How does it go? Christ the Sabbath Rest...

[BobRyan]

I am having an issue here...

1. The Sabbath Rest, instituted by God in the Old Covenant as a day of rest from all physical labor and toil...except for the ministration of the priests, they still had to perform their daily mandates EVERY day, even on the Sabbath.

2. Christ is said to be the fulfillment of the Law, which includes the Sabbath day of rest.

3. Scripture seems to allude to this rest in Christ being "rest from working for eternal life," which seems ludicrous to me because eternal life was never a promise, nor provided for, in the Old Covenant. The OC Sabbath rest had to do with rest from physical work and toil, not working to please God so they could be saved.

4. So my dilemma is this: where does the Sabbath rest from daily toil and physical labor turn into spiritual rest in Christ from "working for salvation?"

I don't see it, does anyone have insight into this?

Thanks, and blessings to all!

Christ fulfilled the Law "Love God with all your heart" Deut 6:5.
Christ fulfilled the Law "Love your neighbor as yourself" Lev 18:18
Christ fulfilled the Law "Honor your Father and Mother" Ex 20:12.

And so must we as Christians - obey the moral law of God.

Those are "prescriptive" laws. They define sin vs obedience and they (along with all the TEN Commandments) are written on heart and mind under the NEW Covenant.

The ceremonial laws were "predictive" predicting the sacrifice of Christ. They were given in animal sacrifices and offerings. That ended at the cross according to Heb 10. But the moral law remains and it includes the TEN Commandments.


The Sabbath was given in Gen 2:1-3 in Eden 1000's of years before Sinai.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[DamianWarS]

So my dilemma is this: where does the Sabbath rest from daily toil and physical labor turn into spiritual rest in Christ from "working for salvation?"

You can look at the creation account as a salvation metaphor. Light into darkness is the biggest clue that 2 Cor 4:6 also agrees with. We are in darkness, light is spoken into us (salvation), which begins a work that when complete ushers in rest.

God does not rest because he is tired, he rests because the work is complete. So completed work is intrinsic to the rest based on the creation account. With the 4th commandment we can only mimic this but we cannot fully complete it. Christ on the other completed his work, said "it is finished" on the cross and breathed his last. He then rested in the grave over the complete sabbath and rose again on the next day. Although the law doesn't put this on us, the logic and demand of work/rest can go to our beating heart and our every breath we take. While in the grave Christ fully rested in a way we can never, he fulfills sabbath like no other when he rose.

The 4th commandment is also not just about ourselves. It is spoken implicitly to a head of a household role which then is responsible for their household to also keep sabbath or broadly those under their care. It is not just for children/spouses too but it is for servants/slaves and even animals. The thing with these roles is as you move down each have less and less authority too. An animal would have no authority and cannot take rest for themselves. an animal may only rest if they are given rest by one with authority. We too cannot take salvation for ourselves, regardless of our work or our accomplishments because we have no authority to do so. Salvation must be given to us and must be given to us with one with authority. Jesus is that authority and he gives us salvation not because of our work but because of his completed work. If it were based on our work, we would have to work until death and even then it would not be enough. In this way, sabbath is a metaphor for salvation. It is not our work that is completed that we rest from that matters because we can never do enough, but it is the rest we get from Christ for his completed work in a fullness we only have access too with Christ.

 

[BobRyan]

You can look at the creation account as a salvation metaphor.

certainly that account of the creation of all life on Earth can also be used as a useful metaphor about the Gospel. I agree.

We see similar uses in the metaphor about the wheat and the tares. We have literal wheat and tares but the metaphor also works.

 

[DamianWarS]

certainly that account of the creation of all life on Earth can also be used as a useful metaphor about the Gospel. I agree.

We see similar uses in the metaphor about the wheat and the tares. We have literal wheat and tares but the metaphor also works.

Regardless of one's perspective of the literal the salvation message through creation has a more personal application where the how/when/timeline of God creating the heavens and the earth have less personal impact. The personal message tends to more accessible and easy to relate to.