The Everlasting Covenant

The Cross of Christ

The Sabbath comes revealing Christ the Creator as the burden bearer. He bears the burdens of the whole world, with all its toil and sin and sorrow, and He bears it easily—His burden is light. “His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness; by whose stripes we are healed.” ¹ It is in the cross of Christ that we receive life, and are made new creatures. The power of the cross, therefore, is creative power. So when on the cross Jesus cried, “It is finished,” He was simply announcing that in Him, through His cross, could be obtained the perfect works of God, which were finished from the foundation of the world. Thus the Sabbath—the seventh day rest that commemorates creation completed in the beginning—is a blessed reminder of the fact that in the cross of Christ that same creative power is freely offered to deliver us from the curse, and make us in Him as complete as was everything when God saw it and pronounced it “very good.” The word of life which is proclaimed to us in the Gospel is “that which was from the beginning.” EVCO 445.2

He does not fail nor become impatient or discouraged; therefore we may confidently cast all our care on Him. Thus the Sabbath is indeed a delight. In the Psalm for the Sabbath day, David sang, “Thou, Lord, hast made glad through Thy work; I will triumph in the works of Thy hands.” ¹ The Sabbath means triumphing in the works of God’s hands, not in our own works. It means victory over sin and death—everything connected with the curse—through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the worlds were made. It is a remnant of Eden before the curse came, and therefore he who keeps it indeed really begins his eternal rest—he has the rest, the perfect rest, which the New Earth alone can give. EVCO 446.1