“Are Christians Required to Keep the Sabbath?”

If someone approached you and asked, “Which day is the sabbath day ?”, what would your answer be ? Many would answer, Sunday. Some would say, no, it’s Saturday. It’s quite obvious that both ans­wers cannot be right for there is only one Sabbath day ; so we must turn to the Scriptures to determine the truth. In this case it is sur­prisingly easy to find, for in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, it states in the 2nd chapter, “And on the 7th day God finished His work and rested on the 7th day, so God blessed the 7th day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his His work which He had done in creation.” This 7th day of rest was later referred to in the Ten Commandments as the Sab­bath day. In the second book of the Bible, Exodus, it says, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested the 7th day ; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”

From these two passages alone, it is quite evident that the 7th day (Saturday) and not Sunday is the Biblical Sabbath day. Then why is Sunday observed by the majority of Christians today as the “day of rest”? There are sev­eral factors in this which we will examine later, for now we will state that its universal acceptance came as a result of an edict by the Roman Empire or Constantine, early in the 4th century, enjoin­ing the solemn observance of Sun­day as the day of rest.

So then, the question naturally arises, which day shall we observe ? Are Christians today required to keep the sabbath, which is actual­ly Saturday ? Again we must go to the Bible for our answer and to arrive at a proper understanding, we must search out the reasons behind its original observance. We must inquire as to whom it was given and whether it is binding on all peoples.

In Exodus 31 :13 are recorded the instructions of God to Moses regarding the Sabbath. “Speak thou also unto the Children of Is­rael saying, Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign be­tween me and you throughout your generations ; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanc­tify you. Ye shall keep the Sab­bath therefore ; for it is holy unto you. Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever.” From this it is quite evident that Sabbath keeping was a command to the Jewish race, the children of Israel, and it was given to them as a sign of the covenant that God had made with them to remind them that He was the Lord their God. It was also to be a reminder to the Jewish nation of their great deliverance from the slavery of Egypt. In Deuteronomy 5:15 it is recorded, “Remember t h at thou (Israel) wast a servant in the land of Egypt and that the Lord thy God brought thee o u t thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm : Therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.”

From these testimonies we can arrive at three definite conclusions regarding the Sabbath : (1) It was to be a sign between God and the Jewish people; (2) It was to be a perpetual covenant between them; and, (3) It was to be observed as a memorial of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. These features of the Sabbath have never pertained to any other nation and thus the Sab­bath assumes a definitely Jewish character and nowhere in the Bible has there ever been a command or precept to change this character­ization. Therefore as long as the Mosaic Law was in effect, the keeping of the Sabbath, the 7th day, was a necessary observance.

However, Christians today are not under law to Moses but are re­sponsible only to the commands of Christ. Christ came to fulfill the Mosaic law, and when this fulfill­ment was accomplished, it was taken out of the way ; the Old Covenant being superceded by the New. Of this the apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians, saying that Christ blotted out the hand­writing of ordinances that was against us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. In writing to the Romans the apostle told them, “Ye are not under the law, but under grace, for Christ is the end of the law, for righteous­ness to everyone that believeth.”

But there were those in first century times, just as there are to­day, who tried to combine the two covenants, endeavoring to carry over into the Christian dispensa­tion some of the requirements of the old Mosaic law, including that of Sabbath keeping. Many of the apostle Paul’s letters were written to combat this tendency. He wrote to the Galatians “Ye observe days and months and times and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have be­stowed upon you labor in vain.” Then to the Romans, “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regard­eth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it.” Notice the absence of any divine command to keep the sabbath.

