Not under Law but under Grace

Part Eight

by G. A. N. James

This is the eighth part of the series of messages on the subject of Law and Grace, entitled “Not under Law but under Grace.” We have already established the limitation of the Law of Moses in fulfilling God’s aim to deliver humanity after the Fall from the bondage of death and sin into Life and righteousness. We have also dealt with the purpose of the Law in God’s unfolding plan of salvation to foreshadow and point to the true Life and righteousness which Christ would bring to humanity. We examined the fulfilment of the Law in Christ who came to reveal the true substance or body of Life and righteousness, which the Law foreshadowed. We examined the truth that Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one who believes and accepts Him. We then examined the truth that the righteousness of God apart from the Law is now manifested and is imparted by God to a believer in Christ by grace rather than achieved or produced by a believer’s efforts. In the seventh part of the series of messages on Law and Grace we began to examine the Sabbath under grace. We pointed out that the observance of the Sabbath, like all the ordinances and rituals of the Law, was a shadow or type of a reality the substance of which is fulfilled in Christ. For the Sabbath, this reality is Divine rest in Christ. We will continue to explore this wonderful truth of the Sabbath under grace from the standpoint of the Scriptures.

The Sabbath under Grace, Cont.

As we pointed out in our last message, a fundamental Scriptural truth, which we have highlighted in this series of messages on Law and Grace, is that virtually all the ordinances and statutes which constitute the Law foreshadow the substance or reality of the righteousness of God in Christ. Col 2:17 states that the ordinances and rituals of the Law “are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.” Also we read in Heb 10:1: “For the Law which has a shadow of good things to come, not the very image of the things, appearing year by year with the same sacrifices, which they offer continually, they are never able to perfect those drawing near.” We also read in Jo 1:17: “For the Law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” In other words, the Law was a shadow of a reality which Christ brought to mankind in Himself. Therefore, an important question we must ask in understanding and interpreting any aspect of the Law is what is the substance or reality or truth does this aspect of the Law foreshadow in Christ. To relate this principle directly to the observance of the Sabbath as dictated in the Law, the question for us who, according to the Scriptures, are not under Law but under grace, is what reality or truth did the observance of the Sabbath under the Law foreshadow in Christ.

We ended last week’s teaching by stating that the observance of the Sabbath as a weekly day of rest could at its best only foreshadow or symbolize the reality of Divine rest, which God entered into when He completed the work of creation. God certainly intended for the reality of Divine rest to be to mankind a deeper timeless experience than merely shutting down earthly productions and activities on a particular day of every week. A proper understanding of the teachings of the Scriptures on the subject of the Sabbath reveals that, far more than being a ritual observance of a weekly day of rest, the Sabbath of God or Divine rest is a reality of a timeless experience left for the people of God to enter into by faith. In other words, true Sabbath, signifying the reality of the eternal God at rest, transcends time and the periodical observance of days.

Therefore, the observance of Sabbath days in their temporal and repetitious rituals was actually a limited type or shadow which pointed to the eternal reality of the Sabbath of God or Divine rest. And God intended the Sabbath to be for man, not merely a ritual observance to be repeated again and again as a memorial of His rest, but rather an experience of an eternal reality of Divine rest for man to enter into in Him through faith. Let us explore this fundamental truth about the Sabbath of God from the standpoint of the Scriptures.

The fact that the observance of Sabbath days was a repetitious ritual practice observed periodically by the nation of Israel demonstrated its limitation in taking the people of God into the timeless experience of Divine rest. In fact, there were various Sabbaths which the people of Israel were commanded to observe under the Law of Moses. There was a Sabbath on every seventh day, one every year, and one every seventh year. They were all meant to signify in a repetitive ritual under the Law the truth that God has accomplished His work at the beginning of creation and has entered into Rest. It is important to note that the observance of all these Sabbaths signified the truth that God had entered into His rest. In other words, the observance of the Sabbath days was a sign that God had brought about a state of Divine rest.

The Law of Moses stated clearly the significance of the observance of the Sabbath to the nation of Israel as a sign. We read in Exo 31:16-17: “Therefore the sons of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant. It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested, and was refreshed.”

