Should Christians obey the sabbath?
This question often comes up from sceptics who accuse Christians of cherry-picking the Bible. They say Christians not only ignore some of the peripheral commands that make up the 613 laws in the Torah. You know the regulations around food, clothing, and sacrifices. No. Christians seem to blatantly break one of the OG 10 Commandments that God gave Moses on stone tablets.
Exodus 20:8, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”
So the Sabbath command confuses Christianity’s critics. But equally this command tends to confuse Christians. Different streams of Christianity have diverse takes on how Christians should relate to the Sabbath. Is Sabbath an Old Covenant command, or is it rooted in Creation? If Christians should remember the Sabbath, then on which day: Saturday or Sunday? And what do we make of the claim in the Gospels and Hebrews that Jesus is our Sabbath rest?
Now these questions weren’t just a big deal in the early Church as the gospel moved beyond Jewish borders to embrace Gentiles. This is a live controversy today, with new Hebrew Root Movements calling for non-Jewish Christians to observe Torah.
So that’s why I want to make this video. To help newcomers, doubters, and Christians get some clarity on the Sabbath, and do some theological triage as we explore a taxonomy of the different Christian interpretations. And hopefully, along the way, we’ll deal with the sceptic’s objections, before finishing with some personal and pastoral applications for you.
But for anyone new, let’s start with this: what is the Sabbath?
The Hebrew word Shabbat literally means to to cease, to end, to rest. It traces back to the opening chapters of Genesis. Throughout chapter 1 God’s creative work is described using a pattern of 6 days. God creates everything from nothing, as Hebrews 11:3 enumerates. God brings order out of chaos, separating light from darkness, space from sky, and water from land. God creates life from non-life. Plants. Fish. Birds. Animals. Then God sparks consciousness from non-consciousness, creating humanity in His own image.
After 6 days of creation, Genesis chapters 2 begins: “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.”
So Shabbat first described God’s rest from his work of creation. Neither necessitated by obligation nor exhaustion, God freely ceases from His duties in Creation to delight in the work of His hands.
And this becomes the blueprint he gives in Torah to the Israelites in Exodus 20, building in a hard stop or sacred breath into their rhythm of life by following God’s example. Six days of work; one day of rest.
So let me do some taxonomy and lay out 4 views on the Sabbath.
First, Torah Observance. Some Christians are convinced that Torah, or the Mosaic Law, was not abolished or fulfilled by Christ, but remains binding on Jews and Gentile converts alike. While Messianic Judaism might invite Torah Observance as they consider its rhythms spiritually beneficial but not necessary for salvation, teachers in the Hebrew Roots Movement argue that obedience to the Law of Moses is required, including the Saturday Sabbath, with salvation being expressed by full obedience. They argue that Christ and His Apostles taught obedience, with a love for God being expressed through faithfulness to Torah. And that the New Testament references disparaging the law have been misinterpreted to mistakenly downplay Torah’s significance.
Do they remember the Sabbath? Yes.
When? On Saturday. Sundown Friday to Sundown Saturday.
Why? Obedience to Torah as God’s binding will.
Second, Creation Ordinance. Some Christians continue to practice a Saturday Sabbath, not because it is commanded in the Torah for Israel, but because it predates the Mosaic law, being rooted in Genesis as a creation ordinance for all humanity. Their argument is that while Torah was a guide to lead Israel to Christ, and was fulfilled by Christ, the Torah also includes a moral law that eternally governs human actions. That the Decalogue or 10 Commandments reflect the shape of what it means to love God and love others; a moral vision of life that will never pass away. This is why, they argue, Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not Israel, in Mark 2:27. And why God’s prophets in the Old Testament speak of Sabbath celebrations in God’s future world.
Do they remember the Sabbath? Yes.
When? On Saturday. Sundown Friday to Sundown Saturday.
Why? Obedience to God’s pattern in Creation and New Creation.
Third, Sunday Sabbatarians. Some Christians hold essentially the same argument as the previous view; that Sabbath is a creation ordinance. But they transpose it from Jewish observance on Saturday to a specifically Christian celebration on Sunday. Why? Because Jesus’ resurrection from the dead in Easter Sunday launches a new creation rhythm. From the earliest historical evidence in the New Testament, and from the Apostolic Fathers, Christians were seen to set apart a specific day for worship. Sunday. The first day of a new creation week inaugurated by Jesus’ resurrection. We see it in 1 Corinthians 16:7 and Acts 20:7. In Revelation 1:10 the Apostle John calls it The Lord’s Day. Chapter 14 verse 1 of the Didache gives the same command, and the Roman governor Pliny the Younger, writing to Emperor Trajan, makes reference to how the early Christians would gather before dawn on a certain day of the week to sing a hymn to Christ as God. Undoubtedly this was on Sunday.
Do they remember the Sabbath? Yes.
When? On Sunday.
Why? Celebrating Christ’s resurrection as Lord of the Sabbath.
Fourth, and finally, Gospel Wisdom. Some Christians argue that while Sabbath is a gift from God, channeling profound wisdom on our need as humans to rest from our duties to delight in God and His creation, that it is no longer a binding command. That whether in creation or redemption, the Sabbath rest was only ever a shadow of the true rest that dawned with Christ’s resurrection. They still celebrate Sunday as the Lord’s Day, but not as a formal Sabbath.
Personally, I find this view not only persuasive, but beautiful. Jesus regularly healed on the Sabbath. He allowed his disciples to eat heads of grain in the fields. He flouted the religious rule keeping that was imposed on a day that was intended to liberate humanity from the pressure to be and do enough. "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).
And in the ultimate invitation, Jesus did not point his disciples to the Sabbath for the rest they sought; he pointed to Himself. Matthew 11:28-30: “28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Jesus’ Apostles seem to argue that the Sabbath has come completion in Jesus. Paul explicitly teaches in Colossians 2:16-17 that the Sabbath days and sacred feasts were only ever a shadow of the rest and redemption we have now in Christ. Hebrews 4:9-10 speaks of those who trust in Christ as having entered the unending rest to which creation’s Sabbath served as a compass. And a handful of other Scriptures like Galatians 4 and Romans 14 warn against seeing Sabbath observance as binding on Christians.
Which is why from Ignatius to Augustine, the early Church fathers taught that the Old Testament Sabbath had been abolished, with Christ’s death and resurrection ushering in Torah’s messianic hope.
So the argument here is that that the Sabbath is fulfilled in Jesus. The command is no longer binding on Christians. But Christians can still practice a Sabbath as the outworking of gospel wisdom. Helping us escape the demands of fast-life, and the pressure to be enough, to take a sacred breath together on the Lord’s Day and rest in the deep truths of the gospel; that we are not saved by our works but through Christ’s work on the cross, that God upholds all creation and provides even when we lay our tools down, and that we are most fully alive when we delight in Him and His creation.
The last thing I want to do here, though, is divide Christ’s body, the Church, in seeking to answer this question. You might disagree with me. I may well be wrong and need to be gently corrected. Truth invites questioning. But this is a perfect example of where Christians need to do theological triage.
Christians all remember the Sabbath and keep it holy in a way.
Some on Saturday in obedience to Torah, or to creation’s pattern.
Some on Sunday following the pattern of new creation.
And some in Christ as the light to which the Torah’s shadow pointed.
The Apostles, especially the Apostle Paul, was intensely concerned to unify the Church around one faith, making secondary matters a question of individual conscience, and warning to hold those views in a way that builds up the Church and models the love that Christ said should be our defining feature. I encourage everyone watching this to do the same in how you walk out your convictions.
