Sabbath: Working Toward A Foundation for Rest
We are going to get right to the point: The Christian Sabbath. This is a topic that, if I had to guess, many reading this might not have a category for. After all, isn’t the Sabbath a Jewish thing? What does Christianity have to do with the Sabbath? Didn’t Christ do away with the Sabbath in the New Covenant? These are difficult questions, and there are a variety of answers and perspectives that are justifiable and fall within the realm of Christian orthodoxy. So, let us push forward toward some semblance of a Biblical and theological understanding of the Christian sabbath.
- What was the Sabbath in the Law?
- There are two main places that serve as the foundational commands. Those are Exodus 20:8-11 and Deuteronomy 5:12-15. In both texts, we see two commands with two reasons. The first command is to work for 6 days; even in the Sabbath command, God was giving commands concerning work. The second command is to rest on the 7th day, and not to do any work on it; the seventh day was to be set apart for the purpose of rest. The reasons: because the Lord created in 6 days and rested, and the Lord brought you out of the land of Egypt, so rest and give others the opportunity to rest. In other words, the Sabbath was to be a restful remembrance of the LORD’s work and rest in creation and work redemption (Gen. 2:1-3; Ex. 20:2, 11; Deut. 5:6). But, some might say, this is the Law. What do Christians have to do with the Law?
- What did Jesus think about the Law?
- Jesus, in the sermon on the mount, addressed the Law and His relationship to it. Jesus said: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17). What Jesus meant by fulfilling the law is of the utmost importance in ascertaining how Christians relate to the 10 Commandments. Matthew Henry sheds light on what is meant when Christ said He came to fulfill the law: “If we consider the law as a vessel that had some water in it before, he did not come to pour out the water, but to fill the vessel up to the brim.” That is, as we see Christ do in the proceeding verses in the sermon, Jesus gives a fuller explanation of various commands from the 10 Commandments. Though Jesus does not address the Sabbath here, we must insist on what Jesus is not doing. Jesus is not throwing away the 10 Commandments, saying they are no longer binding upon the people of God nor anyone else for that matter. Rather, Jesus argues for the 10 Commandments’ “permanent validity” (Berkhof). He does this by giving them fuller explanations.
- What about what Paul said?
- In Colossians 2:16, Paul says: “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.” In short, Charles Hodge both argue that behind this was the heretics that so aggravated Paul and the churches on many occasions. Hodge notes that they “insisted that the Mosaic law continued in force, and that Christians were bound to conform to its prescriptions with regard to the distinction between clean and unclean meats, and its numerous feast days, on which all labour was to be intermitted” (ST Vol. 3, p. 332). Simply put, this passage is not about walking in step with the Fourth Commandment in matters of rest and worship (Sproul).
- What did the Church do about a day of worship and rest?
- Acts 20:7 says: “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight.” I don’t know about you, but it sounds like Paul was giving a lengthy and killer sermon (look at the rest of the context). Upon what day did Paul deliver this sermon? It was the first day of the week. The breaking of bread should draw our minds back to Acts 2:42, where it says the new Christian church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” The breaking of bread mentioned was more than likely the practice of the Lord’s Supper in the church. So, we have a sermon and likely the practice of the Lord’s Supper in Acts 20. All of this was taking place on the first day of the week; that is, it was on Sunday that Christians were meeting together to worship as the church, to hear God’s word preached, and to participate in the Supper. Theologically speaking, just as the Jews set aside the 7th day for rest and remembrance of creation and redemption from Egypt, the early Christians set aside the 1st day of the week for rest and remembrance of re-creation and redemption from sin by the Son of God, Jesus Christ the Lord.
In conclusion: the Sabbath still matters. No doubt there is various difference between the Jew and the Christian regarding the Sabbath. Nonetheless, we see that Christ did not do away with the Law (the Ten Commandments). Therefore, we must do something with the fourth commandment. Additionally, there are various places in the New Testament where special care is needed lest we think that the Sabbath is simply washed away with the inauguration of the New Covenant. At the same time, something has happened within the New Covenant! Christ has come and the early Church recognized that something has shifted. This is seen in that they met on the first day of the week (Sunday) and not the last day (Saturday). With that being said, I hope you will join me again in the near future on this subject. In my next post, we will move toward a Biblical-theological practice of the Christian Sabbath.