By Steve O. Martin
A former minister and missionary of the Churches of Christ
IN OPPOSITION to the Biblical teaching that Christians should observe the creation Sabbath, “the seventh day,” some men quote the last half of Romans 6:14, which states, “You are not under the law, but under grace.” But if anyone will read the previous thirteen verses, he will see that Paul was writing to new converts to Christianity. Baptized for the remission of sins, they had risen to “walk in the newness of life,” as the apostle phrases it. (Verse 4) “For sin shall not have dominion over you,” he said to them, “for you are not under the law, but under grace.” Verse 14. Before they became Christians, they lived under the judicial condemnation of God’s law.
God says that “the whole world” (1 John 5:19) which includes all the Gentiles as well as the Jews-is under the law in this sense. “Now we know that what things so ever the law said, it said to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.” Romans 3:19. But now the Christian believer, having been pardoned of his offense against God through Christ’s death, did not live under the shadow of divine justice’s disapproval. They were not “under the law.”
Those opposing the Sabbath doctrine also declare that nine of the Ten Commandments “have been incorporated into the new covenant.” Paul said, “You are not under the law” (Romans 6:14), in AD 60, some twenty-nine years after Christ’s death had ratified the new covenant, or relationship, between God and man. But if at that time nine tenths of the law still remained in force (as some argue), then Paul ought to have said, You are nine tenths under the law and one tenth under grace.
Seventh-day Sabbath opponents also contend that no record exists of anybody observing the Sabbath from creation to the time of Exodus 16, and that the historical silence proves that man did not observe it before Moses’ lifetime. Such reasoning works both ways. The Book of Acts, for example, contains no record of any meeting to break bread after the Pentecost meeting of Acts 2 until the one mentioned in Acts 20. Therefore, according to their argument, the Christian church did not assemble for Communion on the first day of the week for a space of about twenty-seven years.
In the effort to show that the Sabbath had no existence before the Exodus, some quote a passage in Nehemiah which says, “And [thou] made known unto them [the Israelites] thy holy Sabbath.” (See Nehemiah 9:13, 14.) They claim that the reference indicates that the Hebrews did not know about any Sabbath before then, and that consequently it had not existed before the Exodus. Yet in Ezekiel 20:5 we find the statement, “And I made myself known unto them in the land of Egypt.” Does that mean that before He made Himself “known,” to the Hebrews in Egypt God had no existence? The fact that while they suffered in Egyptian slavery they had forgotten God does not imply that He had no existence prior to that time. And the fact that for the same reason they did not remember to observe the Sabbath does not mean that it had no previous existence. Jesus stated that “the Sabbath was made for man.” (Mark 2:27.) The term “man” means more than just the Hebrews. It includes every human being from the time of Adam onward.
The law of the Ten Commandments antedated sin’s entrance into the world. If there had been no law, there could have been no sin. “For where no law is, there is no transgression.” Romans 4:15. “Sin is not imputed when there is no law.” Romans 5:13. “Sin is the transgression of the law.” 1 John 3:4. The moral law-or the Ten Commandments-points out sin: “For by the law is the knowledge of sin.” Romans 3:20. “Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law,” Paul writes, “for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shall not covet.” Romans 7:7. What law commands us not to covet? The Ten Commandments. James also explains that “the whole law” of the Ten Commandments is the law we violate, and the one which condemns us when we sin. (James 2:10-12.)
At different times the allegation has arisen that there exists “not one single passage in the whole Bible that intimates that a Gentile was ever commanded to keep the Sabbath.” The Old Testament Book of Isaiah contains several promises for the non-Jew who accepts God as his Lord and keeps the Sabbath. “Blessed is the man that does this, and the son of man that lays hold on it; that keeps the Sabbath from polluting it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.” “Also the sons of the stranger [“foreigners,” A.R.V.], that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, every one that keeps the Sabbath from polluting it, and takes hold of my covenant. Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer.” Isaiah 56:2, 6, 7.
The passage speaks of “strangers” Gentiles-and not of just one, but “every one,” every Gentile in the world. It does not speak of them “that join themselves to the Jews.” Instead, it refers to all “that join themselves to the Lord.” Acts 13:42, 44, 17:14, and 18:4, 11 contain specific instances of non-Jews keeping the Sabbath in New Testament times.
