The all-important point for a just interpretation is that God's rest is here before us, His glory in heaven. It is not at all rest for the conscience or for the heart, which the believer has or finds now in Christ. The rest of God is exclusively future. The perfect word of God distinguishes even outwardly what may be, and ought to be, now enjoyed from what is only in hope however sure. Our Lord in Matthew 11:28-2928Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. (Matthew 11:28‑29), speaks of what His grace makes good while we are here; Hebrews 3:44For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God. (Hebrews 3:4) only of what the believers enter at His coming. Hence ἀνάπαυσις is the word for rest in the Gospel, κατάπαςσις in the Epistle. Jesus, rejected as Messiah, does not only fall back on the heavenly and universal glory He looks for as the Son of Man, but unveils Himself as the Son of the Father, and invites to Himself all that labor and are burdened. To those that come to Him the Son gives rest. It is free and sovereign grace, present and full relief from the toil of law and the burden of sin. This rest He gives to conscience, the starting point by faith to all holiness. Therefore He adds, “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest for your souls.” This is rest for the heart of the Christian day by day, and found only in obedience. It is not help, as men say, nor peace exactly, but rest of heart in the submissive acceptance of God's will. So Christ Himself bowed and was blessed here below; so all that follow Him. But He gives rest to the conscience (without here explaining how) before we find rest for our souls in judging self and doing God's will. Faith makes both our own now; but we are called also to exult in hope of the glory of God. This is His rest; and we are going on toward it, as Israel to Canaan. Such is the text here applied. It is God resting in what satisfies His love and holiness, when righteousness reigns and sorrow flees away, Κατάπαυσις being stronger than ἀγάπαυδες. The former is applied in Genesis 2 (70) when sin and death had not yet entered the world. It is used here also for the scene and time of glory.
“Let us fear, therefore, lest a promise being left of entering into His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short. For indeed we have had good tidings borne to us, as they also [had]; but the word of the report did not profit them, not having been mixed with faith in those that heard” (verses 1-2).
It is impossible to understand the entire context, if we regard the rest here spoken of as any other than the future rest of God into which Christ will introduce us at His coming. Wrest it to the primary need of the soul, as men are apt to do, and all is confusion. Would the Spirit say, “let us fear” if it were a question of believing in Christ to all joy and peace? The word of the Lord to the troubled soul is “Fear not;” “I will: be thou clean;” “Thy faith hath saved thee: go in peace;” “Daughter, be of good comfort,” and the like: never a syllable to induce a doubt of the Saviour's grace, or of the believer's salvation. For indeed He came to seek and save that which is lost. But here the warning is given to those that bear His name who were stopping short and weary, like Israel, of the pilgrimage through the wilderness. There is danger on all sides. It may be the desire to go back into Egypt, or the slight of Canaan—the pleasant land, or murmuring against Moses and Aaron meanwhile. In every case it is unbelief; and Israel paid the penalty. “Let us therefore fear lest, a promise having been left of entering into His rest, any one of you should seem to have fallen short.”
Fallen, unbelieving, man is ever in quest of this or that. He is restless, and knows no happiness (or rather, pleasure) in this world but change, the pursuit of what he has not but wishes to have. Had he the gift of God's love, the water that Christ gives would be in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life, of which he drinking shall never thirst again. Even so, he needs to have always before his heart that heaven to which he now belongs, his new fatherland, where Christ is gone before. If Israel had a hope, we have assuredly no less, but in far richer measure and brighter light. The hope of the future according to God has a mighty effect in delivering from the power of present things opposed to Him. The renewed heart needs it and has it clearly set before us in scripture, as here. Let us fear therefore lest any of us should come short in this, respect. What is destructive where there is no faith is injurious, and may be so to the last degree, to the believer. Therefore do we hear of “seeming” to have come short. There is no rest of God now, nor for us is it here but in heaven. Let us fear even the appearance of settling down on earth.
This was natural to a Jew's feeling and expectation, especially if Messiah were come. But He is rejected, gone up, and is glorified on high. There with Him will be our rest, and, what is far better, the rest of God. Let none of us (for surely it is no less true and weighty for the Gentile believer) let none of us seem to have come short of that rest. The Christian Jew was in nothing behind his fathers; if the elders had good tidings, those who cleave to Christ in heaven had no less. But if the word be not mixed with faith, it can no more profit the hearer now than of old. Then the fathers saw wonders and heard the Voice more awful than thunder or earthquake; yet they fell through unbelief, and disobedience its effect. So now, when it is no question of sight or sound, the word mixed with faith for those that heard is indispensable: else the ruin is still more irretrievable than falling in the wilderness.
I am aware that the mass of ancient MSS. favors the strange reading adopted by the Revisers, as well as by most modern critics, “because they were not united by faith with them that heard.” So almost all the uncials and cursives and many ancient versions. Here I cannot but agree with Tischendorf that the Sinai MS. (m) is right, as are a few cursives, the Peschito Syriac, and some good copies of the Vulgate, &c. The externally best supported reading seems hardly sense if not wrong doctrine. Ed.