Power to get eternal life

-D&C 45:8

In this verse God does not offer eternal life as a reward.  He offers power to get eternal life as a reward.

That’s a big difference.

Most Christians generally get that Hell is not and should not be an arbitrary punishment  .  They have different theories about how and why, but the general idea is that what we call Hell is more or less a natural consequence of sin, like being thirsty is a natural consequence of wandering out into the desert without water.  This general idea seems generally correct to me.

What we do not have as clear in our minds is that Heaven is also not arbitrary.  It is a natural result of becoming a certain way.  Heaven is what happens naturally to the greatly good.  There can be different accounts of the mechanism, but what all should agree is that heaven and being heavenly isn’t something artificial that God bolts on to you.  Through grace He helps you to become heavenly, and then heaven happens to you because it must, because it is inevitable.  That is the difference between being given eternal life and being given power to get eternal life.