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One of Christ’s most precious promises is that He will provide rest for the soul. The great church father Augustine famously wrote in The Confessions, “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” Jesus addressed this need for rest when He said:
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:28–30)
What a remarkable assurance: rest for our souls. Isn’t this exactly what we need?
J.C. Ryle recognized the profound encouragement offered by Jesus’ words. He wrote from the vantage point of nineteenth- century England, but his analysis of the human condition was no different from Augustine’s: we are restless and desperate apart from God. Ryle wrote:
How cheering and comfortable are these words! Unrest is one great characteristic of the world: hurry, vexation, failure, disappointment, stare us in the face on every side. But here is hope: there is an ark of refuge for the weary, as truly as there was for Noah’s dove. There is rest in Christ, rest of conscience, and rest of heart, rest built on pardon of all sin, rest flowing from peace with God.
Rest for the soul can come only through Jesus. Human beings go to great lengths to seek rest in other things, but with each failed attempt, the restlessness of the soul asserts itself even more powerfully. We find our rest by coming to Christ alone, taking up His yoke and learning from Him. By resting in Jesus, we find our souls’ true rest.
What Augustine and Ryle realized was the same thing that Thomas Vincent, a Puritan pastor from the seventeenth century, reflected on and treasured. This is how he explained the soul’s rest in Christ:
The soul doth rest upon Christ for salvation when, being convinced of its lost condition by reason of sin, and its own inability, together with all creatures’ insufficiency, to recover it out of this estate, and having a discovery and persuasion of Christ’s ability and willingness to save, it doth let go all hold on the creatures, and renounce its own righteousness, and so lay hold on Christ, rely upon him, and put confidence in him, and in him alone, for salvation.
Have you been convinced of your own inability to provide rest for your soul? Are you persuaded of Christ’s ability and willingness to save? Have you laid hold of Him for salvation? Come to Jesus, and He will bring you rest. Rest in Him alone, and you will find rest for your weary soul.