On Rest – 01

(Edited by sister Cheryl Lowe)

On seeking the Lord earnestly, and our rest in God

Many are the seemingly self-contradictory sets of principles in God. This proposal of simultaneous earnest pursuit and rest is one example. And like many others, it puzzles us as a spiritual man when we are earnestly seeking God. It lends to many a struggle of the soul and spirit from within, and even concerning aspects of our lives from without.

In various teachings, the Lord Jesus encourages us to always seek God in earnest. In that light, rest, when alluding to a composure of our self-assuredness, is seemingly excluded if we are to passionately seek Him in the exercise of our faith. Indeed, here lies a common controversy concerning what He means by seeking and resting.

If rest is the goal, faith the means for its attainment. We’d better first address the “goal” of our rest, then the works of our faith. We would want to know where to go, then learn how to get there.

So, what is rest?

Firstly, we need to acknowledge, just like many of God’s attributes and ways, they are always contrary to man’s orientation and imagination. This is the very reason that we are to learn to die to the “old self” and to take on, or grow into, the full stature of Christ, as our “new self”.  I use the term “self” here to denote a sense of the sovereignty of our being. That is, “I am who I am,” or at least whom I presume to be. In other words, we are our own god, or rather as Paul puts it rightfully, a slave to a sinful nature (fallen from the purpose and reason of why God made us), an alien and stranger to our real “self”. Only in Christ Jesus could this spiritual blindness, or this “veil of our flesh”, be taken away. It is to be done thru the spiritual enlightenment wrought by the work of the Holy Spirit, thru our faith and the obedience thereof in Christ. (2 Cor. 3, Eph. 1)

When we believed the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and our sonship in God the Father, we recognized that Jesus, being the first-born among many sons, now has rescued us from the wretched old state of our being. He has granted us liberation into His own divine being. When Peter admonished us to “be holy (set apart, different from the common man), for God is holy (not of this world, of different origin in His being, and different designation in His operations or works)”, evidently he had in his mind the idea of our being “born again” into the life of God thru our faith in (and our obedience to) Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Yes, he had in his mind this work of God’s life for His sons, even our conformity into the image and likeness of Christ Jesus.

So, God allows us to have no rest with our old self, but rather we are to be rid of it in order gain His life in Christ Jesus. Then what is His idea of rest for us as a spiritual man? What are its differences from man’s idea of rest? We will continue to expound on this next time.

(to be continued…)