Labor Day Celebration: Rest from your work, because of His work.

Hebrews 4:10 "For whoever has entered into God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from His."

We are all working! Every day, consciously or not, we are all putting in work for our own self-salvation project. We amplify our good works and justify our evil deeds to be better than the next person or to be seen as innocent in the eyes of our peers. Whether we do good things or abstain from bad things, we are naturally justifiers of self. Often times this self-justifying work is seen by living a safe life, devoted life, purposeful life, moral life, happy life, thrill-seeking life, self-satisfying life, etc. I have found that I can find my self-justifying work load by filling in this blank: "I deserve to be accepted because I _____".

This work is anti-gospel. The gospel calls us to rest from our self-justifying intentions and trust in the justifying work of Christ alone. This is why Jesus says his burden is light. He relieves us from this hard labor of justifying ourselves.

So today, put your faith in Christ. Stop your working. Celebrate the labor of Christ, who lived the perfect life we could never manage to live and gives us His perfect life in exchange for our self-justifying, burdened life. Now we can be accepted because Christ worked for us, not because we worked hard enough to earn acceptance! And because His righteousness is given to us, we can quit our self-salvation project. Let this Labor Day be the day you never work (in this sense) again!

-G