LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
Canaan and Rest for the Soul
In Christ the soul finds rest when it is saved from itself and won for God.
Rodrigo Abarca
Canaan represents the rest given to the people of God. After the hard servitude of Egypt and the troublesome pilgrimage in the desert during forty years, Israel finally rested when they entered into the land of abundance. The land of Canaan typifies the abounding riches of the grace granted by God in His Son Jesus Christ. Because all the promises, blessings, gifts and divine favor are summed up in the indescribable gift of God that is Christ. All fullness was gathered in Him. Therefore, Christ Himself is the rest given to the people of God. He is our land of rest and abundance.
The conditions of rest
However, although everything was given to us in Christ, some conditions exist for the full possession of our inheritance. Certainly, faith is the first of them. In Hebrews 3:19 it says that the first generation of Israel, saved from Egypt, could not enter into God’s rest because of their unbelief. They didn’t want to believe the word of God and, as a consequence, fell in the desert. This is a very important principle. So, the word of God is living and effective, and only through it can we enter into God’s rest.
But a question arises: How does the word of God introduce us into His rest? The answer is in the work that the word of God carries out in believers. Hebrews compares it to a double edged sword “penetrating even to the division of soul and spirit...” This is the second condition for rest. Because, truly, God’s rest is the resting of the soul. For many of us, the biggest obstacle for enjoying the abundant life that we possess in Christ is in our soul. For it, the psalmist tells us: “Upon God alone doth my soul rest peacefully.” Because our soul is by nature restless and active. It is always full of plans, feelings, initiatives and activities of all types. But that whole activity truly is a hindrance for the manifestation of the divine life in us. Therefore, for the full enjoyment of the life that is in Christ, rest for the soul is required.
The life of the soul is depicted in Israel’s long pilgrimage through the desert. Everything there is restlessness, fear and anxiety. The word that better describes this experience is dissatisfaction. On the one hand, we partly enjoy life and heavenly wealth, but, on the other, that long, troublesome and omnipresent desert is always before us, with all its temptations, fights, frustrations and defeats. A coming and going without direction. But, will it always be this way? Doesn’t the bible tell us that the path of the righteous is like the dawning light, shining ever brighter till the full light of day? Why then does our Christian life always seem to rotate in circles, without showing any evidence of progress? Thus the same sins, fears, anxieties and temptations that were upon us in the beginning seem to continue here after so many years.
But, it should not always be this way. The desert must constitute the normal experience of our life because God has provided a land of abundance and fullness for us. Nevertheless, the secret of its possession is that it is also a land of rest.
The secret of his rest
The land was not conquered but was received with a gift. And an immense difference exists between conquering and receiving. The Scripture tells us that the Israelites possessed the land without effort and without work on their behalf. God went before them, destroying their enemies. Then, they received the land as a gift from God. The first generation could not enter into it because they looked at it as something that had to be conquered. But this is a task for which no man is qualified. Mere human capacity, ability and effort will never be able to obtain even a centimeter of the land of Canaan. The road is closed off to this route. This is the explanation for our failure and frustration when we try to live the Christian life for ourselves. The secret is in receiving, but how do we receive?
We have seen that Christ is a land of rest and that this rest is the rest of the soul. Many believers understand the truth of their union with Christ in His death and resurrection mentally, and they know that the secret of the victory is in Christ and His life. What’s more, they know that faith is the only requirement to enjoy it, but for some inexplicable reason this truth does not seem to work for them. They make an effort to believe and to take these truths of the Scriptures for themselves, but they always end up discouraged and confused. Why does this happen to us?
What we cannot see, along this whole painful road, is that the center of all our effort is the activity of the soul. It is the soul that has understood the truth and it now tries to reproduce it in the experience. The human “I” is still in the center of everything. It is offering “to extract” the life and the power needed for the victory from Christ. But, the land of abundance is not reached this way, because it is a gift and not a conquest. Truly, the soul is essentially disbelieving and it cannot seize God’s life for itself. The soul, in order to receive it, should first cease all activity and come to a state of rest and stillness. Why? Because Christ’s fullness and His life are in the spirit and not in the soul. The Christian life is, primarily, an activity of the spirit and not of the soul. Therefore, it is necessary that the soul is first separated or “parted” from the spirit through the work of the word of God.
The word of God is a living and effective word; a word that is Spirit and life. It contains the substance of all the divine acts worked in Christ, in His death, resurrection and exaltation. That is to say, it is the same Spirit working by means of this word in our soul, applying Christ’s work upon it, bringing death upon its natural and independent activity. And for this to happen, our sincere willingness to be examined and judged in His light is required (that is, to be judged in the root and the deepest motivations of all that we are and do by means of our soul). The light of the living word of God strips bare and puts an end to the independent activity of the soul. Then, from the spirit, the soul receives the necessary faith to believe in this word.
And here there is true rest. The spirit, having been regenerated by God’s Spirit, is the site of the divine life in man. “He who unites himself with the Lord – Paul tells us– is one with him in spirit” (1Cor.6:17). For this reason, Hebrews affirms that the spirits of the righteous have been made perfect (Heb.12:23), that is, that they participate, by means of their union with Christ, in the perfect righteousness of the Son of God. In this way, we can see that the human spirit, by virtue of regeneration, has inwardly received, in a perfect way, Christ’s victorious life. However, since the source of identity and of that which we call personality is in the soul, it is only through the soul that this life can and should be expressed.
Consequently, the soul needs to be “saved” from itself, that is, from its natural and independent activity, to come to a submissive rest under the superior operation of the spirit, in order to enjoy Christ in fullness. This is true rest. Because the soul is saved from itself and won for God and His life, when it arrives at this state of stillness and rest in Christ: “In repentance and rest is your salvation; in quietness and trust is your strength” (Isa.30:15).
The fruit of rest
To enter into God’s rest is to enter in His works, which were finished from the foundation of the world. They are all summed up and finished in Christ, because everything was made through Him and for Him. This is God’s rest, and as believers we simply enter in to participate in that rest by virtue of our union with Christ. Then, Christ comes to be all of what is Gods, for us. He becomes the air that we breathe and the land that we step on. He is our center and also our circumference. He is everything! Next, spontaneously and without any effort on our part, His character, His power and His glory begin to be reflected and manifested in our life. It is not about truths and virtues that we try to seize or to develop for ourselves, but of His divine person filling every part of our being. What a difference there is here! Christ Himself fights our battles and subjects our enemies under our feet. Sin, the flesh, the world and Satan; nothing can come against Christ and His resurrection life. This is the true victory! It is the land of Canaan and it is also God’s rest.
Therefore, we need the living word of God to penetrate our being and completely strip bare the independent and fruitless activity of the soul, and in this way bringing it to its end. When this happens, Christ’s life will find a way to manifest itself in us. Then all the “truths” contained in the Scriptures will end up being part of our experience, and our faith will cease being something merely conceptual and will convert into a real experience.
Some Christians of the past called this “the victorious Christian life” or “the abundant life.” However, this is, in actual fact, the class of life that God predestined from eternity, that it might be the possession of all His children. We were not called to failure, disillusion or continuous defeat. We were not called to wander in the desert. Our inheritance is the land of Canaan, which is Christ in all His fullness. He is ours by birth right, because we are God’s descendants. We don’t need to live in spiritual poverty if we have Christ as our life. Let us simply allow the Holy Spirit to introduce us into the full possession of all that has been given by God, in Christ, and let us enjoy it in the rest and stillness of our soul.
“Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.” (Psalm 62:5).