Striving to Enter God’s Rest

In our small group study last night we were talking over Hebrews chapter 4 and the following passage of scripture brought out a lively discussion:

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. (Hebrews 4:11 ESV)

The disobedience that the writer refers to is the unbelief of the Israelites in the incident where the spies returned from the Promised Land and the people refused to enter due to their unbelief. No one in that generation ever entered the land except Caleb and Joshua, as God had said “They shall not enter my rest.”

The interesting part of the passage is the idea of striving to enter God’s rest. How and why exactly would we need to strive to enter God’s rest, and what rest is spoken of?

The rest that we strive to enter is of course ceasing doing the work of the law as a means of obtaining God’s favor. Many Christians have experienced this rest at some point in their Christian life. When we enter this rest it is as if a tremendous burden has been lifted from our shoulders as we recognize that Christ has done all that needs to be done to satisfy the wrath of God on our behalf and we can finally stop our endless striving to work for God’s approval. That we can relate to. But what of this strange striving to enter the rest? Have we not entered it already?

We use the term “once saved always saved” to describe salvation, which is truthful in that once we are saved God will never let us go (eternal security). We need only be saved one time and we do not fall in and out of the grace of God with each transgression and repentance that we experience (as the writer says in Chapter 6, verse 6, to do so would be “crucifying once again the Son of God”). But we have also associated this phrase with the idea that we, having once entered God’s rest, will always remain in God’s rest, and this is simply (and obviously) not the case. While we are once saved, we must constantly strive to rest in the righteousness of Christ and not some attempted righteousness of our own.

We can perceive this drifting in and out of God’s rest in our own lives, but I think very few are ever able to acknowledge what’s happening to them. In churches whose doctrine allows that we can lose and regain our salvation it is interpreted to be the drifting in and out of salvation. In churches where it is believed that people are “once saved always saved” it may be interpreted as never having experienced saving faith. But it is actually the constant ping-ponging of ourselves between the understanding that we are saved by grace and our human desire to save ourselves by the works of the law. It is alternating between trusting completely in Christ’s righteousness (God’s rest) and our own attempted righteousness (the works of the law – the disobedience of unbelief).

If we are not striving to enter the rest we have in Christ, we will revert to our natural mode of attempting to create a righteousness of our own. I believe this process of striving is exactly what Paul refers to in the book of Philippians when he tells his audience:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12-13 ESV)

He reminds his readers that salvation is God’s work, not their own. Strive to continue to understand that it is God who works in you both to will and work his pleasure. Once you begin trying to will and work righteousness on your own, you are on dangerous ground. Fear falling into this self-righteousness – the worst of all forms of disobedience.

I like the way the writer of Hebrews puts this because it gives us an effective way to test ourselves. We know whether or not we are at rest, which tells us exactly whose righteousness we are relying on at any given moment. Are we short-tempered today? There is no rest in that so we must, somehow, be relying upon our own righteousness. What must we do to correct this? Need we be saved again or doubt that we were ever saved to begin with? No, we must strive to enter God’s rest once again. We must lay aside our attempts at righteousness and embrace the only righteousness which God accepts – that of Jesus Christ – as ours (dare I say that this is nothing less than true repentance?). We can easily determine whether we are living according to law or grace by whether we are in a state of spiritual rest.

There is much more to be said on this subject, so perhaps I will explore it over this next week. In the meantime, we must continually strive to enter God’s rest. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless.