What Is the Christian Sabbath? part 1
Peter Ditzel
Have you ever wondered what
day Christians are to keep? Saturday? Sunday? Are we to keep the day as
a Sabbath or as a Lord’s Day? Or maybe there is no day for Christians to
keep. This might sound like a relatively minor issue. But this question,
simple as it sounds, has divided Christianity into four camps, each
supporting its own view.
What’s more, some people tend to judge others with different opinions on
this issue. We are to defend the faith and expose error. But does the
Bible authorize the judging of others over the issue of days? This
article will answer these questions from the Bible. Whatever your view,
please read this entire article to get the full picture. Also, please do
not jump to conclusions about what my view is. I will state my view
toward the end of the article.
I also want to point out that in writing this article, I am going to
explain Scriptures as I see them. You, the reader, have the obligation
to be as the Bereans and search the Scriptures to see whether these
things I say are so (see Acts 17:10-11). As you read this article, you
will see that I point out the deficiencies of all of the views but the
one I hold. I hold that view because I believe it is the teaching of the
Bible and does not have deficiencies. In doing so, I am not judging the
Christianity of anyone holding to a view different from my own. Romans
14 is a good chapter to study in this regard (I will have more to say
about Romans 14 later). I am only trying to point out what I believe is
the Scriptural and better way to understand the issue of keeping days.
All of us, when dealing with this subject, must be careful not to add to
Scripture (for example, by saying there is a command to keep a day when
there is not), impose our views on others against their will, judge
others’ Christianity, or keep days to earn merit with God (which amounts
to legalism).
The four views concerning the day Christians are to keep are:
1) The Sunday-Sabbath View. Christians are to keep the
Sabbath because it is part of the moral law, but the day (Saturday) on
which it was kept in the Old Testament was merely ceremonial and was
changed to Sunday with the resurrection of Jesus Christ on Sunday
morning. Those who hold this view sometimes call Sunday the Lord’s Day,
but because they view it as a Sabbath, their use of this term does not
put them into the Lord’s Day view discussed below. Presbyterians,
Reformed Christians, Methodists, and some Baptists (especially Reformed
Baptists), among others, have historically held the Sunday-Sabbath view.
Today, however, only the more conservative churches in these
denominations adhere—often quite adamantly—to Sabbath (Sunday) keeping.
The rest seem to view the practice as a quaint custom of the past that
has little relevance to today.
2) The Seventh-day Sabbath View. Christians are to keep
the seventh day (Saturday) as the Sabbath as commanded in the Ten
Commandments. This view is held, among others, by Seventh-day
Adventists; the Seventh-day Baptists; the Church of God (Seventh Day);
the Church of God 7th Day; and the various splinter groups of the
Worldwide Church of God that adhere to the tenets of Herbert W.
Armstrong, such as the Philadelphia Church of God, the United Church of
God, the Living Church of God, and the Church of God, International.
3) The Lord’s Day View. The Sabbath day belongs to the Old
Testament and is past, but Christ, by His resurrection and appearances
to His disciples, instituted a new day called the Lord’s Day. The Lord’s
Day is Sunday. Those who hold this view do not always agree as to how to
observe the Lord’s Day. The spectrum ranges from those who treat the day
as if it were a Sabbath in everything but name (and who are sometimes
judgmental of those at the other end of the spectrum) to those who
believe that it is the day on which we should go to church, but that it
does not otherwise affect what we do outside of church. The Lord’s Day
view is held by most who do not fall into the first two views. Some
people hold a variation of the Lord’s Day view in which they say the
Lord’s Day was not instituted in the Bible, but should be kept because
it was an early church tradition.
The Lord’s Day view, by the way, is the official position of both the
Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches (the Eastern church also
gives some special regard to the seventh day [Saturday] as the day on
which God rested from His works of creation and the day on which Christ
rested in death in the tomb). In reality, however, the Roman church has
wavered and continues to waver between the Lord’s Day view and the
Sunday-Sabbath view. Cæsarius of Arles led a movement in the Roman
church in the sixth century that taught a form of the Sunday-Sabbath
view, but the church officially opposed this. Albertus Magnus
(1193–1280) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) also held to a Sunday-Sabbath
view.
