Sunday Sabbath?

Is Sunday the Christian Sabbath? Is that authorized or commanded in the Scriptures? Or are we, as some Seventh Day Adventists claim, “taking the mark of the beast” when we “submit to the Pope” by worshiping on Sunday?

The short answer is no. And I’m sorry that this has become divisive, because the Scriptural principle here is really very simple. Christians walking by the Holy Spirit are freed from the law, all of it, even the Ten Commandments, because the Holy Spirit leads us to keep the principles behind God’s law. Blindly keeping the letter of the law is death, but following the Holy Spirit, which involves putting aside my knowledge of good and evil and learning God’s wisdom and His ways, to love to do what He loves and hate to do what He hates – that is life, love, joy, and peace.

This is actually a much bigger subject than just going to church on Sunday, and I have a lengthy chapter on it in Volume One of my book. But allow me to summarize it briefly here. And yes, to answer your first question, I am currently attending church on Sunday, though I am also quite open for the Holy Spirit to lead me somewhere else, at any time He wishes. He’s God. He gets to do that.

The principle behind the fourth Commandment is this. Even before there was any sin in the world, God made us with a need to rest, put aside our own needs and desires, and re-tune our focus on Him and His glory at least one day out of seven. That “feeds” our spirit. It is a built-in need, like our need to eat or sleep, and if we ignore it we will eventually break down and suffer the consequences, just as surely as a car will break down if you fail to “feed” it gas and oil.

But we can “feed” our spirit any day of the week. Or every day of the week. We are no longer bound under the Old Testament law that commands, “…the seventh day is a Sabbath of YHWH your God…” The purpose of the law is to condemn us, to bind us down to the altar and show us that we cannot keep it. This ultimately points us to Christ, who by His Spirit empowers us to keep the law in a new and living way. In a very real sense, we must die to the law in order to walk by the Holy Spirit. The illustration God gives is that of a wife whose husband dies. (Rom 7) She is bound by the law to her husband only while he is alive; after he dies, she is free to marry another. “Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law though the body of Christ [in His death on the cross], that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, that we might [walk by His Spirit and] bear fruit [the fruits of the Spirit] for God.” (Rom 7:4) As I said, this is a much bigger subject than just getting picky about which day to worship. This involves all we are and do as Christians, for it determines our relationship to Christ.

 Those bound by the Sabbath law (or any other law) have a slave relationship to Christ. But He doesn’t want slaves; He wants sons of the Heavenly Father. He wants a many-membered Bride, eager to live by love and sensitivity to His desires rather than out of an obligation to keep a list of laws.

 So, does this “do away” with the Old Testament law? Actually, no. As long as there is any sin in the world, the Old Testament law will remain in force. Even for the Christian, if (when?) he turns away from following the Holy Spirit and falls into sin, the law is right there to condemn him and point him back to the Savior who “takes away the sins of the world.” Jesus Himself swore that “…until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law until all is accomplished.” (Matt 5:18) In fact, when He talked about Old Testament laws (in Matt 5 & 6) He made them even stricter!

But then at the end of His great “Sermon on the Mount” He concluded by comparing the two ways of living. One is to live by the law, comparing, judging, and condemning. (7:1-5) I call it living by fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The other way is to live by following the King by His Holy Spirit, seeking first His Kingdom and His righteousness. (6:25-34) This is eating fruit from the tree of life. This is dying to the old nature, and allowing the risen Christ to live His life through us. (Gal 2:20) This is the “Romans 8” way of living. “…if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.” (Rom 8:13-14)

And that is really where the controversy comes. On the one hand, I just said that God’s law will never pass away until the universe is totally cleansed of sin, and His law is even tougher in the New Testament than in the Old. But on the other hand, I said that you can’t live by the law; you can only live by God’s Spirit.

