Saturday or Sunday: Which day should we honour in Sabbath keeping?

The age old question is still as divisive today as it has been through the ages from the time of the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 363), where the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday.

The reason why people, like the Seventh Day Adventists (SDA’s) and the Jewish Orthodox Church still keep to Saturday as their Sabbath, is found in the Old Testament. We will look at a few of the traditional arguments for both sides, but first, let’s clarify what the common idea or definition of the Sabbath is.

The Sabbath is commonly regarded as the one day a week where we refrain from our daily chores, do no work, and worship God, most commonly within a church building, temple or synagogue. So we see that some groups, such as the Seventh Day Adventists (SDA’s), but not limited to them, view the Sabbath as the day of worship, the day in which Christians should attend church- or worship services. These groups typically teach also that no work is to be done on the Sabbath, but the “day of worship” is more emphasized than the “day of rest”.

As an aside, there’s another question that begs an answer. God commanded the Jews to labour for six days, and on the seventh day to cease from their labours. Now, six days from when? Nowhere de we read that it started on the first day of a specific week, so do we really know the first Sabbath was on the seventh day of the week? Also, from the end of the Sabbath, you counted six days, and then the seventh day is the next Sabbath. Let’s take this argument a little further, according to the law of Moses, every year the day of Nisan 15 was to be a Sabbath. So, when this day fell on the day after the Sabbath, ie the first day of the week, you had to count seven days after the end of the ‘double’ or 48 hour Sabbath, to the next Sabbath. So, how do we conclude that the 7^th day of the week is still the Sabbath?

If we disregard the above mentioned argument, we have to look at the rest of the arguments as they stand.

Ok, so let’s look at them:

1. God made the Sabbath

Genesis 2:2-3: And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all 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.

2. God is the one who commanded the keeping of the Sabbath.
Exodus 20:8-11: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt 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.

3. Jesus customarily worshipped on the Sabbath.
Luke 4:16: And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read.

4. The Ten Commandments were never changed.

Psalms 89:34: My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.

Luke 16:17: And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.

5. The Apostles kept the Sabbath.

Act 17:2  And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures,

Act 13:13,14  Now when Paul and his company…………..went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and sat down.
Act 16:13  And on the sabbath we went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made; and we sat down, and spake unto the women which resorted thither.
Act 18:4  And he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks.

6. How was it changed to Sunday, by whom and why?
It is commonly held that the Sabbath was changed from Saturday to Sunday through a mandate by Constantine in A.D. 321.
The Catholic Church does honour Sunday as the Sabbath, and apart from citing the fact of Christ’s resurrection on the first day of the week, they believe they have divine mission and divine power to make laws binding on the conscience and binding before God. They also cite the verse in Lev 23:36 “For seven days you shall present food offerings to the LORD. On the eighth day you shall hold a holy convocation and present a food offering to the LORD. It is a solemn assembly; you shall not do any ordinary work.” as further proof of the legitimacy of this practice.
It may be what is spoken about in this quote: “We move from the ‘Sabbath’ to the ‘first day after the Sabbath’, from the seventh day to the first day: the dies Domini becomes the dies Christi!... By contrast, the Sabbath’s position as the seventh day of the week suggests for the Lord’s Day a complimentary symbolism, much loved by the Fathers. Sunday is not only the first day, it is also ‘the eighth day’, set within the sevenfold succession of days ...”

- Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Dies Domini, Vatican, May 31, 1998

Now, let us take a better look at these arguments, and see what scripture tells us.

God made the Sabbath when He rested in Gen 2:2-3?
First of all we must remind ourselves of the fact that God is omnipotent, and cannot tire! So, the fact that He rested is a foreshadowing of a Sabbath law to come. He did not, however, “create” or institute the Sabbath here. If He had, Adam through to Moses would have kept the Sabbath, or would have been under an obligation to keep it. We know from scripture though, that this is not the case.

The Sabbath was instituted for the first time by God in Ex 20:8-11?
Here God’s example in creation is used to explain what God expects of them. In Deuteronomy 5 Moses reviewed the law with the next generation, giving them the commands. We see in verses 12-15 the reason they are commanded to keep the Sabbath. Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee. Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.

Two facts are made very clear here. Firstly, it was a command and a covenant with the nation of Israel, no one else! Secondly, it was to remember or commemorate how God brought them as a nation out from Egypt, how He freed them from slavery!

Note that nowhere is there any mention of worship.

