REST AND PEACE THAT IS REAL
09/01/21 15:03
Many of us are bound to effort. Some of us to ostentatious effort. Seeking self-worth from our work or religious life is a widespread form of slavery. We are in a good place when we already possess self-worth. When we see ourselves as worthy because we know we are loved and celebrated as sons and daughters of God.
SABBATH REST
Happy and at peace is the person who is self-assured and at peace in simply being themselves – without needing to be noticed, or working to be seen as a worthwhile and valuable person. Which is to say, working to be loved.
FREEDOM AND FRUITFULNESS
If you do what you do, simply because you are being you and being a natural expression of yourself, you are free. Certainly free from the influence of those WORKERS, who have never experienced the Sabbath Rest of resting in themselves. Resting because they are in God’s rest and resting satisfied with their completeness for that moment and season.
REAL HOLINESS
‘Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience’ Heb 4.11 NIV. Obedience here is defined as living in the extravagant provision of the Lord, rather than making religion out of the scarcity to which we are accustomed.
REST
You can have a Sabbath life. Jesus is your rest from human restlessness. You have it when you are the I AM of yourself and not a clone of someone else and not measuring yourself worth against a set of legal abstractions.
IDENTITY OF NEW BIRTH
We are quite different persons when we see Jesus as expressing Himself as us, rather than us attempting to do the fruits of the Spirit or a list of denominationally defined virtues.
You have Sabbath rest when Christ is your life. When you are not striving to find an identity that can be honoured and loved because God has already honoured you in His Son, in the cross and in His sweeping you into the Family of God forever. Jesus has done more than make you a Christian. He has made you - you.
HE IS US
By the one act of atonement and the continuous atoning life of Jesus He is our vicarious humanity and the living representation of our real self. The Lord’s Table was never about moping about the cross. It’s about Christ becoming one substance with you.
In Him you become the self, envisaged from the foundation of the earth and the real self who is being revealed day by day as you, as you enter the rest that is Jesus your life. This is the real self who is the revelation of Christ’s glory as you.
CONTRACTS AND TRANSACTION
Primitive religion has us bound in a constant bargain. I’ll do this for you God, so that you will do this for me. This is the old covenant’s ‘obey and live’ treadmill. But this is not the new covenant and it’s not what we inherited. It’s so different. It is, ‘I have given you my life to enable you to live your life as you.’ This is exactly what our new birth is – being ourselves by Christ being us.
This is both the gift of eternal life and the gift of everyday life with Jesus as our life. You are graced with the freedom to be who you are – even in your sin. But you are graced also to become who you really are.
SEEING NEW BIRTH AS IT IS
Advancing from glory to glory is none other than becoming our real selves in Jesus and breaking free from degradations and bondages because Christ’s resurrected life is ours. Francois Du Toit Explains what the law of liberty is and is not.
IT’S NOT THE LAW OF OBLIGATION
“The law of perfect liberty does not rely on man’s ability and disciplined performance to obey and perform routine regulations and commandments. Like the law of gravity, this law works spontaneously within a specific ‘magnetic’ field of influence.
Living under the law of Moses or any moral law for that matter, depends entirely upon the individual’s willpower and self-discipline to consistently adhere to and obey the requirements of the law. Thus the law of obligation became the basis of man’s experience of condemnation, and a sense of failure and shortcoming.
What keeps religion enslaved to this law is fear of punishment and a hope for reward, whether it is the thought of escaping hell and gaining heaven one day, or at least the pious feeling of applause and recognition now. Any measure of success achieved produced a ‘holier than thou’ attitude, which could easily become the breeding ground for hypocrisy.” (1)
CHRIST OUR LIFE
This is why Godliness is found in Christ your life and not in your participation in a contract, in Cherry-picking bits of law or latching on to iconic pieties and partisan moral positions.
We need not engage in virtue signalling when Christ is our life. Virtue signalling is not required to ourselves, to God or to others. We are who we are as the manifestation of Christ. To live in the incarnation is to enjoy oneness with God and to become the true expression of our real selves as sons/daughters of God. In this mode we are life giving spirits, imparting Kingdom life to all we do.
(1) Du Toit, Francois. God Believes in You (Kindle Locations 412-419). Mirror Word Publishing. Kindle Edition.