Pope John Paul II, in his apostolic letter called Dies Domini, wrote in 1998, "It is the duty of Christians therefore to remember that, although the practices of the Jewish Sabbath are gone, surpassed as they are by the ’fulfilment’ which Sunday brings, the underlying reasons for keeping ’the Lord’s Day’ holy — inscribed solemnly in the Ten Commandments — remain valid, though they need to be reinterpreted in the light of the theology and spirituality of Sunday.... [Jesus Christ]...restores to the Sabbath observance its liberating character, carefully safeguarding the rights of God and the rights of man. This is why Christians, called as they are to proclaim the liberation won by the blood of Christ, felt that they had the authority to transfer the meaning of the Sabbath to the day of the Resurrection.... Therefore, also in the particular circumstances of our own time, Christians will naturally strive to ensure that civil legislation respects their duty to keep Sunday holy. In any case, they are obliged in conscience to arrange their Sunday rest in a way which allows them to take part in the Eucharist, refraining from work and activities which are incompatible with the sanctification of the Lord’s Day, with its characteristic joy and necessary rest for spirit and body." It is interesting to see here how these words show that Catholics still struggle to explain how they believe that Sunday is not the Sabbath while also believing that somehow it is! Notice the equivocation: "...although the practices of the Jewish Sabbath are gone...the underlying reasons for keeping ’the Lord’s Day’ holy — inscribed solemnly in the Ten Commandments — remain valid.... This is why Christians...felt that they had the authority to transfer the meaning of the Sabbath to the day of the Resurrection."
This same thinking can be seen in Pope Benedict XVI, when, in 2007, he wrote in Sacramentum Caritatis, "...the Synod Fathers reaffirmed the importance of the Sunday obligation for all the faithful.... To lose a sense of Sunday as the Lord’s Day, a day to be sanctified, is symptomatic of the loss of an authentic sense of Christian freedom, the freedom of the children of God.... Sunday thus appears as the primordial holy day, when all believers, wherever they are found, can become heralds and guardians of the true meaning of time. It gives rise to the Christian meaning of life and a new way of experiencing time, relationships, work, life and death.... For the sake of these important values – while recognizing that Saturday evening, beginning with First Vespers, is already a part of Sunday and a time when the Sunday obligation can be fulfilled – we need to remember that it is Sunday itself that is meant to be kept holy, lest it end up as a day ’empty of God.’... Finally, it is particularly urgent nowadays to remember that the day of the Lord is also a day of rest from work. It is greatly to be hoped that this fact will also be recognized by civil society, so that individuals can be permitted to refrain from work without being penalized. Christians, not without reference to the meaning of the Sabbath in the Jewish tradition, have seen in the Lord’s Day a day of rest from their daily exertions." Again, while avoiding explicitly naming Sunday as the Christian Sabbath, the pope references refraining from work on Sunday to "the Sabbath in the Jewish tradition" and, quite in the fashion of the Jews, even says that this Sunday rest begins on "Saturday evening" (Jews, both anciently and today, keep the seventh day Sabbath from evening to evening).
In the above references, both
popes call for laws to protect Sunday observance. Is it preposterous
that we could, even today, return to enforced rest on Sunday? Not at
all. As I write, France is trying to enforce Sunday laws, which the
Associated Press says are "aimed to support ’dominical rest’,"
against handbag manufacturer and retailer Louis Vuitton ("Louis
Vuitton opens store Sunday amid legal battle"). French "law empowers
a Prefect, after consultation with employers’ organizations and trade
unions, to issue a formal decision concerning the Sunday closure of
establishments within a particular sphere of activity and a particular
geographical area" ("Sunday
Rest"). And, backed by Catholic bishops, the European Union has
proposed a new law on Sunday rest ("European
bishops back proposed EU law on Sunday rest").
4) The God’s Rest Fulfillment View. This position is
somewhat similar to the third view in agreeing that the requirement to
keep a Sabbath day (whether seventh day or Sunday) ended with the Old
Covenant. The difference between this view and the Lord’s Day view is
that those who hold this fourth view believe that the Bible does not
enjoin Christians to observe any day. The Sabbath was a shadow and a
part of the law pointing to Christ. Christians have entered God’s true
rest and no longer need the shadow. Also, Jesus did not institute a new
day called the Lord’s Day for Christians to keep. This is very much a
minority view held only by small groups of Christians.
The Sunday-Sabbath View
The view that the Sabbath was
transferred to Sunday, and that Christians are obligated to keep this
day as a Sabbath, is called semisabbatarianism. In the thirteenth
century, the scholastic theologian Albertus Magnus explained how this
transfer from one day to another could have happened. He said that the
command in the Old Testament to rest upon a Sabbath was moral and
perpetual, but the day of the week on which this rest was commanded to
the Jews was only a symbol subject to change. Those who today hold to a
Sunday-Sabbath view still use this argument.
The Fourth Commandment, as found in Exodus 20:8–11 states: “Remember the
sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy
work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou
shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy
manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that
is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the
Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Do these verses allow
for the Sabbath to be transferred to Sunday?
