Doing and Blessing

“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” John 13:17

Jesus says this to His disciples the night He is betrayed.

What is He saying?

Is He saying, “Here are my commandments. Know them. Then, discipline yourself! Do them! Show that you have the ability and the gumption and the wherewithal to be My disciple! Once you have done that, I will bless you”?

Jesus has just acted like a menial servant, washing His disciples’ feet. He then says, “You also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you” (John 13:14b-15).

Taken by itself, this sounds as if Jesus is laying a burden on His disciples, assigning them a task to do. So is the interpretation above correct?

No. Indeed, later this evening Jesus will tell these same men, “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

In addition, John 13 itself shows that Jesus must be saying something different.

Consider His interaction with Peter, who protests, saying Jesus will never wash his feet. Our Lord replies: “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me” (John 13:8).

So once Jesus pays the penalty for Peter’s sins (as pictured by washing his feet), he has a share with Jesus! He is “completely clean” (John 13:10). He is already identified with Jesus! He is an insider!

Peter does not need to obey Jesus’ commands to earn His favor – He already has that favor! He needs to obey Jesus’ commands to display Jesus, to represent Jesus as one sent by Him, to proclaim the message entrusted to him. Then he is so identified with Jesus that the one who receives Peter receives Jesus (John 13:20).

But a question remains: What is the blessing Jesus speaks of in verse 17? If it is not His acceptance, His favor – what is it?

The blessing is being like Jesus! The blessing is displaying the image of God! The blessing is fulfilling the purpose of our creation, becoming what we were created to be!

Can we – sinners that we are, dead in those trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1) – become like Jesus through self-discipline? The answer should be obvious. The only way we can become like Jesus is through His working in us.

Our task then is to actively depend on Him, on His Spirit. Yes, we then obey Jesus’ commands. But we obey as beloved children who know their Daddy and depend on him, not as slaves trying to avoid a whipping from an evil master, nor as employees striving to earn a raise from a tough boss.

We must always remember: Obedience to a set of rules is not our objective. If it were, we rightly could think that we could reach that objective with a little more effort, a little more discipline, a little more practice, or a little more accountability.

Our objective is to be like Jesus, to display Jesus, to be conformed to His image (Romans 8:29). Jesus demands such conformity – and Scripture promises that God will bring it about (Philippians 1:6).

So if we are in Jesus, the work is as good as done. Saved by His grace, we can bask in His love and delight in His grace, knowing we are “completely clean” – even when we sin. But we hate that sin. We hate that lack of conformity to Jesus’ character. Knowing that our greatest joy comes from being like Him, we turn to Him once again in repentance, confessing the sin, knowing that Jesus is the propitiation for our sin (1 John 2:2). God thus continues as our loving Father, delighting in us, as he uses even such failures to complete the good work in us He has begun.

“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” Know Jesus commands. Know Jesus’ character. Know the grace and mercy and power of the Gospel. Then step out in confidence, in confession, in repentance, showing Jesus to those you love and to the wider world. This is the path of blessing. This is the path of joy.

Strive to Enter God’s Rest

“Let us therefore strive to enter [God’s] rest” – Hebrews 4:11.

What does the author mean by this command?

There is an eternal rest God promises His people in which:

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away (Revelation 21:4).

And God calls all people everywhere to repentance and faith in Jesus so that they might enter that eternal rest (Acts 17:30).

But there is an important sense in which we enter God’s rest today, getting a taste today of that eternal rest.

How do we strive to enter today’s rest?

Striving to enter God’s rest today is working hard to look away from ourselves, to look to Jesus, to trust in God’s promises, every minute of every day.

Or think of it this way: Striving to enter God’s rest is working hard to live out Psalm 23 every minute of every day:

God is your shepherd; you lack nothing in Christ. He leads you in His paths – and they are good and restful, even if they pass through frightening and dangerous valleys. He delights in you and honors you as His own – and those who try to harm you, those who hate you and abuse you, will have to acknowledge that. His goodness and love will pursue you your entire life – and He will in the end bring you into His eternal rest as part of His beloved family.

We initially come to faith in Jesus in this way, trusting in the promise of the Gospel: that God created us for His glory; that we all reject that purpose and rebel against Him; that He sent His Son to die on the cross to pay the penalty for the sins of all who would believe in Him hereafter; that the benefits of that sacrifice, including becoming part of the intimate family of God, accrue to everyone who will repent and believe this Good News.

Subsequent to salvation, Hebrews 4:11 calls us to continue to trust daily in the Gospel and in all of God’s promises. Because in this life we are always tempted to lean on our own resources, to lean on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5-6). We must acknowledge that we cannot save ourselves, nor can we make ourselves into the type of person we desire to be, nor can we accomplish anything for God through our natural resources.

We can never merit salvation through good deeds, nor can we ever merit God’s commendation through acts we do in our power.

