for them. That's his providence. He gives them many good things, but it exposes their unbelief, their ingratitude, and their being fattened up for the great judgment that awaits.

Now, what about the righteous? And here's the second point, and that comes to this whole matter of temporal rewards. The Reformed tradition really emphasizes that though there are temporal rewards, and Calvin will speak of certain privileges or certain honors that God can give his people in this life, the main thing is the eternal reward.

And you need to keep the eye of faith on the eternal reward, because often in this life, in God's good pleasure, the obedience of his children and their wholehearted faithfulness is met with opposition and hostility and suffering.

You think of Joseph in the Old Testament, an outstanding example of faithfulness, trying to be lured by Odiphor's wife to violate the seventh commandment. He resists. How can I do this sin so wickedly against my God?

And you would think after all that faithfulness, there would be an abundance of temporal rewards bestowed upon him, and he'd be elevated. He gets thrown into the darkest prison of the king. Now, it's true later on in his life, God would elevate him right to Pharaoh's right hand.

In this life, he would elevate him, but for many years, what did he receive for all of his faithfulness? Prison, loneliness, suffering. And you could go through the Bible and see that is the case often.

The apostle Paul is so faithful, and yet he is maligned and reproached and hated and slandered by false apostles. So, the Reformers emphasize that while there are temporal rewards in this life, God's under no obligation to give this or that according to our expectation.

Keep your eye fixed on the eternal reward. That's the main thing.

Amen. Yes, and thank you for pointing out that it was Asaph in Psalm 73 who was dealing with that very issue of the bafflement on the prosperity of the wicked. Let's see here. We have another question from a listener.

Joey in New Rochelle, New York. And I have to enlarge Joey's email because the font is so small. And Joey in New Rochelle says, if I understood you correctly, I think you said that degree of glory is not related to degree of Christian works.

You called that works view the minority, but then you suggested that degree of glory is related to different individual capacities. But the comparison you gave is the thief on the cross and the apostle Paul.

Could you explain how that is different? I ask because the thief on the cross is a near-death conversion, which really tells us nothing about his capacity for good or for God. Can you please explain how.

That is different from comparing their degrees of works? If I misspoke, I apologize for that, Joey. There is a degree of blessedness and glory in the eternal reward that corresponds to the good works of obedience that were lived out in this life.

And that's the teaching of a passage like Revelation 22 verse 12, where Jesus says, my reward is with me to give to every man according as his work shall be. So, right there, very explicitly in the Bible, there's a correlation between the reward and the works that preceded the reward.

The Bible never says that there will be a reward on the basis of the works we perform. Everything we ever receive from God now and into all eternity has been earned by the perfect work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Only his works can merit with our God. But there is a correlation between the works of this life and the reward in the life to come. And that's the truth I was trying to address. I can say more about that if you'd like me to, Chris.

Yeah, sure. The grand reality is that from all eternity, God chooses each one of his people in election, and he determines the entire course of their life. He determines everything about them, and he brings them forth by his marvelous work.

He saved them by planting them into Jesus Christ, gives them a true and living faith, justifies them, sanctifies them by the Holy Spirit, puts them in a certain historical context, gives to each one a certain capacity for labor, creates all the circumstances of their life, sovereignly directs every step of their life.

And he makes each one different, as he does in the animal kingdom. Animals are so different. Or even in a beehive, you have all kinds of different bees in the beehive. Same thing is true in the church.

You have all kinds of different believers, and every difference has been determined eternally by God. And as he leads his people through this life, he equips each one of us by his Almighty Spirit to live unto him in good works of obedience.

And there are variations in work. The works produced by each individual Christian are not identical. The whole organic body of service rendered by, let's say, for example, the Apostle Paul is different than the whole body of service rendered by the believing thief on the cross.