Does God require Sabbath keeping of Christians?

The question might then be asked, "Has the Christian believer no Sabbath day to keep?" The answer is, No. If we speak of a Sabbath day then surely it must mean the seventh day, and if we desire to keep the Sabbath day holy we must keep not the first day of the week but the seventh day. But some will say, "the Sabbath has been changed from the last day of the week to the first day." This is often said; but there's no scriptural authority for it. Neither Christ nor His apostles declared such a change. It is, therefore, wrong to call the first day of the week, known by the name "Sunday," the Sabbath or "Christian Sabbath." The first day of the week is the Lord's day, the day of resurrection, the day of the new creation. This day was kept in the very beginning of the Christian age as a precious memorial of Him who was dead and was raised from the dead, who is seated in the Highest Heaven and who is coming again. It was with the early Christians, and should be so still, a day of worship, when they came together to break bread and partake of the blessed cup, to show the Lord's death, till He come again. Some one has expressed it in the following short sentences: " Israel was commanded to observe the Sabbath day; the church is privileged to enjoy the first day of the week. The former was the test of Israel 's moral condition; the latter is the significant proof of the Church's eternal acceptance. The Sabbath day manifested what Israel could do for God; the Lord's day perfectly declares what God has done for us."

There is no law about this blessed first day of the week. The Christian believer is in perfect liberty, with no yoke and bondage upon him. "For ye have been called to liberty, brethren; only do not turn liberty into an opportunity to the flesh, but by love serve one another" (Gal. 5:15). The child of God will know how to use this liberty in the right way and will certainly have the first day of the week as a day of rejoicing in the Lord and fellowship with Him.

For a week they stayed there, and on the first day of the week the disciples met together to break bread. It is interesting to note that while there is a command to keep the Sabbath given to the children of Israel, there is no command to Christians to keep the first day of the week. It is the genius of Christianity not to give commands, save those that are moral, such as believers loving each other. Yet it is happy to note the overruling providence of God that gives the Sunday to be a day of rest and freedom from occupation. The fact that the early Christians met on the first day of the week, and were in the habit of breaking bread on that day has happily given to us a good example, which we gladly follow.

Were I merely arguing against the Sabbath, as people say, I might cite the fact of the entire omission of any reference to it in the "Sermon on the Mount," where the spirituality of the law is insisted on. I might cite the fact, that in every instance in which it is mentioned, the Lord throws a slight upon it, Christ declaring the Son of man to be Lord of it. I might appeal to history, shewing that the primitive church was unaware of its obligation, and treated it as Judaism, and that there were even stringent canons against the observance of it. I might challenge the "Record" (not "stoutly to maintain," which it is easy to do, but) to give some scriptural proof or authority for the change of day it talks of; but all this would misrepresent my feelings on the subject. I hold it to be one of vast and important bearing; because a part in the rest of God seems to me distinctive of the blessing belonging to God's people, whatever the foreshadowing of it may be. A promise is left us of entering into God's rest; and it must be God's rest, and not rest without God, if such were even possible.

The sabbath did begin in Paradise: "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." Into this rest man never entered, as Hebrews 4 assures us. That it was a law imposed upon man departed from God has no sort of scripture proof; and I flatly deny it. To make one totally departed from God an obliged partaker in God's rest, nothing but unintelligent legalism could have thought of. But I believe, from the Lord's own statement, that "the sabbath was made for man;" that its observation would have been a temporal blessing to man condemned to labour, and a continual remembrancer, in the scene into which sin had brought him, that his hopes and blessings were elsewhere. That men forget all this we know too well. But the moment that God brought man, in a covenant way, into relation to Himself by redemption, He made the sabbath a sign of the covenant. God's rest belongs to God's people. As the form of that covenant was legal, it was given in a legal way. And it is remarkable that in every particular institution, on which in any respect the relationship of God with Israel was based under the old covenant, the sabbath enters for part; and the prophets allude to this as a sign of the covenant. Outside this we only get traces of it in hebdomadal [weekly] divisions of time, as in the cases of Noah and Jacob.

87 But that old covenant, in which the sabbath was made legally obligatory, was to be done away, and the time of Messiah, the true rest of His creation, was to come in. We have here, therefore, to consider how the Lord Jesus deals with the sabbath. We have already seen that He does not introduce it in His spiritual summary of practice in the Sermon on the Mount. Nor can the smallest instance be found in which He sets up or insists upon its authority. But when He goes out of Judaism and reveals Himself as Son of man, He declares that He is Lord of it. Speaking in His divine character, when charged with the breach of it, His language is still more striking — "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Grace might labour in a world of sin; but neither the holiness nor the love of the Father and Son could find their rest in a world of sin and misery. No one can find in the writings of the New Testament a word that insists upon the moral obligation of the sabbath. When the question arose between Jew and Gentile Christians as to what was to be maintained as obligatory, the sabbath was not one of the things insisted upon. Have we then lost the rest of God? or even every trace of it here below? God forbid! And I have no doubt that the last words, "The sabbath was made for man," remain in practice a true blessing now for man; but when we come to spiritual hopes of that rest, it is a different matter. The rest of God in the first creation is over, because sin has entered. It will, I doubt not, have its sabbath; but that will be in the millennium, in a new order of things. It is not a seventh day, but the seventh day — God's rest after finishing His work.

