The question of how to live after the catastrophe of AD 70 was equally pressing for every Jew of that age, whether an orthodox Jew or a Christian believer in the Messiah. The discussion of the Sabbath as a time of abiding in God's rest was...
The question of how to live after the catastrophe of AD 70 was equally pressing for every Jew of that age, whether an orthodox Jew or a Christian believer in the Messiah. The discussion of the Sabbath as a time of abiding in God's rest was, in a sense, the epistle writer's answer to this question—a specifically Christian answer. Indeed, the seventh day of the biblical Poem of Creation is a day of rest, a day when God no longer creates and the world abides in the stillness of His presence. Of course, understood in this way, the Sabbath also has a personal dimension: it becomes a time of abiding in the inner stillness familiar to everyone who has experienced real, living communion with God. But in speaking of Sabbath rest, the writer of the epistle means more than inner stillness alone.
He understands the seventh day as a reality on a cosmic scale. The seventh day, the day of rest, is precisely that time when history has already ended but the Messiah has not yet returned. Such was the time in which he and his contemporaries found themselves living. Yet Sabbath rest does not call for outward activity. What is needed here is inner stillness and attentiveness, not a frantic search for something that, like a magic wand, might provide answers to every question and solutions to every problem all at once.
For Christians, Sabbath rest was inseparable from communion with Christ. A Sabbath without Christ was inconceivable to them, because it would lack that fullness of the Kingdom which is the purpose and meaning of every Christian's life. For a Christian, entering Sabbath rest meant entering that realm of relationship between the Father and the Son which was the spiritual heart of the Kingdom and within which the Church abided as the body of Christ of which Paul speaks in his epistles. And now, according to the writer of this epistle, the time for just such rest had come—on a universal, cosmic scale.
Every Christian now faced a choice: either to enter this rest, to enter the realm where Christ and the Kingdom are, awaiting history's final consummation and the Messiah's return in glory; or to search frantically elsewhere, wondering why what they so eagerly awaited had still not happened. Indeed, Sabbath rest had always also been understood as waiting—waiting for God, who comes when the time for His coming arrives. Here it is important to know how to wait and to have the patience to wait until He comes; otherwise, the whole journey made thus far may prove meaningless. This is what the writer of the epistle reminds his readers of, in the context of their particular situation.
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4:2 But the word which they heard did not profit them - So far from it, that it increased their damnation. It is then only when it is mixed with faith, that it exerts its saving power.
4:3 For we only that have believed enter into the rest - The proposition is, There remains a rest for us. This is proved, Heb 4:3-11, thus: That psalm mentions a rest:yet it does not mean,
- God's rest from creating; for this was long before the time of Moses. Therefore in his time another rest was expected, of which they who then heard fell short Nor is it,
- The rest which Israel obtained through Joshua; for the Psalmist wrote after him. Therefore it is,
- The eternal rest in heaven.
As he said - Clearly showing that there is a farther rest thanthat which followed the finishing of the creation.Though the works were finished - Before: whence it is plain, God did not speak of resting from them.4:4 For, long after he had rested from his works, he speaks again. Gen 2:2.
4:5 In this psalm, of a rest yet to come.
4:7 After so long a time - It was above four hundred years from the time of Moses and Joshua to David. As it was said before - St. Paul here refers to the text he had just cited.
4:8 The rest - All the rest which God had promised.
4:9 Therefore - Since he still speaks of another day, there must remain a farther, even an eternal, rest for the people of God.
4:10 For they do not yet so rest. Therefore a fuller rest remains for them.
4:11 Lest any one should fall - Into perdition.