How Do We Answer Those Who Claim the Sabbath Is No Longer Binding on Christians?

A Study Outline

1. Jesus Christ lived the pattern of life we are to live, and He kept the Sabbath Day.

a. Christ read the Scriptures on the Sabbath and kept it as a rest day (Luke 4:16).

b. He castigated the Pharisees, scribes, and Sadducees for their personal tradition that burdened people on the Sabbath, and prevented their full enjoyment of the day (Matthew 12:1-8; 23:2-4; Luke 13:14; 14:3-5; John 9:14-16).

c. He did good deeds on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:9-13; Luke 13:10-17; 14:1-6).

d. Even though Jesus may have been resurrected on the first day of the week, there is no command that we as Christians are to change the rest day, instituted at Creation (Genesis 2:2-3), from Saturday to Sunday.

e. Christ came to fulfill the law (4137 = pleroo, make replete, cram, level up [a hollow] furnish, execute), to “execute” or “do” it in the way it should be done, not to destroy the law (2647 = kataluo, disintegrate, demolish, or halt); see Matthew 5:17-20.

2. Who would want to miss the great joy of having a rest day from the workaday world within Satan’s society?

a. This world (cosmos = orderly arrangement of society) we are to abhor (I John 2:15-17) and “come out of” (Revelation 18:4).

b. The Sabbath is to be a day of great joy and delight (Isiah 58:13-14), typifying the nature of the Kingdom during which time joy and all of God’s nature will be prevalent (Galatians 5:22-23).

c. Our present world brings sorrow within a system designed to capture our affections, attempting to make us slaves to sin.

d. The Sabbath rest was made for mankind’s edification (Mark 2:27).

3. The Sabbath (rest) has always been the seventh day, from Creation to the present.

a. Elohim rested (7673 = shabath, to repose or desist from exertion) on the seventh day, and blessed and sanctified it (Genesis 2:1-3).

b. The seventh day Sabbath was confirmed to Israel at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 20:8-11), in commemoration of the creation Sabbath.

c. Christ kept the Sabbath day as it should be kept.

4. With the Spirit of God within God’s people in the New Covenant relationship (Jer. 31:33-34; Heb. 8:10-11), the ecclesia will not have cast the laws of God out of their lives as some say Christ did at His crucifixion (“nailed to the stake”; Colossians 2:14), but rather they will be living those laws as they ought to be lived in their spiritual fullness.

5. Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection did indeed abolish the need for us to perform the sacrificial laws that typified His own sacrifice (Hebrews 10:1-5), but not the performance of the laws of God now within our hearts. Those laws of love to God and to neighbor are summarized by the ten commandments (Matthew 22:36-40).

a. We keep His laws and ways of living as a consequence of the gift of salvation, to please God.

b. All of the “laws of God” cannot be placed in one basket.

c. The sacrificial laws added in Leviticus (sin offering, peace offering, trespass offering, etc.) were given because of Israel’s sins, after the laws were given at Mt. Sinai (Jeremiah 7:21-24).