88 But our rest is not in this creation. We have been rejected out of it, as Christ has been too, who (if man had not been a sinner as he was) had power to bring in rest, when He first came. But now He has introduced us by resurrection into a new and heavenly rest of God, a brighter and a better hope; and the seventh day, the sabbath, the sign of the old covenant, the rest of this creation, in no way meets our hopes. For the writer of the "Record," who puts us under Adam headship, this might do, but not for a Christian; and, even so, it is impossible, for how could a sinner have the rest of God under the old covenant? And what introduces us into this new and better hope? It is resurrection — the resurrection of our blessed Lord. In the grave on the sabbath (the only rest He found here), He rises up to begin, as the head of the new creation, brighter and better hopes founded on His sacrifice. Hence, to the Christian Church, the first day of the week, as all the New Testament after His resurrection testifies, not the seventh, becomes the sign and pledge of her rest. It is not a law, but established by the testimony of scripture. It is monstrous, as Christians, to say or think that the neglect of that which is not established by law is not ruinous in its nature. We do not pray by law, nor read scripture by law. And this day is marked out in the New Testament. The day of Christ's resurrection He met His disciples assembled; the next first day He did the same. The first day of the week, we read, "the disciples met together to break bread." The first day of the week they were to lay by for the poor, as God had prospered them. And in Revelation 1 it is formally called "the Lord's day," with the testimony that John was in the Spirit on it. To make it the seventh day, and a mere change of day, which scripture always positively contradicts, is to confound the old creation (which is under condemnation by sin) with the new, into which we are risen with Christ in resurrection. That corrupt Christianity, which has lost all spirituality, should have lost this altogether, is but too natural; that reformed Christendom could only go back to the law, and make a seventh day of it, is only one of the sad proofs how little its members have known the privileges that God has conferred on us.

298 Let us now see what the New Testament directly affords us on the sabbath. Is any hint as to its sacredness to be found? Matthew 12:1 is evidently of great consequence here. The Pharisees complained of the disciples' plucking and rubbing the ears of corn. The Lord's answer is remarkable. It is not to rebuke the Pharisees as He does elsewhere, but to shew that the sabbath and other ceremonial enactments have been set aside for sufficient cause, and that a greater than any obligation of the sabbath was there. Could God say, I am greater than a moral commandment? Would that be a divine way of putting things if it were a question of hating a brother or coveting another man's wife? Such a thought would revolt at once. But that is the Lord's reasoning as to the sabbath. First a rejected Messiah made all common, for another obligatory commandment, the sabbath, gave way under God's own eye. Christ was greater than the temple; and if they knew God's heart, they would not have condemned His disciples. All this proved the Pharisees wrong and unjustifiable. But, besides, the Son of man was Lord of the sabbath. Surely this could not be said of a commandment as to right and wrong! He had a title to dispose of the sabbath, through the dignity of His person and office. Could all this have been said if the Lord were insisting on the maintenance of its authority? He adds that it is lawful to do well on the sabbath. The parallel passage in Mark adds, The sabbath was made for man.

Matthew's gospel gives us dispensational changes, and, on that ground, Christ's person as divine; and the place He took as Son of man laid the ground for dealing with the sabbath as Lord of it. Here Christ is the servant-prophet, and we have another ground laid: the sabbath was made for man. It was in favour of — for — man; and hence He who ordered all for man, as the head of the race according to God, was Lord of it. It was a benefit conferred on man for his advantage, and the Son of man was the competent disposer in the matter. Could this be said of a divinely binding law?

