What are the Holy Days of Obligation?
The phrase "Holy Days of Obligation" describes a calendar of fixed religious festivals that a church requires its members to keep, and the writers in this collection treat that idea at length — not by naming the modern list, but by asking where such days come from and whether the New Testament gives the church any authority to impose them. Their answers cluster around three questions: did God ever appoint holy days, are they still binding, and what has replaced them?
Days God Himself Appointed
Scripture does contain divinely fixed holy days, and under Israel they were binding in the strongest sense. One writer sets the two eras side by side and shows how completely the ground shifted.
The Bible TreasuryTo neglect the appointed feasts and holy days was, in the last dispensation, a sin so serious that Israel's captivity and dispersion are said to have happened so that the land might "enjoy its Sabbaths"… Now, to "observe days and months and seasons and years" is enough to make an apostle doubt those who do so.
Shadow and Substance
Why the reversal? Because the old feasts pointed forward to someone. Once He has come, reinstating the sign is a statement about the substance.
J. N. DarbyA "holy-day" (it is worth calling it that, since the name shows its meaning) was a day God had made to be regarded above another: this, and the food and drink and various washings and outward ordinances of Judaism, had their time and use. "The body is of Christ." In Him we have what they were designed to picture. If I take them up now, I take up the shadow and not the substance; it is a mere shadow, but by setting it up again I make it the real thing, and deny Christ.
Nothing of the Kind in the New Testament
The direct historical question — who authorised these days? — is pressed by another writer, and his answer starts with what is missing.
C. StanleyI certainly do remember that our blessed Lord did not institute a single holy day, except that His resurrection marked out the Lord's day, the first day of the week. Nor did the apostles observe a single holy day or church festival. Some did cling to Judaism with its poor shadows; but nowhere do the Epistles teach the observing of days and months and seasons and years. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit severely condemns the attempt of the Galatian deceivers to introduce them.
Where the Calendar Came From
Several writers trace the church's festivals not to Israel but to the pagan world, and they read Galatians as having predicted exactly that drift.
J. N. DarbyNotice carefully that all their ceremonies are the same thing as paganism, the elements of the world… We learn this here as doctrine, but the history of the church shows it to us as a fact. Holy days and holy places were taken from the heathen, who had holy places and days on which they held festivals in honour of deified men, such as Theseus and Hercules. The names of saints were later attached to these places and days, and the saints were celebrated instead of the demi-gods.
Keeping Days Proves Nothing
There is a further problem with obligation as a measure of devotion: anyone at all can meet it.
Hamilton SmithIf the Apostle judged these Galatians only by what they were doing, he might well doubt whether they were true Christians, for a person does not need to be converted in order to observe days and seasons. This is a solemn thing to consider for Christendom, which has so largely fallen into the Galatian error by turning back again to outward ceremonies and the observance of man-made holy days.
The Lord's Day Is Not an Obligation
The one day the writers do hold up is kept on a completely different footing — and the difference is the whole point.
Frederick W. GrantThe law took men in nature, as a nation, and tested them as to their ability to "do and live." But the first creation has fallen into ruin, and Christians are a people separated from the world by grace, a "new creation"… The principle of grace is not "do and live," but "live and do."… How fitting that a Christian should observe the day of his Lord's resurrection, with whom he is raised — the new beginning for him, which he rightly calls "the Lord's day"! How fitting that his keeping of it should be enforced, not by legal commandments, but by the joy and privilege of it!
Where Believers Differ
The severity of Galatians is not the whole counsel. Where a genuine conscience is involved, the writers point to a different apostolic tone.
The Christian's FriendAs to this — and in saying this much we learn God's tenderness towards His people — let every man, Paul writes, be fully persuaded in his own mind. The point is to keep a good conscience, and doing that, whether in eating or in observing days, it may be done to the Lord. Someone might hold a mistaken conviction, and yet if it is truly carried out to the Lord and before Him, it would so far be acceptable to Him.
Summary
- Shadow. God did appoint holy days for Israel, and neglecting them was serious sin — but they were pictures pointing to Christ.
- Substance. "The body is of Christ." To rebuild the shadow after the reality has come is to deny the One it pictured.
- Silence. Christ instituted no holy day, and the apostles kept none; the Epistles condemn rather than command the observing of days.
- Source. Writers trace the festival calendar to heathen feasts renamed with saints' names — the very slide Galatians warned of.
- Substitute. The Lord's day stands alone, held not by obligation but by privilege — while a mistaken conscience keeping a day to the Lord is to be borne with, not despised.