soul rest

i recently learned (thanks to mary willson) that the jewish leaders who criticized Jesus for breaking the sabbath had added 39 prohibited activities to the original, God-given sabbath legislation. and while i don't observe these additional regulations, i have my own areas of 'gospel deficit.' this calls for some examination (and possibly a future post). in the meantime, read this:

. . .there is an entire psychological substructure that, due to the Fall, is a near-constant emission of relational leveraging, fear-stuffing, nervousness, score-keeping, neurotic controlling, anxiety-festering silliness that is not something I say or even think so much as something I breathe. . . And I'm seeing more and more, bit by bit, that if you trace this fountain of scurrying haste, in all its various manifestations, down to the root. . . you find gospel deficit. All the worry and dysfunction and resentment is the natural fruit of living in a mental universe of Law. The gospel really is what brings rest, wholeness, flourishing, shalom-- that existential calm which for brief, gospel-sane moments settles over you and lets you see for a moment that in Christ you truly are invincible. The verdict really is in; nothing can touch you.

I am believing tonight the unbelievable: The radiant sun of divine favor is shining down on me and while the clouds of my sin and failure may darken my feelings of that favor, the favor cannot be lessened any more than a tiny, wispy cloud can threaten the existence of the sun. The sun is shining. It cannot stop. Clouds, no clouds-- sin, no sin-- the sun is shining on me. Because of Another.

The Lord looks on his children with utterly unflappable affection.

. . . How strange the gospel is. In one sense I am not restored. How painfully obvious. Sin clings, weaknesses and failings abound. Anxiety, anger, idolatry. But in another sense, a deeper sense, I am restored. Perfectly, already. . . And the sweep of New Testament teaching is that it is the latter that now defines me. That is the fundamental reality defining my existence. . . And I suppose the whole Christian life is simply the process of bringing my sense of self, my Identity with a capital 'I', the ego, my swirling internal world of fretful panicky-ness arising out of that gospel deficit, into alignment with the more fundamental truth.
-dane ortlund

as mary willson put it, "a remedy for the restless" was needed, and provided, in the finished work of the cross. a remedy from attempting works that lead to self-salvation (and self-sufficiency and self-glory and self-absorption) was needed. so there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. for the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.