Resting and Wrestling

The Christian life is one part resting and another part wrestling.

That is at least one takeaway from our upcoming sermon text, Hebrews 12:3–11 — and it’s also something that Jesus teaches us.

We quote Jesus’s words often on Sunday morning at the start of our service: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). We rest. We believe that!

But also Jesus says, “Strive [wrestle] to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able” (Luke 13:24). We wrestle. We believe that too.

Resting and wrestling. The Christian life is both, and as John Piper has said, it’s not that it’s rest one day and then wrestling the next day, like some kind of back and forth — but instead it’s resting and wrestling all together, happening at the same time, always connected.

Here’s how that connection works: The main aim of the wrestling is to rest in God, not other fleeting things. (That’s almost a direct quote from Piper.) We are wrestling to rest in God, and that wrestling is against the temptation to look for rest in other things. 

Fighting for Faith

This goes back to Hebrews Chapter 11. It’s an observation that Pastor Mike Polley pointed out to me in the office a couple of weeks ago. He didn’t get a chance to say it in his sermon, but it has to do with the idea of sin in Chapter 11. The word “sin” is only used one time in Chapter 11, referring to the “fleeting pleasures of sin” in Egypt that Moses rejected (11:25). Mike pointed out that in all the heroes of faith who trusted God and endured, the alternative path for each of them was to sin by not trusting in God but by trusting in other things. In other words:

• Rather than looking forward to that city whose designer and builder is God, they could have sinned and put all their eggs in the basket of the cities of this world. (11:10)

• Rather than acknowledge that they were strangers and exiles on the earth, they could have sinned and thought this earth was their home. (11:13–14)

• Rather than desire a better, heavenly country, they could have sinned and only desired a better, earthly country … to be made “great again” (11:16)

In their faith, for each one of them, they fought for that faith. They wrestled for that rest. And we have to do the same. We wrestle for rest in God. 

• Are you trusting in Jesus or your job to give you peace?

• Are you banking on God’s salvation or your stuff to give you joy?

• Are you resting in God’s love for you or do you pine for the approval of man?

We fight for faith. We pray, “God, I believe, help my unbelief” and we pray it through tears and agony and failure and disappointment … and … restfully.

Wrestling Restfully

We wrestle for rest in God, and do that wrestling restfully — and this sounds like a paradox. It does not make sense apart from the gospel.

What this means is: that in our fight against sin, our wrestle against false hope, intense as it is at times, it is a wrestling with the confidence that the victory has already been won. The tomb is empty. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. In him we are more than conquerors. God will complete in us what he started. The Spirit has poured into us resurrection power.

Our wrestling is not in our own strength. It’s not self-reliant works-righteousness. But it’s from a heart ruled by peace, saturated with gratitude, equipped for the fight he’s already won.

So rest … and fight … for rest … restfully.