Our Lord’s invitation to us today is so compelling and inviting to hear. He says, “Come to Me, all you labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And He says, “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.” These words have echoed within the Church since the beginning, in sermon by bishop and priests for nearly 2,000 years. It was these words that famously led Saint Augustine in his spiritual autobiography The Confessions to address God and write: “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in You.”
I think that we can be assured that we are receiving the power of the Holy Spirit when we are able to rest in Christ, and in His loving arms. I think that we are receiving the power of the Holy Spirit when, in knowing that Christ is alive and that He loves us, we are able to sink into Him, sink into His being, as we might sink into our favorite piece of furniture. Our Lord is loving unto every person, and His mercy is over all His works, especially we who are His works, for as we grow in relationship with Christ through the Holy Spirit, His is working His transformation upon the eyes of our heart, away from the darkness of sin and beholding the radiance of Christ’s presence and love.
In the Book of Proverbs (15:3) we are taught that “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.” The Lord is ever watching us, His eyes ever upon us. There is nothing we say, do, or even think without the Lord’s knowledge. His eyes see all; His ears hear all; His mind knows all. This I think is why Our Lord invites us to rest in Christ. Doing so is the only solution to the human condition; resting in Christ is the only solution to the fact of the disordered world of human sinfulness. We are all sinners; we are all people in need of a Savior. And we know Who our Savior is, and we know His Name: Our Savior is the Son of God Who sits at His Right Hand, and His Name is Jesus. He knows we must rest in Him.
When Jesus says, “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light,” He means this in contrast to that of the world. He means this in contrast to the life of the flesh, with which Paul is wrestling in our Epistle reading. “Wretched man that I am!” says the Apostle. This recognition leads him to ask: “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” He means the body in which the body’s mind is set on things of the flesh; the body’s mind which is set on worldly things, worldly concerns, worldly goals. A mind set on the world, that is on the flesh, is death, and this is the primary (not only) definition of death in Scripture: a person who is alive physically by dead spiritually. People are dead spiritually because the main priority in their life is living according to the values of the world. This is the death that was introduced to humanity by the eating of the forbidden fruit by Adam and Eve: spiritual death, spiritual hell, which is where humanity is headed when it does not heed the commandments of God.
Compared to this — compared with spiritual death and spiritual hell — the yoke and burden of Jesus Christ is light. Or, lighter, because His yoke and burden together are a demand upon us. Christ does place demand upon His people. What is this demand?
His demand in one part is His summary of the Law: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” And His demand in the other part is to repent as a way of life: that is, the way of life in which we constantly lift our heart and mind to God, turning to Him and to His light. This is the yoke: to love God with all that we are, and love God in our neighbor, and to habitually repent, habitually lift our heart and mind to God; and this the burden, the bear our Cross, to suffer for what is right, to witness in public to Christ, that He is the Savior of all.
This yoke and this burden, these are not nothing; both do make a demand upon us. But in comparison with a life spiritually dead? In comparison with a life of spiritual hell? Is there any question which we should choose? Can there be any hesitation?
And so let us, dear brothers and sisters, continue to work to set our minds not on worldly values, but on what is of God. Let us strive to live according to the Holy Spirit, in all we do, in all we say, in all we choose. Yes, Christ places a demand on us, and it is an absolute one. But from it comes abundance of life, and from it comes an abundance of peace. This is what it means, in the fullest sense, to rest in Christ: to be activated by His abundant life and peace, to show in our lives the glory of God’s kingdom and to talk of His power, that His power, His glory, and the mightiness of His kingdom, the Holy Spirit, may be known through us to all people around us. Amen.
On Resting in Christ