Winning Ways: A Day to Fully Rest in the Work Christ Has Done

Without constant help, we will always think of our relationship to God as something we earn or maintain by our own efforts. It's the default setting of the human heart.

Thank God for Sundays.

I bet you've never thought of it before, but Sunday is meant to be our "reset button" whenever we fall into performance-based living. Sunday is a "day off" in a much, much deeper way than most of us tend to think when we use that phrase.

We're told to "keep the Sabbath" in the fourth of God's 10 Commandments. How should we do that? Some Christians insist that the Old Testament commandment to rest and worship on Saturday is still in force. Many Christians insist that all the Old Testament commandment to rest and worship on Saturday has been transferred to Sunday because of Christ's resurrection.

But the Old Testament Sabbath-rest was really designed to point to the true rest from our performance-based living (see Hebrews 4). Jesus restored our relationship to God through his atoning death on the cross, and as we trust that his work accomplished our reunion with God, we truly enter into rest.

In the New Testament, we see the first generation of believers meeting on Sunday, which they called "The Lord's Day." It wasn't their day of physical rest, and in the Greek and Roman rhythms Sunday was not a day off. But it was their day to remember their spiritual rest in Christ. By gathering when they could, and by celebrating the gospel through sermons, songs and communion, they remembered God's grace again and again each week.

I hope you get some physical rest each Sunday. I'm grateful that our culture still allows us that time off. But regardless of physical rest, you "keep God's Sabbath" by trusting the finished work of Jesus on your behalf!

And that's why each Sunday is a "reset button." The songs and testimonies, the sermons and communion--it's all meant to remind you of what God has accomplished for your salvation. Christianity isn't about what we try to do for God but about what God has done for us in Jesus. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened," Jesus said in Matthew 11, "and I will give you rest."

Reset with us this Sunday. See you at 10 a.m.!

 

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