Some people resolve this conflict by claiming that God’s Spirit will never lead you to break His law, at least the moral law as embodied in the Ten Commandments. In this claim, they are being inconsistent, for they freely break the fourth Commandment, which is really quite clear that you can’t do any work, not even gather sticks or light a fire, on the seventh day Sabbath. And the Ten Commandments are only a small part of God’s law. What about all the other Old Testament laws He gave, dietary laws, ceremonial laws, and so on? The New Testament makes it quite clear that those laws are “only a shadow of the good things to come” (Rom 10:1) and are obsolete, growing old, fading away. (Rom 8:6-13)

 I don’t try to resolve it that way. Jesus was led by the Spirit on Earth, and He quite often “worked” on the Sabbath. He gave the illustrations of watering your livestock (Lk 13:15), pulling an animal out of the well on the Sabbath (Lk 14:5), or the priests laboring in the temple on the Sabbath (Matt 12:5), and concluded that, “It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” (Matt 12:12) So here is how I resolve it. I look at all of God’s written laws as outward pictures of deeper spiritual truths, and I study them, not to bind myself under them, but to learn the wisdom behind them so I can delight my Lord by learning to love what He loves and hate what He hates.

For example, those dietary laws I mentioned. I don’t throw them out any more than I throw the Ten Commandments out. I learn from them. For example, people who eat “kosher” (according to those laws) don’t get most kinds of cancers. So I avoid eating the “unclean” animals like pig and shellfish.

My favorite example is the old ceremonial laws, including those on the Feasts of Israel. That’s what I wrote my book about! No, we are not bound by those laws to celebrate the Feasts, but if we will humble ourselves to learn from them, we will discover much wisdom concerning God, His Plan of the Ages, our own purpose in life, and our destiny.

And the Ten Commandments – they’re not just a list of “Thou shalt nots.” They teach us about things God likes and things He hates, so we can have a closer relationship with Him and become like Him. For example, the fifth Commandment teaches us how He loves families, with children submitting to and honoring their father and mother. The sixth Commandment teaches us how He values human life as uniquely sacred and hates murder, especially of the innocent (as in abortion). The seventh, eighth, and ninth Commandments teach us how He hates immorality, theft, and lies, thus valuing faithfulness and integrity.

So, back to the Sabbath and my original questions. No. Sunday is not the Christian Sabbath. The seventh day is, always has been, and always will be the Sabbath. It begins on our Friday evening at sundown, and ends on our Saturday at sundown. No Scriptural injunction can be construed to authorize the change to Sunday. That happened at the beginning of the old Roman Catholic perversions of Scripture which led to the Dark Ages.

And no, we who are being led by the Spirit are not bound under it, any more than we are bound under any of God’s Law. Many of us are led by God’s Spirit to attend a church fellowship which meets on Sunday or some other day. That is not “breaking” the Sabbath Commandment any more than Jesus broke it by healing someone on the Sabbath. Gathering for worship and fellowship is something that God loves, and He loves it on any day that we who love what He loves do it.

 But the seventh day is still the Sabbath. It is still just as sanctified as when God blessed it on the seventh day of Creation. (Gen 2:2) It is still the best day of the week to set aside our own work or pleasure and “retune our hearts back to The Holy.” It is a day of lifting our focus from earth and the chores of making a living, to remember the perfection, the glory, of Creation while it was still “very good.” (Gen 1:31) As we remember that first Sabbath and the perfect world it represents, we can refocus our spirits upon His Spirit and rededicate ourselves to being led by His Spirit. Thus we are empowered to “labor to enter into His Rest” (Heb 4:11), the true Sabbath Rest which lasts for a thousand years.

So you see, God did not make a mistake in allowing the church to “lose” the Sabbath back at the time of Constantine. Corporate worship, as important and wonderful as it is, can still be “work,” especially for the leaders. Moving that to Sunday, for some at least, was a good thing. That leaves the entire Sabbath free for those who truly love the Lord to seek His face, to refocus their attentions from the things of earth back to The Holy, and to rest from all the chores of life in order to enter into the completed works of the Author of Life.