Colossians 3:24
Colossians 3:2424because you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as your reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
JWs read "you know that it is from Jehovah you will receive the inheritance as a reward" as confirmation that eternal life is a reward earned through faithful service — tracked meeting attendance, field-service hours, loyal obedience. The "inheritance" is the paradise earth awaiting Great Crowd survivors of Armageddon, granted as compensation for a life of compliance.
Paul's word for "reward" here (antapodosis) is used for recompense, but the content of the recompense is "the inheritance" (tēs klēronomias) — and inheritance in the Pauline corpus is never earned. An heir receives the inheritance because he is a son, not because he worked his way into the will. makes the logic explicit: "if children, also heirs — heirs indeed of God, but joint-heirs with Christ." likewise — "you are no longer a slave but a son; and if a son, then also an heir through God." The inheritance of flows to those who are already sons, and the text is encouragement in ordinary workplace obedience ("whatever you are doing, work at it whole-souled as for Jehovah") — not a scoring formula. The Colossian believers are already "raised up with the Christ" (3:1) and their life is already "hidden with the Christ in God" (3:3). Service flows from secured inheritance, not toward it.