By their argument that the Sabbath is an institution reserved only for the Jews, men cut themselves off from the new covenant the Christian has with God. The principle behind it can be turned against other vital points. “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah,” God said. (Jeremiah 31:31; Hebrews 8:7-13.) Seeing that He establishes the new covenant “with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah,” how can the non Jews, the Gentiles-share its benefits? The theologian who uses the argument that the Sabbath pertains only to the Jews must with even greater reason restrict the new covenant relationship to the Hebrews. Yet the author of the Book of Hebrews applies the new covenant to the Christian church.
God speaks of “every one that keeps the Sabbath from polluting it, and takes hold of my covenant.” God’s covenant is eternal (Hebrews 13:20, 21; Isaiah 55:3; Ezekiel 37:26), especially the commanded covenant, or Ten Commandments (Deuteronomy 4:13; Psalm 111:7, 8). “And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even Ten Commandments.”
Deuteronomy 4:13. The commanded covenant was the basis of both the old and new covenants. God called Sabbath observance-a part of the Ten Commandments - “a perpetual covenant.” (Exodus 31:16, 17.)
God speaks to man as if He had formed a first and a second or an old and a new, covenant. (Hebrews 8:8-13.) In reality, though, so far as He is concerned, the covenant is eternal. He varied some of the conditions of the eternal covenant because man would not and could not keep the stipulations of the first covenant between God and man. The new covenant is based “upon better promises.” (Hebrews 8:6, 7.) Man specifically, the Israelites-made the promises involved in the old covenant, while God made them in the new one. (Exodus 24:7; 19:8; Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 8:10.) In the first covenant the people promised, and in the second the Lord promised. The difference in the two covenants centers in who made the promises.
Anti-sabbatarians declare that 2 Corinthians 3:7 says Christ took the law-”written and engraved in stones”-and abolished it.
The Bible does not say that. It says that the “glory was to be done away.” (Verse 7.) The Revised Standard Version translates the phrase as “fading as this was.” It does not say that the law was to be done away. The phrase apparently refers to the glory on Moses’ face, a glow that soon faded away. We also read that the “vale is done away in Christ.” (Verse 14.) The words glory and vale are not the same as law.
The passage in 2 Corinthians 3:7-13 is plain. It discusses ministration-the act or process of someone interceding for man before God-and describes a change that took place in it. Moses was the administrator in the first covenant, while Christ is the administrator in the second. The word ministration appears four times in the King James translation of the chapter. (The RSV uses “dispensation.”) Paul refers to the first covenant as the “ministration of death, written and engraved in stones.” (Verse 7.)
In the ministration of the first covenant God wrote the Ten Commandment law on the tables of stone; but in the ministration of the new covenant He inscribes the Ten Commandments on the tables of the heart-in the individual’s mind and character. (Hebrews 8:8-10; Jeremiah 31:31-33.) God found fault “with them,” with the Hebrew people, but not with the law. The law is perfect (Psalm 19:7; James 1:25) and holy (Romans 7:12). He desires to have His perfect and holy law revealed through men’s lives-their thoughts and actions.
Those who reject the Ten Commandments often labor under the erroneous impression that the law of Moses and the law of God are the same thing. The law of God is the one which He wrote in the form of the Ten Commandments with His own finger on the tables of stone. (Exodus 24:12; 31:18; 34:28; Deuteronomy 4:13; 5:22; 10:2, 4.) God both spoke and wrote the Ten Commandments. “My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips,” He said centuries later. (Psalm 89:34.) Although He was specifically referring to His promise to preserve David’s throne, the statement shows that the character of God is unalterable and that He never breaks a promise, although He may change its conditions to meet different situations. Moses placed the sacred law in the ark under the mercy scat in the sanctuary. (Exodus 25:16, 21; 31:18; 40:20; Deuteronomy 10:1-5.) The tables of the Ten Commandments were the only law kept inside the ark. (1 Kings 8:9.)
Moses personally wrote the Mosaic law, containing the ceremonial law in a book and placed it in a pocket on the side of the ark. (Deuteronomy 31:24-26.) The “book of the law of Moses” contained the ceremonial laws which would pass away at Christ’s death on the cross. (See Acts 6:14, margin; Ephesians 2:13-15.)
