The Daily Word of Righteousness

A Giant Step Forward, #26

So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a very little while, He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him."  But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved. (Hebrews 10:35-39)

Each one of us has a goal, a unique calling. We are to be pressing toward that goal every day of our Christian life. We are to be grasping that for which we have been grasped. Although that goal is unique in terms of our calling, it is true nevertheless that each of us is to labor to enter the rest of God. We all have this in common.

To be fully in the rest of God is to be in the moral image of Jesus Christ and to be dwelling in untroubled rest in the very center of the Father's Person and will. The Jewish Christians to whom the Book of Hebrews was addressed had received the blood atonement, had been filled with the Holy Spirit, but they were not following on to know the Lord. They were not pressing into the moral image of Jesus Christ and into untroubled rest in the center of the Father's Person and will. This is the reason for the following exhortation:

As has just been said: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion."  Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed ? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief. (Hebrews 3:15-19)

We no longer are encumbered by the numerous statutes of the Law of Moses. We are without condemnation even though we do not adhere to the Law. Rather we are following the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. As we do so we are being set free from sin.

Freedom from sin is not gained overnight. It is a battle, city by city, as we enter the promised-land rest of God. If we are faithful in following the Spirit, when the Lord Jesus returns to earth we will be raised from the dead and clothed with eternal life. The last enemy, physical death, shall be destroyed.

But if we do not follow the Spirit of God, if we do not proceed from victory unto victory in the Lord, then, when the Lord returns to earth, we will not be clothed with eternal life. Rather, we will be raised by spiritual power, not by eternal life, and then receive what is due us according to our behavior while living on the earth.

To be continued.