There is a specific person in my life who is mean and cruel to everyone, who is self-indulgent and narcissistic, yet never faces any obvious consequences. "But they won't go to heaven" came to mind-- however on further reflection, is it not true that someone could be a horrible human being their entire lives, and still go to heaven if they repent and accept Jesus at the last instant?

This raised a spiritual question for me: why bother following God's commandments if one can live however they'd like and wind up with the exact same outcome as a virtuous ascetic monk, or something along those lines?

I found a great answer to that question here. The crux of it is the notion of "leaving things too late": only the Lord knows when your life on Earth will end; you could get scrubbed in a car accident in an instant. Further, only God knows when Jesus will return-- it could be tomorrow even, who is to say? Better accept Jesus now.

The other aspect of it is muscle memory: even our aforementioned ascetic monk sins, and he's devoted his whole life to following God's will. How will someone who has spent an entire life flagrantly sinning and not caring, one hundred percent diametrically have the capacity to reverse course just as the paramedics are arriving and the person has five minutes left to live?

It's not impossible, but it's difficult to put it mildly: if they didn't have the capacity to do it at any other point in their life, what makes them think they will have the capacity later?

And of course, this is side-stepping the "virtue is its own reward"-line of thinking. It's like St. Theresa of Calcutta's "Simple Path": "The fruit of silence is prayer; the fruit of prayer is faith; the fruit of faith is love; the fruit of love is service; the fruit of service is peace." The individual I opened this post mentioning is perhaps the most wretchedly miserable person I've ever known, which is a negative consequence in-and-of itself.

All of the hedonism and sinning-- doing the opposite of the "Simple Path"-- is intended to achieve peace. But in fact it's a fool's errand; it's going about the goal via the totally wrong means.