Some argue against the Sabbath by quoting Colossians 2:14-17, which speaks of certain Sabbath days “which are a shadow of things to come,” alleging that it indicates the abolition of the weekly Sabbath. But Paul distinguishes the Sabbath days “which are a shadow of things to come” from the seventh-day Sabbath “made for man” in Eden before the entrance of sin. (Genesis 2:2, 3.) “The Sabbath days” were symbolic of various parts of the plan of salvation. Moreover, by the word shadows Paul meant “things to come,” symbols of events still future when God gave the ceremonial Sabbaths to man. The seventh-day Sabbath always stood for something that had already occurred-the creation of the world. (Genesis 2:2, 3; Exodus 20:11; 31:17.)
The apostle refers to the annual Sabbaths yearly rest days-the Israelites observed as they celebrated their religious feasts. (Leviticus 23:7, 8, 21, 24, 25, 30-32, 35, 39.) Because they came on specified days of the month and without particular regard for days of the week, the ceremonial Sabbaths did not fall on the same day of the week each year. A similar thing occurs today in the case of the celebration of Independence Day and Christmas, which fall on different days of the week from year to year. As civil ordinances establish the observance of July 4 as Independence Day, so also the law of Moses ordered the Israelites to abstain from ordinary work on the ancient annual Sabbath days. Ordained only in the law of Moses and not mentioned in the Ten Commandments, the Hebrews were to keep them “besides [in addition to] the Sabbaths of Jehovah.” Leviticus 23:38, A.R.V.
Whereas the annual Sabbaths foreshadowed and pointed forward to how Christ would work out the plan of salvation-and would be abolished as a result-the seventh-day Sabbath, which Christ Himself declared to be the Lord’s day (Matthew 12:8; Luke 6:5; Mark 2:28; Revelation 1:10), pointed back to creation. Christ (Luke 4:16, 31) and His faithful followers in apostolic times (Matthew 24:20; Luke 23:56; Acts 13:14, 42, 44; 16:12, 13; 18:1-4, 8, 11) honored the seventh-day Sabbath. “All flesh” (redeemed Jews and Gentiles) in the new earth will also observe it. (Isaiah 66:22, 23; 2 Peter 3:10, 13; Revelation 21:1; 22:14.)
UNDER the theocracy of Israel the authorities pronounced the penalty of death upon those who broke any one of the Ten Commandments. “Sin is the transgression of the law,” a New Testament author wrote. (1 John 3:4.) “By the law is the knowledge of sin,” Paul said in his discourse on the subject. (Romans 3:20.) “Where no law is, there is no transgression.” Romans 4:15. “Sin is not imputed when there is no law.” Romans 5:13. The law that defines sin is the Ten Commandments. (Romans 7:7, 12; James 2:10-12.) “The wages of sin is death,” Paul also points out. (Romans 6:21) “Christ died for our sins.” 1 Corinthians 15:1 Therefore Christ died to satisfy the demands of the broken law, the Ten Commandments. If He abolished it, why did He have to die?
In the Old Testament times men faced death by stoning for breaking the Sabbath. They also met the same fate for telling lies (Deuteronomy 19:15-21), for stealing (Joshua 7:10-25), for killing (Leviticus 24:17), for blaspheming (Leviticus 24:16), and for dishonoring their parents (Deuteronomy 21:18-21; Leviticus 20:9). Is it all right now for people to commit such acts because God does not at once put to death those who do them? The fact is that the death penalty for sin has not ended. Instead, God postpones the execution of it upon the disobedient until a day of final judgment. Sin is still “the transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4), and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23; Ezekiel 18:4, 20). Death will be the lot of the wicked when the time shall come to punish them. (Ecclesiastes 8:11-13; Revelation 21:8.)
If the Ten Commandments apply only to the Jews, then all other men may freely have other gods, worship images, blaspheme, dishonor their parents, slay their enemies, commit adultery, steal, and lie as they please without guilt. Paul asks, “Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.” Romans 6:15. “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid.” Romans 3:31.
A person may be “under the law” in two senses. One is when the law condemns the individual because he has broken it. (Romans 3:9, 19.) Also he may be under obligation to the law in that he must obey it. (Revelation 22:14.) To illustrate, suppose that a man has committed a murder and thus broken the law of the state. The authorities arrest him. Being a transgressor, he is under the law, that is, under its condemnation. Then the governor of the state pardons him. Can he go out and say, “Now I am not under the law, and I am free to go out and kill again”? No. Although the law no longer condemns him for having broken it, he still has an obligation to obey it.
