We’re in a four-week series exploring how God’s Word shaped the work of C.S. Lewis—the author of Mere Christianity, The Chronicles of Narnia, and other beloved works. One of the most obvious ways the Word shaped Lewis’s work is found in today’s passage: For most of his life post-salvation, Lewis was in intentional community with other Christians.

During the 1930s and 40s, Lewis met on a near-weekly basis with a group called the Inklings, which was marked by three distinct characteristics.

First, the core members of the Inklings were all serious Christians, including Lewis, Hugo Dyson, Charles Williams, and Lord of the Rings creator, J.R.R. Tolkien. Notes from their meetings make clear that their gatherings enabled each other to renew their minds with the truths of God’s Word.

Second, the Inklings were also all writers. They didn’t just love the Lord; they loved literature as well, which enabled them to not only encourage each other spiritually but also vocationally.

Finally, many of the Inklings were marked by genuine humility and lived out Paul’s command to “in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (Philippians 2:3-4). 

Take Tolkien and Lewis as case-in-point. While these men were great friends, they were also great rivals. And yet Lewis was the chief cheerleader of Tolkien’s work. As Tolkien said of Lewis, “He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my ‘stuff’ could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought [The Lord of the Rings] to a conclusion.”

Knowing that The Lord of the Rings would compete directly with The Chronicles of Narnia, that must have required a great deal of humility on Lewis’s part. But this, Lewis said, is “The real test of being in the presence of God…that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object.”

If you want to work with increased levels of excellence and obedience to God’s Word, having your own group of Inklings is critical. If you’re in a group like this—maybe in your local church—praise God! If you’re not, find one. Because, in the words of Jen Wilkin, “The Christian faith holds no room for individualism.”

C.S. Lewis was one of the greatest Christian apologists of the 20th century. But up until his early thirties, he was an ardent atheist.

How did God bring about Lewis’s radical transformation? By appealing first to his heart and then to his mind.

It all started when a 17-year-old Lewis was waiting for a train in England. To pass the time, he purchased a novel titled Phantastes, and as he began to read, something remarkable happened. As one of Lewis’s biographers explains, “everything was changed for Lewis as a result of reading the book. He had discovered a ‘new quality,’ a ‘bright shadow,’ which seemed to him like a voice calling him from the ends of the earth.” 

Lewis had no idea at the time that the book’s author, George MacDonald, was a Christian pastor. Because the novel was no sermon. It was a parable written to awaken desire in the soul rather than preach truth to the mind.

This experience, which Lewis dwelled on frequently until his conversion some fifteen years later, lends credence to what the Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal once argued—that “there was little point in trying to persuade anyone of the truth of religious belief. The important thing, he argued, was to make people wish that it were true….Once such a desire was implanted within the human heart, the human mind would eventually catch up with its deeper intuitions.”

This is precisely what happened to C.S. Lewis, and it’s a philosophy he carried into his own work after coming to faith in Christ, most famously in The Chronicles of Narnia. Christians who read those novels will clearly see Jesus reflected in the lion, Aslan. But many non-Christians won’t. They will only see a story they desperately want to be true.

In writing in this way, Lewis’s work followed the form of his Savior’s. As Lewis pointed out, Jesus rarely lectured but instead used “paradox, proverb, [and] parable” to awaken people’s hearts to the beauty of his Kingdom.

You and I can do the same today. How? By living a parable of Christ’s love for his enemies, and by seeking to bless our enemies and competitors. By living out parables of Christ’s humility by working to place others in the spotlight rather than ourselves. By telling stories of redemption that are so beautiful and true that “people wish that they were true.”

C.S. Lewis’s story reminds us that God can use our subtle parables to make people receptive to our explicit preaching. Work to that end today!

I hope this series has inspired you to chase hard after the remarkable reward of your work physically lasting into eternity. But you may be thinking, Jordan, it doesn’t feel quite right to be motivated by these eternal rewards.

I know I felt that way for years. Before I address this feeling of guilt, I want to make it crystal clear that Jesus is the ultimate treasure of heaven—not our work being considered “the glory of the nations.” That said, there are at least three reasons why we should be comfortable unashamedly chasing after the rewards God promises us.

First, God encourages us to. If God didn’t want us to be motivated by eternal rewards, then why did Jesus spend so much time talking about them? In Matthew 6:1-6 Jesus mentioned three rewards in just six verses! As Dr. Randy Alcorn says, “If we maintain that it’s wrong to be motivated by rewards, we bring a serious accusation against Christ!”

Second, we should be free from the guilt of chasing after eternal rewards because most eternal rewards are tied to sacrifice. They require giving up something in the present for something far greater in the future (see Colossians 3:23-24 and Luke 6:22-23 as examples). Maybe that’s why Scripture is constantly saying that these rewards are an act of justice (see Hebrews 6:10, Jeremiah 17:10, and Revelation 22:12).

I don’t know about you, that idea makes me uncomfortable. Because I know you and I don’t “deserve” a single thing from God. But God in his incomprehensible goodness and grace says he will “repay” us for the good we do. Why? John Eldredge explains saying, “God seems to be of the opinion that no one should be expected to sustain the rigors of the Christian life without…being brazenly rewarded for it.”

Finally, we should boldly chase after eternal rewards because the more rewards we have, the more gifts we will be able to bring to Jesus. Look back at Isaiah 60—one of the core passages of this series. The people aren’t bringing “the glory of the nations” into the New Jerusalem for their glory, but for God’s. They bring their ships, incense, and refined “silver and gold, to the honor of the Lord” (v. 9).

The same will be true for us. When Jesus graciously redeems the work of our hands and carries our paintings, skyscrapers, books, and inventions into eternity, we will take those rewards and lay them right back down at the feet of our King. So go and do your work with excellence, love, and in accordance with God’s commands today, brazenly chasing after that reward!