I Went to Church on Sunday

I went to church on Sunday.

At church we come together partly to experience, proclaim and witness to the rest we have already been given in Christ. By worshipping on the Lord's Day, the first day of the week which commemorates and celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the church affirms its participation in the rest of Christ. Here, as the whole person is caught up in the Spirit, we are removed from the preoccupations of mundane living, divorced from existential pressures, protected from the expedient urge to fix our problems, and focused on the Person and work of our redeeming Lord, Jesus Christ. Here, at the effectual summons of the Holy Spirit, we have (been) assembled together in the presence of our Triune God in order to show forth praises to his holy name, to declare his worth among ourselves and to the nations, to ascribe the glory that is due his Name, in other words, to worship him in Spirit and in truth.

Though we are plagued by persistent remaining sins, because of our union with our Lord Jesus Christ, we are holy; we are saints; we have already entered the rest of Christ. Our date or point of entry was the time that we heard the gospel message and believed it, Heb 4:3, not according to our own doing and according to the exercise of our will but only through and after the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. We entered that rest when we placed our faith alone, the gift of God, in Christ alone. The rest that we have entered is none other than the rest that God himself entered and celebrated when he ceased from his creation of the universe, vv. 4, 10. Each Lord's Day when we gather together we are reminded of the three-dimensional perspective of our rest in Christ: past – we first entered it when he delivered us from our sins; present – we are currently enjoying the benefits and fruits Christ secured for us by his finished work on the cross and which are now being applied to our hearts and lives by the Holy Spirit; future -we will fully and finally enter this rest at the Second Coming of Christ when he gathers up all his covenant people for whom he lived and died, unto himself to present us to his and our Father.

In the meantime, our rest is interspersed with sin and with struggle against it. We live in a fallen world characterized by sin and rebellion against God, by chaos and unrest. Each day we are called to consciously wrestle against our chief enemies, ".. the schemes of the devil.. The rulers, .. the authorities, .. the cosmic powers over this present darkness, .. the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places", Eph 6:11 -12. Each day we are mustered into a battle on three fronts, against the world, the flesh and the devil.

We cannot wage this battle in our own strength but only in a synergistic dependence on God the Holy Spirit who equips us in this struggle. In this regard we, whom the Lord has redeemed from the Egypt of sin to be the people of his own inheritance, are the new covenant fulfillment of the children of Israel who, although sent and led into the Promised Land by their Redeemer God, Yahweh, Josh 1:13, were still required to fight against and drive out their enemies with the Presence and power of Yahweh: "The LORD your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you. But the LORD your God will give them over to you and throw them into great confusion, until they are destroyed. And he will give their kings into your hand, and you shall make their name perish from under heaven. No one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them." Dt 7:22-24. Like the faithful children of Israel who understood that their entrance into the Promised Land was only a type of the final rest to be enjoyed with God forever, "For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on." Heb 4:8, we, "on whom the end of the ages has come.", 1 Cor 10:11, also know that we have not yet attained our final rest. God's promise of rest still stands, Heb 4:1. "So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.” vv. 9-10.

Now, this begs the question, what does our eternal rest look like? To what can we liken it? Indeed, to what must we liken it? We compare it to the rest into which God enters after his creation, vv. 3-4. For this reason, the writer to the Hebrews calls it a Sabbath rest, v. 9. We will rest from our labors in the same way that the Lord God rests from his original creation activity. In this Sabbath rest the Lord God pronounces a cosmic benediction on the work of his hands. "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day." Gen 1:31. "For everything created by God is good, .." 1 Tim 4:4. This Sabbath rest then has as its primary distinction the delight of God in himself and in his work. Theologians call this God's love of complacency. A. A. Hodge defines this love of complacency as ".. that approving affection with which God regards his own infinite perfections, and every image and reflection of them in his creatures, especially in the sanctified subjects of the new creation." and Louis Berkhof explains it as God’s "..delight in the contemplation of His own infinite perfections and of the creatures who reflect His moral image." It is true that our eternal rest necessarily includes rest from sin but far more than this, it is a rest in which we will be forever delighting in him and in his work of creation and re-creation, that is, redemption. It is a rest in which we, the unmerited recipients of God's love of complacency, will be basking in the unrestricted fullness of his glory.

The church at worship on earth eagerly anticipates this rest for which she is currently being framed and fitted. The church of Jesus Christ inwardly groans with inanimate creation to enter that rest. Each Lord's Day is both a reminder and a type of the Sabbath rest that is approaching as well as awaiting us. Each Lord's Day, those who have been justified by faith alone and who now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, Rom 5:1, experience this rest and cry out with Saint Augustine, "Lord, thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee." Confessions, Book I. The church therefore understands that the term "rest in peace" is truly not meant for those who have died but for those who are living, for those who have eternal life by God's grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. Those who have faithfully responded to Jesus' command to come unto him and receive his rest, Mt 11:28, are the very ones who will experience this shalom and this rest consummately in heaven where they will always be with the Lord. No wonder then that the church's final recorded prayer in history is "Come, Lord Jesus!" Rev 22:20. No wonder then that we are restless until we enter our consummate rest.

I went to church on the Lord's Day. There I enjoyed, already but not yet fully, the rest of God in Christ. The rest is yet to come.