Notice that the command says, “the seventh day is the sabbath.” It does
not say one day in seven is a Sabbath. It specifically names which day
is the Sabbath—the seventh. It goes on to explain why that day is the
day on which to rest: because God made the heavens and the earth in six
days and rested the seventh. The commandment makes no distinction
between the rest as moral and the day as symbol. Since the command
actually defines the Sabbath as the seventh day, it is impossible to
divide the command by saying the Sabbath is moral law, but the seventh
day is ceremonial law. To say that another day—the first day—could be
the Sabbath is to do violence to the commandment.
The Sabbath command is repeated in Deuteronomy 5, where again it is
stated that the seventh day is the Sabbath. It is also repeated in
Exodus 31, where it says, “the seventh [day] is the sabbath of rest”
(verse 15), and “for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on
the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed” (verse 17). These verses
all intimately connect the seventh day with the Sabbath rest. The two
are inseparable. As far as these passages are concerned, one must
conclude that as long as there is a day to be kept as a Sabbath, it must
be the seventh day.
Of course, those who believe that Sunday is now the Sabbath have
additional arguments to support their case. Central to these is Jesus’
resurrection on Sunday. (The Seventh Day Adventist Church also teaches
that Jesus was resurrected on Sunday, after resting in death in the
grave on the Sabbath. But most other seventh-day Sabbath keepers believe
Jesus was resurrected on the seventh day. For the Bible’s answer to this
view, see “3
Days + 3 Nights = 1 False Doctrine.”) Other evidence offered
includes the facts that Jesus, after His resurrection, met with His
disciples on the first day of the week (John 20:19); that He met with
them again “after eight days” (John 20:26), taken to mean a week later;
that, during a visit from Paul, the disciples met to break bread (take
the Lord’s supper) on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7); and that
Paul ordered everyone in the Corinthian church to “lay by him in store”
on the first day of the week (1 Corinthians 16:2). This article will
mention these Scriptures again in discussing the Lord’s Day view. Here,
only those aspects of them that specifically pertain to their being used
as evidence supporting semisabbatarianism will be addressed.
Does Jesus’ resurrection on the first day of the week make that day a
Sabbath? Proponents say that because Jesus’ death and resurrection make
possible God’s free gift of grace, so that we can now rest in grace
instead of doing the works of the law, and because the Sabbath pictures
God’s rest, Jesus’ resurrection on Sunday shows that God was making
Sunday the Sabbath day. Does the Bible say this? No. The Bible nowhere
states that Jesus’ resurrection changed the day of the Sabbath. In fact,
as we have seen, the Old Testament Sabbath command does not allow for
such a change.
Can we logically deduce that the day on which Jesus was resurrected
became the Sabbath day? As mentioned above, Sunday-Sabbath proponents
says that Jesus’ death and resurrection make possible God’s free gift of
grace. It is certainly true that Jesus’ death paid the penalty for the
sins—past, present, and future—of all believers. His resurrection showed
that those sins are truly gone because if He still bore them, He would
have remained dead in those sins. It is also true that because of this,
we are no longer bound to try to do the works of the law for our
salvation, but can rest in God’s grace. Because of what Jesus has done,
we enter God’s rest (more about this later). It is also true that the
Sabbath day was a picture of that rest. All of this, God gives us as a
free gift of His grace. But there is absolutely no reason to conclude
that because Jesus was resurrected on Sunday, that Sunday became the
Sabbath day. There is simply no logical connection. As a Lutheran
minister, the late Leo Gruendemann, says of the proponents of the
Sunday-Sabbath view, “Their conclusion therefore to say the least is not
even a logical deduction” (
http://www.wlsessays.net/node/681 ). Semisabbatarianism requires us
to assume that God is using various hints to show us that He changed the
Sabbath day to Sunday. But there is no reason to make such an
assumption, and God does not change clear commands through vague hints.
In fact, there is biblical evidence that shows that after Christ’s death
and resurrection, the day that the Jews called the Sabbath and the day
called the first day were different days. Matthew 28:1 states: “In the
end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the
week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.”
Notice that it says that the Sabbath was ending as the first day of the
week was beginning. Obviously, the first day of the week was not the
Sabbath. Matthew wrote this several years after the resurrection. If he
understood Sunday to be the new Christian Sabbath, why did he not take
the opportunity of explaining it in the context of the resurrection? And
Mark 16:1–2 agrees: “And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and
Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they
might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning the first day
of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun.”
Notice that on the morning of the first day of the week—Sunday—the
Sabbath was past. Also, there are numerous places in the book of Acts
where the day on which the Jews met in the synagogue—the seventh day—is
called the Sabbath (Acts 13:14, 27, 42, 44; 15:21; 17:2; 18:4).
Nowhere in the entire Bible is Sunday or the first day of the week ever
called the Sabbath. The reason is that it is not the Sabbath.
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