<![CDATA[Studies of Hebrews 3:7-4:11 have concentrated on the nature, location, and background of the promised rest, and on the way the letter’s eschatology drives its exhortations. This article asks a related but neglected question: how does the passage arrange access to that rest in time? We argue that the author works with three temporal points of reference. The first is God’s rest, available ‘from the foundation of the world’ (4:3-4), which early Jewish and Christian readers understood as a seventh day that never reached its evening. The second is the ‘Today’ of Psalm 95, which the author treats as a limited day of invitation (3:13; 4:7). The third is ‘the Day’ that the readers see approaching (10:25; cf. 9:28). Taking up Nicholas Moore’s christological reading of 4:10, we propose that Christ, the one who has already entered God’s rest and the forerunner who entered ‘for us’ (6:20), links these three points. Within the rest motif, the two strands of eschatology that Scott Mackie has identified in Hebrews, two-age eschatology and heavenly sanctuary eschatology, meet in him. The Sabbath rest that ‘remains’ (4:9) is therefore a rest the Son already occupies, and believers enter it as ‘partakers of Christ’ (3:14). Because the warnings of the passage concern the limited Today and not the availability of the rest, Hebrews can hold grace and urgent exhortation together without contradiction.]]>
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