Paul says that when one is not under law, but under grace, the law no longer passes sentence on him. (Romans 8:1-4.) In Romans 6:15 Paul asks, “What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.” He emphasizes the same thought in Romans 3:31, saying, “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.” Certainly the Christian does not keep on sinning-breaking God’s holy law-because he is not under the law but under grace. “Sin is the transgression of the law.” 1 John 3:4. The grace of God manifest to us through Christ has brought us pardon for our violations of God’s principles. Christ freed man from the law’s claim on him. Man no longer lives under a divine death penalty. “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid.” Romans 6:1, 2. Under grace, we must not continue to break God’s law. To do so is to reject Christ’s grace, to nullify what He did on the cross.
“We learn from the early fathers that the first day of the week is the Lord’s day,” some claim. Why go to “the early fathers”? Why not go to the Bible itself? It is the only source book for the Christian religion. The Lord’s day is the same day of which Christ says He is Lord. “The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath,” He announced, plainly declaring that the Sabbath day is the Lord’s day. (Mark 2:28. See also Luke 6:5; Matthew 12:8.) Christ’s statement should carry more authority than the opinions of the so-called early fathers. “We ought to obey God rather than men,” the Apostle Peter said in another situation where the authority of men and God clashed. (Acts 5:29.) The apostasy that brought about the attempted change of the Lord’s day from the Sabbath, the seventh day, to the first day of the week had already begun in Paul’s day. (2 Thessalonians 2:1-8.)
Others suppose that by the words “all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19, 20) Jesus meant that Christians should consider as binding only the things which He spoke while personally with the disciples. Yet Christ was the one who spoke through the Spirit that inspired the prophets from earliest times. (1 Peter 1:10, 11; 2 Peter 1:19-2l.) Not only one of the creators of this world (John 1:14, 10, 14; 17:5, 24; Colossians 1:13-17; Hebrews 1:1, 2; Genesis 1:26) and creator of the Sabbath (Genesis 2:2, 3; Mark 2:27, 28), He was also with the children of Israel in their wandering through the Sinai desert (1 Corinthians 10:4). He existed before Abraham’s birth. (John 8:56, 58.) His life and teachings are the same as His Father’s. (John 15:10; Matthew 7:21-23.) He not only kept the Sabbath (Luke 4:16, 31), but He kept it with His disciples (Mark 1:21) and told them to continue to make His holy day a matter of prayerful concern (Matthew 24:20). During His ministry He said nothing whatever to His disciples about religious observances on the first day of the week. Consequently the Christian cannot include Sunday observance in the “all things whatsoever” He commanded His apostles before His death.
Many have claimed that the Sabbath was given the Jews after they left their Egyptian slavery. But the Biblical record indicates that the Israelites kept the Sabbath at least one month before they came to Sinai, the place where God gave them the Ten Commandments. (Exodus 16:1, 4, 22-26; 19:1.) God withheld the manna every seventh day. He who had made the Sabbath (Hebrews 1:2; Colossians 1:13-17) during creation week (Genesis 2:2, 3; Exodus 20:11), again counted and knew which was the Sabbath day that He had made in the beginning.
Christ made the Sabbath. “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” John 1:3. “The world was made by him.” Verse 10. He instituted the Sabbath “for man, and not man for the Sabbath.11 (Mark 2:27.) He had made man on the sixth day (Genesis 1:26, 27, 31) and the Sabbath on the seventh. Therefore Christ created the Sabbath in the beginning specifically for man. It is the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day. (Mark 2:27, 28.) Man undoubtedly honored it for 2,500 years before Moses’ time. (Genesis 26:5.) The Hebrews kept it in Egypt. The Egyptian Pharaoh told the Israelites to work and not be idle-not to Sabbatize, or rest. (Exodus 5:4, 5, 8, 14, 17.)
EXODUS 20:21-17
1
Thou shall have no other gods before me.
2
Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
3
Thou shaft not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltiest that takes his name in vain.
4
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shall thou labor and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shall 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.
5
Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God gives you.
6
Thou shall not kill.
7
Thou shall not commit adultery.
8
Thou shall not steal.
9
Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10
Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.
The clause “You make them rest” (verse 5) reads in the Hebrew text, “You cause them to sabbatize.” The ruler demanded work every day of the week. Moses and Aaron had taught the people to keep the Sabbath. Pharaoh countered, “You are idle, you are idle: therefore you say, Let us go and do sacrifice to the Lord.” Verse 17.
