Saturday 9 February 2013

God's day - the best day

Tomorrow is Sunday; the Lord's Day; the day of holy rest; the day when Christ arose and made all things new.

What is the week without Sunday? It's an endless churning; a restless toil; effort without space to step back and enjoy or reflect.

There is no rest for the wicked; and since most of our world is wicked, they reject God's rest and receive back the "reward" of unending toil. Those who teach that there is no God-appointed day of rest for believers now are, whether advertantly or inadvertently, encouraging us to join the wicked in their dreary restlessness. No thanks.

But godly toil that is punctuated by godly rest is enjoyable toil, punctuated by enjoyable rest. It's not wrong to enjoy either toil or rest. It's not worldly to enjoy God's world, because that's the same world which Jesus now rules, and not another.

Jesus made all things new, and so his day comes first, not like the Old Testament Sabbath. Man's rest is not on the basis of his completed toil, which can never come up to the mark, but of Christ's completed and perfect toil, which is then the basis and motivation for us to rise up afterwards to follow after him. He has subdued the devil through his work on the cross; we celebrate and rest in that fact, and then go out to complete the mopping-up operation.


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