It should be a significant and conclusive f act to all who call themselves Christians or followers of Christ, that in all his teaching he never once enjoined the observ­ance of the Sabbath. He himself kept the Sabbath in his lifetime, prior to his death on the cross, be­cause he was born and lived under the jurisdiction of the Mosaic law. But when he died on Calvary’s cross, the New Covenant in his blood superceded the Mosaic econ­omy. The apostle’s comment on this is very instructive, he says in 2 Corinthians 3, “Now if the dispensation of death, carved in let­ters on s t on e, came with such splendor that the Israelites could not look at Moses’ face because of its brightness, fading as this was, why should not the dispensation of the spirit be attended with great­er splendor ? For if what faded away came with splendor, what is permanent must have much more splendor.” Here the apostle con­trasts the Old and New, and his description of the Old Covenant is pertinent and reflects the author­ity of divine inspiration. In this chapter he calls it the “Letter which killeth, a ministration of death written and engraven on stones, a ministration of condem­nation which was done away.” Now a part of this covenant was the Sabbath law, one of the Ten Commandments which were engraven on stone. It is specifically declared that the Ten Command­ments were fundamental to the covenant, for in Deuteronomy 4:13, it is stated, “God declareth unto you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, even Ten Commandments, and He wrote them upon two tables of stone.” Thus when the covenant was done a w a y, the Ten Commandments were done away as a code, it is not the basis of the New Covenant in Christ.

There is another significant point, found in the experiences of the first century church. Until approximately AD 40 when the apostle Peter was divinely com­missioned to preach the gospel to Cornelius, a Gentile convert to Christianity ; until that time, God’s promise of salvation had been offered only to the children of Israel. After that, Gentiles also were invited to share in the pros­pect of eternal life in God’s King­dom. The invitation was eagerly accepted, but this resulted in unit­ing two groups of people who had different backgrounds and cus­toms, and dissensions arose. Some of the Jewish believers insisted that the Gentiles should observe certain features of the Mosaic law. So a council was held in Jerusalem to decide the issue and a conclu­sion was reached by the direction of the spirit of God. It is record­ed in the 15th chapter of Acts. This is the letter in part that was sent to the new Gentile converts, (verse 28). “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication, from which if ye keep yourselves ye shall do well.”

Notice the absence of any in­struction on keeping the Sabbath. If there ever was a time when they should have been told, this was the time. But the Mosaic law had fad­ed away including the observance of the Sabbath. It was not consid­ered a necessary thing by the spirit inspired apostles of the Lord. Apostolic teaching in the New Testament repeats the other nine commandments in some form as moral rules for believers to ob­serve, but there is no repetition of the Sabbath law. The only logical conclusion then, is that Saturday Sabbath observance is not requir­ed of Christians today.

Then what about Sunday ? Is it right to substitute this day for Saturday as the day of rest? We mentioned earlier that its univer­sal acceptance came from an edict of Constantine, but of course his action is not conclusive because he was not an authority in spiritual things. However, if we look at writings of ecclesiastical histori­ans of the second and third cen­turies after Christ, we find that they testify that the practice of Christian believers meeting on the first day, instead of the seventh was universally observed.

So again we must go to the Bible to determine if there was a Scrip­tural basis for this change and we discover the Bible to be completely silent regarding the transfer of Sabbath observance to Sunday. On the other hand the apostle Paul says (in the verse already quoted) “One man esteemeth one day above another : another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” He says further to the Colossians, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink or of the Sab­bath days, which are a shadow of things to come : but the body (the reality) is of Christ.” The only law laid upon believers in this respect was to “forsake not the as­sembly of themselves together”, with no reference to any particu­lar day. However, it became the practice of the apostles to obey this law on the first day of the week in memory of Christ and of his resur­rection. There are many refer­ences in the Bible to such meetings on the first day of the week and so this practice has been continued by most of Christendom today. Sunday should not be considered, however, as an extension or trans­fer of the Sabbath, which passed away with the Mosaic law, but rather as a day on which to commemorate the sacrificial mission of the Lord.

So, for the Christian, there is no required Sabbath observance to­day, but there is the hope of that great anti-typical Sabbath Day of rest, which Jesus who is the Lord of the Sabbath, will inaugurate when he comes back to earth again. While Jesus remains away, every day should be patterned af­ter the principles of the Sabbath day, in which all who call t h e m-selves Christian should rest or re­frain from the works of the flesh and devote their lives to doing the will of Christ.