In our previous post, we examined the duration of the rest provided the New Covenant believer, of its reality as not a temporary pause from work, but as a state or condition of rest. This rest is then further revealed in the continuation of this line of thought in verse ten, being connected in the use of “gar” (for) here. What is critical to note is that the “sabbatismos” provided to the New Covenant people of God is compared not to the rest of man found in the law, but to the rest of God in creation. This immediately presents it as a different kind of rest than that of the Old Covenant law, a rest that is by nature superior, just as it is in duration. To examine just what the nature of this rest entails, we must examine the nature of the rest of God in creation. We find this rest presented in Genesis 2:2, which reads as follows in NIV “By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all His work”. So, the question naturally arises as to just what work God was resting from, and this work is described in Genesis One, the story of creation. This story tells of God beginning with nothing, and in what is framed as a six-day period, preparing an ideal habitation for the creature created in His image and likeness. On the sixth day, this habitation is fully prepared, and man is created to dwell eternally in this ideal environment. It is upon this creation of man that God pronounces the creation as “very good”, functioning as intended, which is what makes something good. For example, a meal is intended to be tasty, and when it is we refer to it as good, when it is not, we refer to it as not good. God’s purpose in creation is to prepare an ideal habitation for man, and that purpose has been accomplished, so God now rests. So what we find is that God’s rest has to do with accomplishing a purpose, and so also does the rest of the sabbatismos of the New Covenant. It is the rest which comes from finding our purpose in life. All of us as humans are engaged in a search for meaning and purpose in life, and that purpose can only be found in finding and living out our God-given purpose, and the rest referred to here is that of resting from this search for meaning and purpose, for we find them only in Christ. Only in Him and continual engagement with God’s word can we enter and abide in this new kind of rest.

As we continue in our study of Hebrews 4, we now come upon what may be referred to as a transitional verse. This verse begins with a statement of fact regarding the “believing”, here as the definite article and the aorist participle of pisteuo- to believe. This refers to those who both by nature and behavior are believers in the messiah of the New Covenant. “Enter” here is the present indicative of eiserchomai- to enter into, this reflecting the ongoing reality of the experience of these believers, that the rest referred to here is an ongoing reality in their lives. We then encounter our initial introduction into the different nature of this New Covenant rest in the author’s quote of Psalm 95:11- “So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest”. We must note here that the rest referenced here is not the rest of the people but the rest of God Himself, which is further delineated in the explanatory comment and verses which follow. This explanation begins with kaitoi- “and yet or although”, this term shifts the rest mentioned from the Old Covenant to the New. The “His” here is the same person as the “My” in the preceding quote, God in this case. So we find the rest here we are talking about is not the rest of the OT sabbath of the law, but the rest of God in creation. This is made certain in the next phrase, which tells us that God’s “work has been finished since the creation of the world”. So the question we are about to explore the answer to is just what the nature of God’s rest in creation is, and how does it differ from the Sabbath rest of Israel which is in the law. This will be the focus of the next ten verses, as to precisely what this New Covenant rest entails, and how we are to go about entering it. We will find that it is a rest of a different sort, not the Old Covenant rest of one day off work to rest the body, but a more permanent rest, and one not primarily for the body, but one which is much more profound.