The Saints' Everlasting Rest

Richard Baxter (1615 – 1691), in The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, writes:

“It was not only our interest [relationship, participation] in God, and actual enjoyment of him, which was lost in Adam’s fall, but all spiritual knowledge of him [see 1 Corinthians Chapter 2], and true disposition toward such a felicity [happiness of knowing God]. When the Son of God comes with recovering grace, and discoveries of a spiritual and eternal happiness and glory, he finds not faith in man to believe it.

“As the poor man, that would not believe any one had such a sum as a hundred pounds, it was so far above what he himself possessed, so men will hardly now believe there is such a happiness as once they had [before Adam’s fall], much less as Christ hath now procured.”

We just don’t believe the glory of Christ’s work, of His reconciliation, of His work on the Cross. Unbelievers don’t believe it, and Christians usually don’t believe it. As Baxter writes, we are like a person who has known nothing but poverty all his life, someone who has never seen or held more than $1.00. When this person is told that there are people who carry $100.00 bills in their wallets he cannot believe it, he simply cannot comprehend it.

So with many Christians, we simply cannot believe that we are truly and fully forgiven in Jesus Christ. We cannot believe that we are the sons and daughters of the Living God. We cannot accept and live in the fact that “Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.”

We are called to an everlasting rest that is to begin here, on this earth, right here and right now in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 4:9 – 16). We enter this rest by submitting to the Word of God, we enter this rest by our Great High Priest, we enter this rest by ceasing from our own works and relying completely and absolutely on Jesus Christ.

But…we cannot believe it. We have been conditioned to be spiritual dumpster-divers, to eat out of garbage cans, to wear clothing of tatters rather than the fine linen that is the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

We think and act as if Christ begrudges us light and life and forgiveness. We live and think as if, even though Jesus died for us and has reconciled us to our Father, that neither our Father or Lord Jesus really want us to be close to them, they really don’t want us to find peace and rest (but see Romans 5:1 – 11!). We think and act as if the Holy Spirit does not really want to reveal Jesus and His Word to us.

Oh that we would allow the Gospel to penetrate our hearts and souls and chase all our fears away; that we would trust the love and grace of our Lord Jesus – believing that our Father loves us just as our Father loves Jesus, His only begotten Son (John 17:23, 26).

Let us not take counsel of our fears and insecurities, nor of preachers who would only teach one-half a gospel, and certainly not of other preachers who seek to dethrone Jesus Christ (as if that could be done) and place us at the center of the universe, making the Cross a selfish means of pleasure and satisfying our lusts for more, more, and more.

Can we not believe the life and love and Word of Jesus Christ? Can we not accept the love of our Father? Can we not receive the communion of the Holy Spirit?

Isn’t it time we learned to be the children of the Great King and live in His Palace of light and truth and love and dumpster-dive no more?