Now, the question of Jesus keeping the Sabbath:
Yes, Jesus did keep the Sabbath, as part of His atoning work was that He not only had to live a perfect life, He had to keep every jot and tittle of the law perfectly! Mat 5:18  For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Also Luk 16:17  And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail. You see, these two verses have nothing to do with proving the law is still in effect, but everything to do to prove that Christ in His life here on earth fulfilled the whole law, every jot and tittle of it! This means that we do not have to do it anymore, in Him and through Him we are perfect law keepers, but that is a study on its own altogether. The last thing we need to take note of concerning Christ and the Sabbath, is that when we read about Jesus going to the temple on the Sabbath, we do not read anywhere that He went there to worship!

Did the Apostles keep the Sabbath?
The Apostles went to the synagogues on the Sabbath, yes, but what does scripture tell us was their reason? Not for normal worship or as Sabbath keeping (although Paul says in 1 Cor 9:20 And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; that doesn’t mean he was keeping the Sabbath, he just went there to talk to them on the Sabbath, respecting their customs.

If we look again at all the passages quoted above, Act 17:2 , Act 13:13,14, Act 16:13 and Act 18:4 , we see that it all had to do with evangelism, not legalism!

From Acts 18:6 the Sabbath is never again mentioned in the whole of the New Testament, except in Col 2:16 “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:” So we see that the rest of the New Testament from Acts 18 onward never suggests adherence to the Sabbath day, in fact, quite the opposite! This means that there is now no obligation for the New Testament reader to keep the Sabbath.

Let’s address the misconception about where Sunday worship originated.
On what day did the early church meet for worship? Scripture never mentions any Sabbath (Saturday) gatherings by believers for fellowship or worship. However, there are clear passages that mention the first day of the week. For instance, Acts 20:7 states that “And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread.” In 1 Corinthians 16:2 Paul urges the Corinthian believers “Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him,” Since Paul designates this offering as “service” in 2 Corinthians 9:12, this collection must have been linked with the Sunday worship service of the Christian assembly. Historically Sunday, not Saturday, was the normal meeting day for Christians in the church, and its practice dates back to the first century. So we see it was not by a mandate by Constantine in A.D. 321 that the change took place. The explanation given by Pope John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter of 31 May 1998 is, therefore, also not correct.

If we do not read anywhere of worship being commanded on the Sabbath, when did the Jews worship? When we go back to the Old Testament again, we will see that offerings at the temple happened daily, not on the Sabbath, therefore, EVERY DAY was a day of worship, and the Sabbath was a day of rest.

So, what have we learned so far from scripture?

1.      God didn’t ‘make’ the Sabbath at creation, He rested as an example of and a foreshadowing of the law to come.

2.      There was no Sabbath keeping from creation until the Israelites were already in the desert.

3.      The Sabbath was not created or instituted as a day of corporate worship, but as a day of rest.

4.      The Sabbath was never instituted for the gentiles (us), but only for the Israelites, and with a specific reason, so they could remember God’s salvation from Egypt, a foreshadowing of Christ’s atoning work that would accomplish our own salvation from the slavery of sin.

5.      The New Testament church from Acts onward customarily met on the first day of the week, as a celebration of Christ’s resurrection.

6.      So, adherence to, and keeping the Sabbath, whether on Saturday or Sunday, is not scriptural any more.

This does not mean that it is wrong to set aside one day a week for corporate meetings of the body of believers. It would be wrong however to judge or condemn someone who refuses to be legalistic about it, and who would decide to keep it on a different day as someone else, as we read again in Col 2:16-17 “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” We see this idea repeated more than once in the New Testament, for instance in Rom 14:5-6a “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 again in Gal 4:9-10 “But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.” Also remember the words of Jesus himself when the Pharisees were condemning Jesus’ disciples for plucking corn on a Sabbath as they walked through a corn field. Mark 2:27 “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:”.

The Sabbath is still Saturday, not Sunday, it has never been changed, but the Sabbath is part of the Old Testament Law, and Christians are free from the bondage of the Law. (Gal 4:1-26; Rom 6:14) Sabbath keeping is not required of the Christian, whether Saturday or Sunday. Every day is a day unto the Lord!

The Jewish Sabbath keeping was abolished with the law at the cross as we read in Col 2:14 with Christ “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;”.

Now the question comes up, if the Sabbath Day was abolished on the cross, what now?

Jesus Christ is now our Sabbath Rest! But how, you’d ask?

