Murray: "Redemption has a past, present, and future"

John Murray: On the Sabbath

Even though I don't subscribe to all of the baggage that comes with John Murray's "Lord's Day as Christian Sabbath" confessional notion, he does have some great redemptive-historical thoughts about the grounds of our sabbath rest in Christ being in the Sabbath of creation and its correlating commandment:

"It is clear that the rest of Canaan and the rest that remains for the people of God are redemptive in character. Since they are patterned after God's rest in creation, this means that the redemptive takes on the character of that rest of God upon which the sabbath institution for man originally rested and from which it derived its sanction. We cannot but discover in this again the close relation between the creative and the redemptive in the sabbath ordinance and the coherence of Exodus 20:11 and Deuteronomy 5:15. We are reminded again that likeness to God governs man's obligation and is brought to its realization in the provisions of redemption. In the consummation of redemption the sabbath rest of God's people achieves conformity to the fullest extent. "For he who has entered into his rest, he also has ceased from his own works, as God did from his" (cf. Rev. 14:13). The sabbath institution in all its aspects and applications has this prospective reference; the whole movement of redemption will find its finale in the sabbath rest that remains. The weekly Sabbath is the promise, token, and foretaste of the consummated rest; it is also the earnest. The biblical philosophy of the Sabbath is such that to deny its perpetuity is to deprive the movement of redemption of one of its most precious strands.

Redemption has a past, a present, and a future. In the Sabbath as "the Lord's day" all three are focused. In retrospect it is the memorial of our Lord's resurrection. In the present with resurrection joy it fulfils its beneficent design by the lordship of the Son of man. As prospect it is the promise of the inheritance of the saints." -- John Murray