How can we enter into God’s rest?
Question: “How can we enter into God’s
rest?”
Answer: The
concept of entering into God’s rest comes from Hebrews 3—4. What is this “rest” the Hebrew writer is
talking about? How do we enter it? And how do we fail to enter it? The writer
to the Hebrews begins his discussion of God’s rest in chapter 3, where he
references the Israelites wandering in the desert. In giving them the land of Canaan, God had
promised them that He would go before them and defeat all their enemies in
order that they could live securely (Deuteronomy 12:9–10). All that was required of them was to fully
trust in Him and His promises. However, they refused to obey Him. Instead, they
murmured against Him, even yearning to go back to their bondage under the
Egyptians (Exodus 16:3; 17:1–7; Numbers 20:3–13).
The particular “rest” referred to here was that of the land of Canaan. Into
that rest God solemnly said the Israelites who disobeyed Him would never enter
(Hebrews 3:11). They had been rebellious. All the means of
reclaiming them had failed. God had warned and entreated them; He had caused
His mercies to pass before them, and had visited them with judgments in vain;
and He now declares that for all their rebellion they should be excluded from
the Promised Land (Hebrews 3:16–19). But, eventually, the next generation did
place their faith in God and, by following the leadership of Joshua, they, some
forty years later, entered into God’s rest, the land of Canaan (Joshua 3:14–17).
Using the Israelites as an example of those who were not resting in God’s
promises, the writer of Hebrews goes on in chapter 4 to make the application
personal, both to the Hebrew Christians and to us: “Therefore, since the
promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you
be found to have fallen short of it” (Hebrews 4:1). The promise that still stands is the promise
of salvation through God’s provision—Jesus Christ. He alone can provide the
eternal rest of salvation through His blood shed on the cross for the remission
of sins. God’s rest, then, is in the spiritual realm, the rest of salvation.
Faith, the author goes on to assert, is the key to entering God’s rest. The
Hebrews had had the gospel preached to them, just as the Israelites knew the
truth about God, but the messages were of “no value to them, because those who
heard did not combine it with faith” (Hebrews 4:2). Some had heard the good news of Christ, but
they rejected it for lack of faith.
Hebrews 4:10–13 explains the nature of this faith. The
kind of faith that enables us to enter into God’s rest is a faith that first
demands that we rest from relying on our own works. Then the writer seemingly
contradicts himself by telling us to make every effort: “For anyone who enters
God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us,
therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by
following their example of disobedience” (Hebrews 4:10–11). What this apparent paradox means is that such
biblical faith involves our submissiveness to God, and our efforts in that
area.
Though we desist in our self-efforts to earn salvation and the promised eternal
rest, we also “make every effort to enter that rest” by choosing to depend
solely on God, to trust Him implicitly, to yield totally to the promises of God
through the free grace of His salvation. Why? So “that no one will fall by
following their [the Israelites’] example of disobedience” (Hebrews 4:11). We either trust ourselves to save ourselves,
or we trust God to do that for us through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
By failing to trust God fully in His promises, we become disobedient and fail
to enter the rest that is eternal life, just as the children of Israel became
disobedient when they failed to enter the Promised Land.
So how do we stop trusting ourselves? How do we place our full trust in God and
His promises? We enter into God’s rest by first understanding our total
inability to enter God’s rest on our own. Next, we enter God’s rest by our
total faith in the sacrifice of Christ and complete obedience to God and His
will. “And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to
those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of
their unbelief” (Hebrews 3:18–19). Unlike the Israelites whose unbelief
prevented them from entering the Promised Land, we are to enter God’s rest by
faith in Him, faith which is a gift from Him by grace (Ephesians 2:8–9).