In the statement “The Sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27), Christ used the generic word for man referring to all mankind. The Sabbath is intended for both Jews and Gentiles.
One can correctly say that God gave the Sabbath to be a sign of both creation and redemption. He says of His Sabbaths, “They shall be a sign between me and you, that you may know that I am the Lord your God.” Ezekiel 20:20. “I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them,” He explains earlier. (Verse 12.) Those saved from sin’s death penalty are sanctified as “Abraham’s seed,” considered spiritual heirs or descendants of the ancient patriarch. In such a sense (Galatians 3:29) they are also true Israelites (Romans 2:28, 29). Not “because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.” Romans 9:7, 8. “And so all Israel shall be saved.” Romans 11:26. An Israelite is one who has a clean heart, that is “circumcised” in heart. (Romans 2:28, 29; John 1:47; Revelation 14:5.) The chosen people are no longer a physical, literal race, but a group of people bound together by spiritual ties. “And if you he Christ’s, then are you Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
Galatians 3:29. Spiritual Israel still possesses the Sabbath as much as the Hebrews ever did.
PERHAPS the most common reason some offer for rejecting the Sabbath is the idea that God gave it only to the Jews. But the idea does not harmonize with Mark 2:27, 28, where Christ states, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath: therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.”
The antinomians-those against the idea that the moral law is obligatory-claim that “no Gentile ever kept the Sabbath by divine authority.” But God said through the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, “Blessed is the man that does this, and the son of man that lays hold on it; that keeps the Sabbath from polluting it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.” “Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, every one that keeps the Sabbath from polluting it, and takes hold of my covenant. Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer: their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar; for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people.” Isaiah 56:2, 6, 7.
The passage shows that God designed that the Gentiles should also have the blessings of salvation when they should “take hold of” or accept His covenant. Taking hold of God’s covenant includes keeping the Sabbath. God made the promise to the Gentiles, to “every one that keeps the Sabbath from polluting it.” (Verse 6.) The Ten Commandments expressly enjoin Sabbath observance upon the “stranger that is within thy gates.” (Exodus 20:8-11.)
The New Testament specifically states that Gentiles recognized the Sabbath in apostolic times. When Paul and Barnabas taught in the Jewish synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia one Sabbath, “the Gentiles besought that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath.11 “And the next Sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God.” Acts 13:42, 44. At the Sabbath service in Philippi, a Gentile city of Macedonia, appeared a woman from Thyatira. (Acts 16:12-14.) “The devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few” made up the audience at the three Sabbath services Paul conducted in the Grecian city of Thessalonica. (Acts 17:14.) And in Corinth, another Grecian metropolis, Paul preached “every Sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks.” “Many of the Corinthians hearing believed, and were baptized.” (Acts 18:1-4, 8, ll.)
Josephus, the Jewish priest and historian who wrote in the days of the Apostle John, said, “The multitude of mankind itself have had a great inclination of a long time to follow our religious observances; for there is not any city of the Greeks, nor any of the barbarians, nor any nation whatsoever, whither our custom of resting on the seventh day bath not come.” Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, Book 2, section 40. (Whiston’s translation.)
Anti-sabbatarians say that Christ did away with the Mosaic law, and they are correct. The Mosaic law is different from the law of God. The book of the law of Moses contained the ceremonial laws, laws mainly related to religious rites and performances. The Ten Commandments contains no ceremonial precepts. (Exodus 20:3-17.) Christ would, naturally, abolish the ceremonial code because it mainly dealt with the religious symbolism pointing to Christ’s death. (Acts 6:14, margin; Colossians 2:14-16; Ephesians 2:15, 16.) The Mosaic regulations pertained to the priesthood and the sanctuary services. “For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law. For he of whom these things are spoken pertains to another tribe, of which no man gave attendance at the altar. For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Judah; of which tribe Moses spoke nothing concerning priesthood.” Hebrews 7:12-14. (Aaron and his sons came from the tribe of Levi, and under the Mosaic law none but a descendant of Aaron could serve as a priest. [Exodus 40:12-15; Numbers 18:1-7]
The ceremonial Sabbaths, washings (symbolic purification), new moons (the first day of each month, set aside for special religious services), annual Sabbaths-all in addition to or “besides the Sabbaths of Jehovah” (Leviticus 23:38, A.R.V.) would vanish at Christ’s death - “nailing it to his cross,” the Bible phrases it.
