WHAT ABOUT THE SEVENTH DAY?

Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day-- things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. (Colossians 2:16-17)

Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions . . . . One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind. (Romans 14:1, 5)

You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain. (Galatians 4:10-11)

In view of the above passages of Scripture, it is puzzling that the observance of a Sabbath day is still a matter of controversy – sometimes heated! Are Christians obligated to observe one day in seven in a specific manner as holy to the Lord? If so, what day should that be: Saturday or Sunday? Or does it matter?

Perpetual Principle?

Since the Fourth Commandment is rooted in God’s finished Creation and His “resting” on the seventh day, there is a widespread belief that a seventh-day rest is a universal principle. Commentator A. R. Fausset maintains that the principle of a seventh-day rest was established in Paradise:

The weekly sabbath rests on a more permanent foundation (than the other ceremonial sabbaths in Israel’s calendar), having been instituted in Paradise to commemorate the completion of creation in six days.

But the commandment to observe that seventh day was given to Israel as a sign of God’s covenant with that unique nation (Ex. 31:17). The Genesis account of creation simply records that God “rested on the seventh day”; it does not record a command for Adam and Eve or their descendants to observe that day every week. If a seventh-day rest was observed from Adam to Moses, we have no record of it. We might speculate that an oral account of the creation was passed on and that one day a week was set apart by godly people to rest and honor God. It might also be that the Law of Moses invested that tradition with special meaning – along with specific regulations – for the nation of Israel. Whatever the case, the command to observe the Sabbath as a holy day began with the Law of Moses.

While expressing a basically sabbatarian view, Fausset does acknowledge that Hebrews 4 speaks of a “perpetual sabbath,”  and not a day of the week. He sees that rest as a “heavenly Sabbath” when there will be no need for a weekly day of rest.

“If we could keep a perpetual sabbath,” wrote Fausset, “as we shall hereafter, the positive precept of the sabbath, one in each week, would not be needed (Heb. 4:9).”

As mentioned in my previous post, the “rest” of Hebrews 3 and 4 seems to be the rest of salvation by grace apart from human works. It is indeed a “perpetual rest” from all fear of condemnation (Romans 8:1-2).

A Christian Sabbath?

The elders of a church I belonged to many years ago were considering the adoption of the London Baptist Confession of 1689 as the church’s doctrinal statement. Disagreement arose among the elders over two paragraphs of Chapter 22: Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day.

 7. As it is the law of nature, that in general a proportion of time, by God's appointment, be set apart for the worship of God, so by his Word, in a positive moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men, in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a sabbath to be kept holy unto him, which from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ was the last day of the week, and from the resurrection of Christ was changed into the first day of the week, which is called the Lord's day: and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath, the observation of the last day of the week being abolished. ( Exodus 20:8; 1 Corinthians 16:1, 2; Acts 20:7; Revelation 1:10 )

8.The sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering their common affairs aforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all day, from their own works, words and thoughts, about their worldly employment and recreations, but are also taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of his worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.( Isaiah 58:13; Nehemiah 13:15-22; Matthew 12:1-13 )

Some elders who were more aligned with Covenant Theology viewed Sunday as the “Christian Sabbath,” while others believed corporate and private worship to be a matter of individual conscience and not legal obligation. Since the elders of that church only made recommendations to the congregation when there was unanimous support, the London Confession was not presented. Instead they proposed a statement that proved acceptable to the elders and the congregation:

We believe that the first day of the week is the Christian celebration of our Lord’s resurrection. Following the example of the New Testament, the day is best used for the assembly of believers to worship and be instructed. We do not believe that Sunday is the New Covenant equivalent of the Old Covenant Sabbath with its attendant restrictions on activity. The preferring of one day above another is a matter of Christian liberty (Romans 14:5-6).

The New Testament Record

In the Gospels, Jesus had much to say about the Jews’ erroneous views of the Sabbath, but it ought to strike us that the New Testament from Acts on gives no instruction concerning the observance of one day a week as a religious observance. There are a couple of New Testament examples of worship on a particular day, and that day was the first day of the week.

On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them, intending to leave the next day, and he prolonged his message until midnight. (Acts 20:7)

Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so do you also. On the first day of every week each one of you is to put aside and save, as he may prosper, so that no collections be made when I come. (1 Corinthians 16:1-2)

This latter passage certainly implies that the “churches of Galatia” as well as the church in Corinth regularly met on the first day of the week.

While there is a conspicuous absence of rules or even guidelines as to what believers should do on that day of worship, Paul found it necessary to correct disorderly conduct in the church at Corinth and he gave Timothy advice on the conduct of church services. (See 1 Cor. 11-14; 1 Tim. 2 & 3)

Law vs. Grace

At the heart of any discussion of the Ten Commandments is the matter of the New Covenant vs. the Old Covenant. It is beyond the scope of this article to deal with such a vast subject, but some contrasts were made by the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 3. Paul contrasts the law on “tablets of stone” (clearly the Ten Commandments) with God’s law “written on human hears (v. 3). Paul says “the letter” of the law “kills,” while “the Spirit gives life” (v. 6). The law written in stone, Paul says, is a “ministry of death” (v. 7), because it can only condemn those who cannot perfectly fulfill it – and none of us can!

The Old Covenant was rigid, and the penalty for deliberately disregarding it was severe. That included the law of the Sabbath day. (See Numbers 15:30-35)

As I developed in my last post, God’s Word shows a progressive revelation of the Sabbath principle investing it with ever more spiritual meaning. We might contrast the essence of the Sabbath concept in the Old Covenant and New Covenant in this way:

Old Covenant: Obey the Sabbath Day on the penalty of death.

New Covenant: Enjoy the Sabbath Rest in gratitude for the death and resurrection of Christ.

For those who would like to understand better the New Covenant in contrast to the Old Covenant, I recommend these books: Law and Grace by Alva J. McClain and The Law of Christ  by Charles Leiter.