Rest from your works

Hebrews 4:10 For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Rest from your works to justify yourself before God. That’s the encouragement from today’s Scripture. He’s not suggesting that we rest from our good works or from living to love with Jesus. It helps to remember that the author was writing to Hebrews whose identity was with the keeping of the Law of God. The apostles Paul, John, Peter, and Jude dealt with the teaching of the Judaizers, a party of Jewish Christians in the early Church, who either held that circumcision and the observance of the Mosaic Law were necessary for salvation and in consequence wished to impose them on the Gentile converts, or who at least considered them as still obligatory on the Jewish Christians. God rested on the seventh day because His creative work was done. The Holy Spirit tells us in this verse that the person who has been given faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, can rest like God did. He trusts that God’s work for His justification before God was finished through Jesus’ righteousness and death on the cross. This frees us from the burden of the Law which can be summed up in one word—love. Gal. 5:14. “For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” When we live to love with Jesus, we are not only trusting in the work of Jesus through His life and death to satisfy the Law’s demands for us to love always, but we are trusting in His life dwelling within us to glorify God by producing the fruit of love in our lives. We have a heart now that we are born again to obey God’s commands, so work, but we don’t work under the burden of law-keeping and fear of punishment. We aren’t trying to get God’s favor or acceptance through our moral behavior. In Christ, we already have it! So now, that we have come to faith in Christ, everyday is a Sabbath rest—God’s work of salvation is finished. It is crucial that we realize the love God has poured out in our hearts by giving us faith to believe and trust in Jesus (see Rom. 5:1-5). We are perfectly and completely loved by God. So we can rest with Him as we love with Him. No unbelief. No fear. No burden. We can live in freedom and joy as we love with Him, knowing we are loved and accepted in Christ by faith.