The law of Moses required “an offering made by fire unto the Lord, a burnt offering, and a meat offering, a sacrifice, and drink offerings, every thing upon his [its] day.” (Leviticus 23:37.) Yet in the New Testament Paul writes, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat [meat offerings], or in drink [drink offerings], or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come.” Colossians 2:16, 17. He considers the Christian no longer bound by the things mentioned in Leviticus 23:4-44. Those yearly Sabbaths of Leviticus were not the seventh-day Sabbaths. (Leviticus 23:3, 38.) The ceremonial Sabbaths were annual rest days that did not have to fall on any particular day of the week, as did the Sabbath, but were fixed to monthly dates. The tenth day of the seventh month, the fifteenth day, etc., were yearly Sabbaths to he kept “besides the Sabbaths of Jehovah.”
“The moral precepts of the Ten Commandments are incorporated in the covenant of grace and are therefore binding on us,” the antinomians reason. “While the Ten Commandments as a unit may no longer have authority, their spirit or principle survives.” But a Disciples of Christ minister, I. B. Grubbs, says just the opposite.
“To represent the Jews, then,” he writes, “as formerly fulfilling the righteousness of the law, and the Christians as similarly fulfilling the righteousness of the Gospel, is to misapprehend as much the nature of the one as the purpose of the other. And to represent the moral law of God, or any part of it, as obligatory on account of any enactment in either Testament, is to conceive of its nature in a manner quite different from the Apostle Paul, as well as to do violence to our intuitions relative to the immutable distinction between good and evil, virtue and vice. The Apostle illustrates, by a single instance, the nature and perpetuity of ethical obligation, when he affirms that lit is impossible for God to lie.’ This means that he can never revoke the law, which says: ‘Thou shall not bear false testimony against thy neighbor.’ But this again is equivalent to saying that God’s moral law is binding, not because of its presence in either Testament, but because it is the reflection of his own unchangeable character and attributes, and makes itself felt to be imperative in the conscience of the Gentiles when indistinctly ‘written upon their hearts,’ as well as when clearly revealed in the Bible.” - Commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, p. 65.
Now let us consider the new covenant, also called the New Testament. In Hebrews 9:16, 17 we find that as soon as the testator dies, the testament, or will, made by him goes into force. And we read in Galatians 3:15 that after the death of the testator ratifies the will (Matthew 26:28; 1 Corinthians 11:24-26), no man disannuls, or adds thereto.”
Many Christians allege that the observance of the first day of the week came into force at the resurrection, three days after the death of Christ, the Testator of the new covenant. Thus Sunday observance came just three days too late to get into the new covenant.
The fact is that in all that Christ said before His death-which scaled the new testament between God and mankind-He uttered not a word about the first day of the week.
In Matthew 26:26-30 we find that the Lord instituted the Lord’s Supper (Communion) before His death, in order that the new covenant might include it as a Christian rite. If Jesus had waited until after His death, He could not have added it to the new covenant.
Before His death Jesus said, “And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.” Luke 16:17. In the next verse He refers to the seventh commandment of the Ten Commandments, which shows what law Christ had in mind. The Ten Commandments includes the command to keep the Sabbath day, the seventh day, putting Sabbath observance in the new covenant with the obligation to keep the other nine commandments. The New Testament emphasized the binding force of “the whole law” in James 2:10 and 1 John 2:4.
Also, before His death Christ declared in the presence of His friends and His enemies not only that “the Sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27, 28), but also that “the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day” (Matthew 12:8). The Sabbath is the “Lord’s day.”
Christ claimed the Sabbath. He never said as much as one thing in favor of Sunday observance before He ratified the new covenant by shedding His blood on the cross.
Moreover, Christians obeyed the fourth commandment of the Ten Commandments after the death of Christ. “A testament is of force after men are dead,” the author of Hebrews said. (Hebrews 9:17.) Immediately after Christ’s death, His followers “rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.” (Luke 23:56.) “On the Sabbath they rested in obedience to God’s command.” Luke 24:1, Moffatt’s Translation. “On the Sabbath they rested in obedience to the Commandment.” Luke 23:56, Weymouth’s Translation. Which commandment? The fourth commandment of the Ten Commandments, of course. (Exodus 20:8-11.)
The charge that “there is not the slightest evidence that Christ or the apostles ever recognized the Sabbath as binding on Christians” crumbles under the statement in Luke 23:56 that the disciples of Christ rested on the Sabbath and recognized its observance as applying to them. They “rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment,” knowing that their conduct would be in accord with the precepts of God’s law. “And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that said, I know him, and keeps not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But who so keeps his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.” 1 John 2:3-5.