This repetitious observance of the Sabbath was typical of the various ordinances, rituals, and commandments of the Law as they symbolized or foreshadowed the more profound and permanent reality of the eternal life and righteousness which Christ came to be the true substance of. For instance, we read concerning the limitation of the repititious rituals of the ordinances of the Law in Heb 9:6-12:

Now when these things have been so prepared, the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle performing the divine worship, but into the second, only the high priest enters once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance. The Holy Spirit is signifying this, that the way into the holy place has not yet been disclosed while the outer tabernacle is still standing, which is a symbol for the present time. Accordingly both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience, since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

Thus, the observance of the Sabbath, like other rituals of the Law, was repetitious because Christ had not yet come to provide man once and for all access into the eternal glory and reality of the true rest of God. Therefore, under the Old Covenant, although according to the Law, the Jews observed the various Sabbaths, many lacked the faith to enter into the true Rest which the Sabbath signified and, therefore, they missed the Rest of God. On the point of the Jews’ failure to enter into the rest of God, we read in Heb 4:4-11:

For He spoke in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: "And God rested the seventh day from all His works." And in this place again, "They shall not enter into My rest." Since then it remains that some must enter into it, and since they to whom it was first preached did not enter in because of unbelief, He again marks out a certain day, saying in David, "Today," (after so long a time). Even as it is said, "Today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts." For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. So then there remains a rest to the people of God. For he who has entered into his rest, he also has ceased from his own works, as God did from His. Therefore let us labour to enter into that rest, lest anyone fall after the same example of unbelief.

The point which is being made in the above Scripture passage, and which is to be noted in the debate and controversy concerning the observance of the Sabbath day, is that although the people of Israel religiously observed the various Sabbath days as instructed in the Law of Moses under the Old Covenant, they actually did not experience or enter into the true rest of God or the Divine rest, which the observance of these Sabbath days only symbolized. According to Heb 4:8-9, “For if Joshua (as a type of Jesus) had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. So then there remains a rest to the people of God.”

The Scripture therefore points out that regardless of the reptitious observance of the Sabbath day by the Jews, there remains a rest which God wants His people to enter into. This Divine rest, which was hidden from the Jews under the Old Covenant and now remains for the people of God to enter into by faith, is now made accessible in Christ under the New Covenant of grace to all who come to Christ. In Matt 11:25-29, Jesus presents Himself as the rest of God when He declares:

“I thank You, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the sophisticated and cunning, and revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight. All things are delivered to Me by My Father. And no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son will reveal Him. Come to Me all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke on you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest to your souls.”

Jesus Christ gives Divine rest to all who will come to Him. An opportunity is given to believers in Christ under the New Covenant of the grace of God to enter into the Rest of God. The children of Israel, while observing the Sabbaths according to the statutes of the Law of Moses, did not enter into the true Divine rest which the observance of the Sabbath symbolized because they lacked the faith to see beyond the shadow of the statutes and rituals of observing days and to grasp the true reality of the timeless rest of God.

The book of Hebrews in recalling the sad failure of the children of Israel to enter into the rest of God warns us about falling into this tragedy of unbelief in this way in Heb 3:7-19:

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, "Today if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw My works forty years. Therefore I was grieved with that generation and said, They always err in their heart, and they have not known My ways. So I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter into My rest." Take heed, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, while it is said, "Today if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation." For some, when they had heard, did provoke; however, not all who came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was He grieved forty years? Was it not with those who had sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they should not enter into His rest, but to those who did not believe? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

Therefore, it is one thing to observe ritualistically the statutes of the Sabbaths as prescribed by the Law, but quite a different thing to enter into the true Divine rest which God intended the Sabbaths to symbolize or foreshadow. Entering into the Divine rest of God means for the believer a complete cessation of his own efforts of establishing his own rightousness according to the Law and absolute rest in Christ and dependence on the grace of God operating in him and through him to produce the righteousness of God through faith (Phi 3:9). To enter into something is to go in and remain there. Hence, the rest of God remains for man to enter into and abide there, rather than to be observed as a temporal reptitious ritual rest, which one ceremoniously enters into over and over on a certain day every week. “For he who has entered into his rest, he also has ceased from his own works, as God did from His” (Heb 4:10).

Under the Old Covenant of the Law of Moses, the Jews observed the Sabbath days, but lacked the faith to look beyond their ritualistic observance of Sabbath days as well as their other religious attempts to establish their own righteousness and enter into the true perpetual rest which the Sabbaths pointed to. Under the New Covenant of grace, we need not observe times and seasons or days of rest because in Christ we come into the reality of the rest of God for His people. We who have come to Christ have come to the true reality of Divine rest and have ceased from our own works of righteousness having left behind the vanishing symbols of the rest of God represented in the observance of Sabbath days. In this wise, Paul, therefore, exhorts us in Gal 4:9-10: “But now, knowing God, but rather are known by God, how do you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements to which you again desire to slave anew? You observe days and months and times and years.”

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