Of all the verses in Scripture, one of the most comforting to me is Matthew 11:28, where Jesus says—“Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
So much of Christian teaching today wants you to look inside yourself. It wants you to ask questions like—are you reading your Bible and praying enough? Are you sharing your faith enough? Are your passions for Christ strong enough? Are you fighting sin hard enough? In so many cases, the implication is that you need to be successful in these ways for God to be happy with you. Conversely, if you aren’t doing “good enough” (whatever that means, and whoever gets to decide), you should doubt whether you are really God’s child at all. When you stand before God on the day of judgement, some very well-known teachers have argued, your final justification will be determined by your obedience.
Allow me to dispel any uncertainty—the answer to every one of those questions is absolutely, “no.” You aren’t doing good enough. And I’m not either, because the standard of God’s law is absolute perfection. In order to earn your own standing before God, you must be absolutely perfect, every moment of every day, without a single moment of failure as long as you live. One single failure means that you are a lawbreaker who rightly stands condemned under God’s judgement. Anyone who thinks that they can be disciplined enough, passionate enough, or obedient enough for God to be happy with them hasn’t understood the Law rightly. If you think you can get over the bar, it’s only because you’ve lowered it in your mind far enough to make it seem possible.
Once we see God’s law rightly, we begin to realize just how much trouble we really find ourselves in, and we are primed to receive the good news of the gospel—that Jesus lived a life of perfect obedience in our place and gives us that perfect obedience as a free gift. God no longer judges us on the basis of our incomplete, inadequate righteousness. Instead, he looks at us and sees us clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus who obeyed God’s law perfectly, every moment of every day, for his entire life, and has died to pay the penalty of judgement that our sins deserve.
Jesus gives us rest because he gives us his righteousness. We can stop desperately working ourselves to the bone trying to be good enough for God—to make him happy with us—because in Jesus, we are already good enough, and he already loves us more than we could ever know. From that place of rest, we can begin to obey God out of gratitude, joy, and safety, knowing that our future is secure and that our great Saviour will take us to be with him where he is for all eternity.
May we all rest in the finished work of Jesus on our behalf!
All the best,
Luke Burrow
