Hebrews 3 and 4 teaches on the rest that is promised to the people of Israel. It points out that the way in which a person enters God’s rest is by following his Word, by listening to it and not hardening one’s heart against it. Now we know that the Word is Jesus–or Jesus us the Word made flesh. So does it not seem that entering into God’s rest by listening to Christ would somehow relate to Jesus’ exhortation in John 15 to abide in him?

Indeed, John is less about the language of the Old Testament as he is about the more emotional language of personal relationship with Jesus. So he clarifies for us in I John, particularly in chapter 3, though starting in 2:28. He urges us to abide in Christ because of the hope we have of seeing him at his coming, and not being ashamed when we see him. This is strikingly similar to the exhortation in Hebrews 3 and 4 to keep the faith, and listen to the Word so that we may be sure of entering God’s rest.

And John doesn’t leave us to wonder; he makes the connection in the Word: “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God” (I John 3:9). Aha! The abiding (which is in Christ’s love, i.e., the antithesis of sin) is only brought about by the Word first abiding in the individual. So it is in resting! Entering God’s rest is by heeding the Word.

However, we cannot say that the two are identical. For the rest is what the relationship is called, but the abiding describes it. Hebrews says the same thing, only it doesn’t use the term abide: “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the decietfulness of sin” (3:13). Hear is the continuous nature of abiding by supporting one another in love, just as there is in John 15 and I John 3.

So the rest is the assurance that one is in a right relationship with God, and abiding is living in the rest right here, right now. Both are given and sustained by Jesus Christ as gifts to his children.