The Connection Between Election and the Continuing Sabbath

"Since therefore it remains for some to enter it...,  there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from His. Let

Paul at Corinth

us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience." 
- Hebrews 4:6-11

A common objection to the continuing ordinance of the Sabbath is that Jesus has fulfilled it, because Christians find our spiritual rest in Him alone. While I certainly agree with that premise, I think it is an unwarranted leap of logic to go from there to the abrogation of the Sabbath.

Note the words of the author of this epistle, quoted above: there "remain some to enter..." That is, there were - and still are - elect members of Christ who have not yet found their spiritual rest in Him. I have, as millions of Christians down through history have. However, there is an unknowable of number, ordained by God (Acts 13:48, 18:10), who have not yet heard the Gospel or responded to it. There still remains a rest for them, when they respond as they are ordained to do.

That is why the Sabbath cannot have been fulfilled, in an abrogating sense. The redeeming work of Christ has been finished, which is why the types pointing to it have been abrogated. However, that is not to what the Sabbath day points. Rather, its fulfillment is when the last believer finds his spiritual rest in that finished work of Christ. That is necessarily a progressive, historical process. And that necessarily means that its type, the Sabbath, cannot yet have ceased.

While it is beside my point here, I do not want to be taken to imply that this typological role of the Sabbath is its only purpose.