In Matthew 24:20 Christ makes a statement showing that the Sabbath would be binding on His followers after His death. “Pray you that your flight be not in the winter,” He said, “neither on the Sabbath day.” The event He referred to took place in the years AD 66 to 70, when the Roman armies destroyed Jerusalem in fulfillment of His prophecy.
The Apostle Paul kept at least seventy-eight Sabbaths in succession in Corinth alone. Although he worked at his trade of tent making on the “six working days” (Ezekiel 46:1), “he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks.” Acts 18:1-4. “He continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.” Verse 11.
Now and then we hear somebody say, “There is abundant evidence that the Christians observed the first day of the week as a day of worship from the beginning.” Where is the abundance of evidence? Nowhere does the Bible contain a command to keep holy or worship on the first day of the week. Nor does it say anywhere that God blessed or sanctified it. The Bible tells of no blessing or reward promised for observing it, nor of any punishment said to await those who should disregard the day or labor on it. Not once does the Bible call the first day the Lord’s day or the Sabbath.
Anyone who will read carefully Acts 20:7-13 will see that the breaking of bread mentioned there took place between midnight and dawn. If the time was Sunday night in accordance with the Roman practice of beginning the day at midnight, then the breaking of the bread took place on Monday morning. One cannot construe the service as a law ordaining that men shall consider Sunday as a, day of worship. Moreover, Jesus and all His apostles ate the Lord’s Supper on a Thursday night-on the night before He died-but nobody alleges that Thursday must be a sacred day because of the first and most important Communion service. Christ appointed no definite day for observing the Lord’s Supper, but instead said, “As often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you do show the Lord’s death till he come.” 1 Corinthians 11:26.
First Corinthians 16:1, 2 contains a passage often employed in an attempt to prove that the early Christians used the first day of the week as a sacred day of assembly. It, however, proves just the opposite. Weymouth’s Translation, Third Edition, says, “On the first day of every week let each of you put on one side and store up at his home whatever gain has been granted to him; so that whenever I come, there may then he no collections going on.” Plainly Paul urge the believers to stay at home on the first day of the week-not to go to church and take up a collection. But in Acts 18:14, 11 we find that Paul and his associate believers from among the Jews and Greeks (for “many of the Corinthians hearing believed, and were baptized” [Verse 8]) kept “every Sabbath.” In this case at least the early Christians did not hold the first day as a time for religious assembly. Yet many consider 1 Corinthians 16:1, 2 the strongest text generally used by Sunday advocates.
The Christians of Corinth, to whom Paul wrote the epistle, were Sabbath keepers who used what we would call Sunday to make up all their business accounts. Paul instructed them that when they should go over their accounts at home on the first day of the week, they should lay aside something in proportion to their gain or income so as to have an offering when Paul arrived. He then could take it with him to Jerusalem. (Verse 3.) The passage mentions no gathering together in church for a religious service.
“The day of worship was not changed from the seventh to the first,” antinomians declare. “The seventh day was abolished with the rest of the Jewish law, and the first day was set apart for altogether a different purpose, and it was to be observed in altogether a different way.” The Biblical record offers no indication, no supporting text or passage-that Christ or the apostles abolished the seventh-day Sabbath. And even more impossible is it to find a text that says God “set apart” Sunday for His holy day. One certainly does not find it in 1 Corinthians 16:1, 2, which specifies the first day as a time period for doing business, and not for any special religious convocation.
If Jesus had intended for us to keep holy any other day than the seventh, would He not have spoken of it before He scaled the law of Ten Commandments in the new covenant by His own death on the cross? Concerning the new earth to come, God declares, “From one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh [Jews and Gentiles] come to worship before me, said the Lord.” (Isaiah 66:22, 23; Revelation 21:1; 22:14.)
“Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.” “For he spoke in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works.” “There remains therefore the keeping of a Sabbath to the people of God. For he that is entered into his [God’s] rest, he also bath ceased from his own works as God did from his.” Hebrews 4:1, 4, 9 (margin), 10.
Jesus says, “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.” Revelation 22:14.
From The Bible: A New Translation by James Moffatt. Copyright 1954 by James Moffatt. Reprinted by
permission of Harper and Row, Publishers, Incorporated.