Cease from your works, enter His rest

One of the most beautiful parts of the Gospel is the blessed rest that our Savior gives to His children. However, it is amazing how much this doctrine is bombarded in the name of "getting things done" and "not being lazy."

Consider this, is a person "lazy" when he realizes his pitiful state and desires to strive to enter the rest of God by meditation on His Word? Furthermore, how can a saint "get things done" when he realizes the dead state in which he is? There is nothing that he can do.

Nevertheless, mature saints will realize that resting in the Faithful One is no mere excuse for laziness. It is, rather, a declaration of dependence upon the free grace of the sovereign Christ to accomplish every good thing in this life. The only thing you will accomplish by trying to "get things done" is seen as filthy rags in the eyes of the Creator.

What is there left to do then? Well, understanding that anything that is worked out through us by God is "done" by His grace alone will help define the word "do." Consequently, Christ becomes the "doer"; and we remain the vessel. Therefore, we never need to use the word "do"; but in all cases, we use the word "be." For therein lies the blessed truth of producing fruit as a result of who we are in Christ, the true vine. When we understand that fruit is the result of resting in the Faithful One and not the result of our running, striving, or working, we can rest in who Christ has made us by continually ceasing from our dead works that bring only sin and strife and entering into the rest of trusting Christ to do the work and produce the fruit through us.

This, all of this, is based on the foundation of the Sovereign, Creator God. If God is not completely sovereign, our rest is not complete. Our rest begins in His sovereign grace which must be more stubborn than our sin in order to actually bring rest. Anything else is a rest made out of straw. It is a surface rest and nothing else.

Think of the implications, if God is sovereign and He does completely save and He does produce the fruit through us and He does command us to rest completely from our works, then Christ truly does give rest to the weary and burdened.

I ask you, O eternal-security based believer, do you rest from your works or hide your failures?