So when we strive to enter God’s rest, we confess to God every day:

“I am a sinner; You are the Savior. In my natural self there is no good thing, only darkness – You are all goodness and light. I can only become what I really want, I can only become what You desire, through Christ in me: changing me, working out His purposes in me. So may my work apart from Your power cease. May your power take over.”

As Ray Stedman says:

We do not have what it takes, and we never did. The only one who can live the Christian life is Jesus Christ. He proposes to reproduce his life in us. Our part is to expose every situation to his life in us, and, by that means, depending upon him and not upon us, we are to meet every situation, enter into every circumstance, and perform every activity. We cease from our own labors.

But this is not easy. That’s why the author of Hebrews tells us we must strive to enter God’s rest, we must make every effort to depend continually on God.

Jesus doesn’t want your self-powered effort. He doesn’t need your toiling. He, after all, has all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18)! He wants your trust.

What happens when we ignore this command and step out in our own power?

When those who don’t have faith in Christ strive to live up to some standard and fail, they respond in one of three ways:

  1. They fool themselves into thinking they actually did live up to the standard, or will beginning tomorrow.
  2. They justify their failures, saying something like: “I’m only human – no one could really live that The real standard is to do better than most others, and surely I’m accomplishing that!”
  3. Or they feel like failures, overwhelmed, condemned – they can never become what they wanted, even by their own standards.

What about Christians? What happens when we strive apart from God’s power?

We too become burdened. We are so busy, we are working so hard, we are toiling and striving – and all the joy of the Christian life has left us. We get caught in a fog of unbelief, through which we can’t see God – so we go through the motions, saying all the right things, doing all the right things, but we’re not really trusting God. We are not striving with His power; we are flailing away with our own energy. And so we are weary, burdened, feeling like we can’t continue, but wondering how in the world God’s work can go on without our hard efforts.

To such people, Christians and non-Christians, Jesus calls out:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30).

So – when faced with a task that must be accomplished, we are not to grit our teeth, saying, “Yes, I can! I can do it.”

We must admit: “I cannot do this! I am unable! In my natural self, I will fail!”

And turn to Him. He is our yokemate. It is His yoke. We are paired with Him. And He pulls. So when we pull – it’s really by his power.

What does it look like when we live out such active dependence on God?

Consider the difference between the Apostle Paul and the rich young ruler.

There is no doubt that Paul works hard. He details in his letters many of the obstacles he had to overcome: Beatings, imprisonments, shipwrecks, death threats, rejection, betrayals, exposure to the elements – and eventually execution.

So Paul works his tail off.

What about the rich young ruler (Mark 10:17-22)? He too has been working hard; he tells Jesus he has kept all of God’s commandments from his youth! We might be tempted to laugh at that – but he is sincere and, undoubtedly, those looking at his life would conclude that he was an upright, honorable man.

But he has a nagging feeling that all that obedience isn’t good enough. He feels that he needs to do something more.

So he asks Jesus: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” You see: He wants to toil for God! He says, “Give me some task to do, even a great one – I’ll do it! I’m able!”

How does Jesus reply? Jesus does not tell him to go do some great feat requiring perseverance, danger, or hardship. Instead, He tells him to do the easiest thing in world. Indeed, all he has to do is to give one command to a servant, and it’s done.

And yet this easiest task in the world is exceptionally hard. To do it, he has to trust in the promises of God.

Jesus says, “Get rid of everything that you think shows that you are important. Give it away.” And Jesus does not say next, “Then you’ll have earned status as My disciple.” Instead He simply says, “Then follow Me.”

This man could strive in His own power to prove his capabilities, but he did not trust God. He saw Jesus face to face – and Jesus looked at him with love! – yet he turned away. His confidence was in himself and in his riches – not in God. So he holds on to his riches, and walks away from Jesus sorrowful.

In contrast, in all his difficult labors, the Apostle Paul strives “with all [God’s] energy that He powerfully works within me” (Colossians 1:29). He served “by the strength that God supplies– in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 4:11).

That’s how we too must serve, how we too must live. Not by that fruitless striving of the rich young ruler, always trying to prove ourselves, striving to show to God and to others and to ourselves that we’re good enough, we’re strong enough, we’re faithful enough to deserve honor and friendship and commendation. But leaning on Him and on His Word, praying without ceasing, turning to Him in active dependence, trusting in His promises, we live and love and worship and serve, confident in our status because of Christ’s work, delighting in the gifts God gives, thankful for the tokens of His love strewn across our paths.

This is His rest. May we strive to enter it – in complete dependence on Him.

[This devotion follows up on the April 19, 2020 sermon, “Brothers and Sisters, Strive to Enter God’s Rest!” (video). This content draws from a 2008 sermon, “Work Hard Yet Relax During the Race of Faith” (audio, text).]