The sabbath is not a seventh day. It is significatively the seventh day, the rest of God, Jehovah's rest. It is not now the seventh day, the rest of the old creation (to an intelligent Christian that is impossible), but, as clearly distinguished by scripture, the first day of the week in contrast with the seventh, Christ having been unquestionably in the grave during the seventh, and rising (the ground of our rest) the first, not the seventh. Talking about the sabbath being originally the first is slighting the facts, and ignorance as to the purpose and meaning of the change of day. It is not a Jewish or legal sabbath either, but the christian Lord's day. The only part flesh can have in it now is mercy to man in flesh, and that is a fresh revelation of Christ's. When originally instituted, toil was not man's portion; God's rest he might have enjoyed in a worshipping way, but never did. Now sin is come in, the Lord can tell us the sabbath was made for man. So far therefore as the Lord's day can be made a day of rest for all, grace will do it. I may not be able to impose it as a religious law on unconverted men. I do not know what that means in christianity, in the Church of God. Could the early Church have imposed it on the heathen? I believe it is a great mercy if civil law secure it, or the habits of society, even for the world; only there is the danger of self-righteousness. It is an external mercy, if the morality of the law, sabbath and all, be observed; for sin and contempt of God degrade, harden, and corrupt. As a Christian I rejoice to have one day, and the Lord's day, rescued from the world and the old creation for me a child of God; and I believe and have found that (not for visions, but for blessing and for joy) we may look to be in the Spirit on the Lord's day. But that is not law. Yet I do not accept at all the taunt of those who bury, as they say, or abrogate the sabbath. I say, If I were on board ship, I should be positively sinning not to take due care of it on the sabbath, and give heed to the safety of all. On the other hand I have not a doubt the Christian ought to think of others, and (unless in cases where mercy does require it) not use cabs and the like on the Lord's day; and an easy rule is to be found: if he takes one in the name of the Lord Jesus, let him; if not, let him not take one.

The Question concerning the Sabbath. Verses 23-28. The question concerning the Sabbath is closely connected with the preceding parable. The Sabbath, not a seventh day, but the seventh day, was the day on which God rested in Creation. It was also the sign of His covenant with His people Israel. Plucking ears of corn on the Sabbath to eat them is nowhere forbidden in the Law. It was one of the hard and burdensome man-made traditional injunctions. The Lord cites David's case. Mark adds that David was not alone hungry, but "he had need." David, though anointed King, was despised and in need. His greater Son and His disciples were in the same condition. What is greater with God, the maintenance of an ordinance or the need of Man? Surely the latter. He, the humble Servant, was none other than the Lord of the Sabbath. He had rested in His Creation work and instituted the Sabbath for His people. He had become the Son of Man for the need of Man. As the Lord of the Sabbath He speaks, "The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath." On the ground of Grace the Sabbath no longer exists. We have the Lord's day, the first day of the week to enjoy communion with our risen and glorified Lord, resting from our daily occupation. Blessed privilege to adore Him on that day and to follow His own example of doing good.

“One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” The reason for regarding special days can easily be seen in Judaism. God had established them in that system of things — certainly only as typical of better things to come, and not in themselves of any spiritual value. Yet if souls still clung in measure to the observance of those days as something that conscience requires of them, let no issue be raised on this account. Nor on the other hand are they to be allowed to require it of others.

The observance of the Lord's Day is a far different matter. This was never imposed upon man, never in the least degree regarded as a commandment in Scripture, but rather indicated as a privilege graciously given by God in intimate connection with the free grace that the Gospel brings. Consequently it is a matter for the discernment of the heart as in the presence of God — a matter to be understood and appreciated only by those who understand and appreciate Divine grace. The disciples gathered together to break bread on the first day of the week. Their hearts overflowed with thanksgiving. The exacting demands of the sabbath day had nothing to do with this. It was a willing-hearted people who took advantage of this day of the Lord's resurrection to seek in some special measure to please and honor Him.

(Vv. 5-8). The Apostle includes also the question of regarding or not regarding special days. His argument supposes that, whatever view is taken, whether of days or meats, each one is acting as before the Lord. None of us live to ourselves but to the Lord. It is well to see that the Apostle is not speaking of the Lord's day. The observance of the first day of the week, as the Lord's day, has the sanction of Scripture, and is not left as an open matter (See John 20:19; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2; Rev. 1:10).

Today believers are not under law, but under grace. We are not told to keep the Sabbath (Col. 2:16), but by grace the first day of the week is provided by God as a day in which believers may willingly rest from their usual employment and devote the time to pleasing the Lord. No law is attached to this at all, but willing hearts will respond thankfully to such scriptures as Acts 20:7: “on the first day of the week - the disciples came together to break bread.”

In Exodus 31:13-17 God emphasizes that the Sabbath was a sign between Him and Israel, and that the children of Israel were to keep the Sabbath. This was not given to Gentiles, and it is not given to the church in the present age (Compare Colossians 2:16-17). The Lord Jesus was in the grave on the Sabbath day, and was raised “the first day of the week.” From that time scripture emphasizes the first day of the week, mentioning for instance that on that day the disciples came together to break bread (Acts 20:7). Yet no law is made at all of this matter, for we are not under law, but under grace. We should regard the first day of the week as “the Lord's Day,” and therefore be glad for the privilege of using it solely for the Lord's pleasure, without attaching any legal bondage to it.