The key to understanding how Jesus is our Sabbath rest is the Hebrew word shâbath, which means to “repose, that is, desist from exertion; or intermission,” (Strong’s Hebrew dictionary, H7673 & H7676). The origin of the Sabbath Day goes back to Creation. After creating the heavens and the earth in six days, God “rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made” (Genesis 2:2). As mentioned before, this doesn’t mean that God was tired and needed a rest. We know that God is omnipotent, literally “all-powerful.” He has all the power in the universe, He never tires, and His most strenuous expenditure of energy does not diminish His power one bit. So, what does it mean that God rested on the seventh day? Simply that He stopped what He was doing. He desisted from His labours. This is important in understanding the establishment of the Sabbath day and the role of Christ as our Sabbath rest.

God used the example of His resting on the seventh day of Creation to establish the principle of the Sabbath day rest for His people. When God gave the Israelites the fourth of His Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:8-11 and again in Deuteronomy 5:12-15, they were told to “remember” the Sabbath day and “keep it holy.” One day out of every seven, they were to rest from their labours and give the same day of rest to their servants and animals. This was not just a physical rest, but a cessation of labouring (exertion). Whatever work they were engaged in was to stop for a full day each week.

The various elements of the Sabbath symbolized the coming of the Messiah, who would provide a permanent rest for His people. Once again the example of resting from our labours comes into play. With the establishment of the Old Testament Law, the Jews were constantly “labouring” to make themselves acceptable to God. Their labours included trying to obey over 600 do’s and don’ts of the ceremonial law, the Temple law, the civil law, etc. Of course they couldn’t possibly keep all those laws, so God provided an array of sin offerings and sacrifices so they could come to Him for forgiveness and restore fellowship with Him, but only temporarily. Just as they began their physical labours after a one-day rest, so, too, did they have to continue to offer sacrifices. Hebrews 10:1 tells us that the law “can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.” But these sacrifices were offered in anticipation of the ultimate sacrifice of Christ on the cross, who ”after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right of God” (Hebrews 10:12). Just as He rested after performing the ultimate sacrifice, He sat down and rested—ceased from His labour of atonement because there was nothing more to be done, ever. Because of what He did, we no longer have to “labour” in law-keeping in order to be justified in the sight of God. Jesus was sent so that we might rest in God and in what He has provided!

Another element of the Sabbath day rest which God instituted as a foreshadowing of our complete rest in Christ is that He blessed it, sanctified it, and made it holy. Here again we see the symbol of Christ as our Sabbath rest—the holy, perfect Son of God who sanctifies and makes holy all who believe in Him.

Jesus can be our Sabbath rest in part because He is “Lord of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:8). As God incarnate, He decides the true meaning of the Sabbath because He created it, and He is our Sabbath rest in the flesh. When the Pharisees criticized Him for healing on the Sabbath, Jesus reminded them that even they, sinful as they were, would not hesitate to pull a sheep out of a pit on the Sabbath. Because He came to seek and save His sheep who would hear His voice (John 10:3,27) and enter into the Sabbath rest He provided by paying for their sins, He could break the Sabbath rules. He told the Pharisees that people are more important than sheep and the salvation He provided was more important than rules. By saying, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27), Jesus was restating the principle that the Sabbath rest was instituted to relieve man of his labours, just as He came to relieve us of our attempting to achieve salvation by our works. We no longer rest for only one day, but forever cease our labouring to attain God’s favour. Jesus is our rest from works now, just as He is the door to heaven, where we will rest in Him forever!

Hebrews 4 is the one passage proclaiming beyond a doubt Jesus as our Sabbath rest. The writer to the Hebrews urges his readers to “enter in” to the Sabbath rest provided by Christ. After three chapters of telling them that Jesus is superior to the angels and that He is our Apostle and High Priest, he pleads with them to not harden their hearts against Him, as their fathers hardened their hearts against God in the wilderness. Because of their unbelief, God denied that generation access to the holy land, saying, “They shall not enter into My rest” (Hebrews 3:11). In the same way, the writer to the Hebrews begs them—and us—not to make the same mistake by rejecting God’s Sabbath rest in Jesus Christ in Hebrews 4:9-11 “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.”

There is no other Sabbath rest besides Jesus. He alone satisfies the requirements of the Law, and He alone provides the sacrifice that atones for sin. He is God’s plan for us to cease from the labour of our own works. We dare not reject this one-and-only Way of salvation (John 14:6) After all, “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation”? (Hebrews 2:3)

May God bless you and through His Holy Spirit guide you in all truth!

Saved by Grace.