Four Views of 'Rest'
1. Rest is regarded as personal salvation that results in Eternal life in Heaven.
2. Rest is a present Experience when the believer stops trying to live the Christian life in his own Energy and learns to trust God to work through him.
3. Rest is Entering the Millennial Kingdom.
4. Rest is not only entering the Kingdom but possessing the inheritance and reward due to Enduring believers who have finished the work God has for them.
- a. Hebrews 4:1 shows that entering into rest has not yet been Effected.
- b. The Epistle began by stressing that Christ is the heir of all things, a promise which finds its fulfilment at the Second Coming, when all His enemies have been subjected to Him.
- c. This Era of the Kingdom makes it possible for man to have dominion over the created realm, satisfying God's original intention in the garden of Eden.
- d. This view agrees with the analogy suggested in chapter 3 and Psalm 95, in which God's children rather than unbelievers, failed to gain their Expected inheritance in the promised land on account of their sin of unbelief. e. The matter of rewards for faithfulness is an ongoing Element in the epistle.
- f. Hebrews stresses Messiah's kingdom, and the concept of "rest" is Even linked to other passages about the kingdom.