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Posted by on Jan 10, 2011 in Christian Life |

Chamblin on the Sabbath and Sunday

Dr. Knox Chamblin, previously a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson), and author of Paul and the Self and a recent two-volume masterpiece on the gospel of Matthew, has some interesting thoughts on the Sabbath, Sunday, and the application of Paul’s teaching in Romans 14 to the issue.  I’m not sure exactly what to think about his view, so I’ll have to find some resources to interact with regarding his take on the Sabbath, but there are a couple interesting things to note about his view:

(1) He intentionally sees the question of Sabbath-keeping in light of current already/not yet status of redemptive history.  Thus while in terms of eschatology, the importance of one day above the others is gone, we are not yet fully in the reality of the new heavens and the earth, and so we still keep one day in seven because rest is essential in our fallen world.

(2) He urges that even those without the Sunday as Sabbath conviction can profitably keep it for the sake of unity, but at the same time he sees that in certain situations (different cultural situations perhaps?) one can keep the Sabbath on another day.  This seems immensely practical, but at the same time, it seems to de-emphasize the reality that the believers met on the first day of the week in order to celebrate Christ’s resurrection, which is certainly a key feature of the practice of the early church.  Nonetheless, here’s what Chamblin says:

One can esteem all days alike (as just indicated) and at the same time recognize that human beings as creatures urgently need the Sabbath rest.  At the same time, the Sabbath rest must not be riveted to a particular day, as though the efficacy of the rest depended on its being observed on this day instead of that.  But what of persons who stand, as I do, within a tradition that identifies the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath, the day now appointed for rest as surely as the seventh used to be? Such persons may freely relinquish the freedom, or the right, to choose another day.  Their conscience has not been violated; their understanding of Paul remains unchanged.  Yet it is to Christ alone that they are bound, not to a view of the fourth commandment; and they make their choice, both because it is convenient and also in genuine support of believers who are otherwise persuaded. (Paul and the Self, 150-151)

As I say, I’m not convinced immediately by this view, but it certainly gives much food for thought, whether one ultimately accepts or rejects his view.

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Posted by on Jan 8, 2011 in Christian Life | 2 comments

Exploring the Sabbath and Sunday (5)

[See Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.] Thus far, I’ve given a very cursory overview of my understanding of the Sabbath.  To summarize, I believe that the Sabbath is rooted in creation, and thus it has continuing validity in the new covenant.  As part of God’s moral law recorded in the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath is still binding on God’s people until the Second Coming of Christ.  However, through the resurrection of Christ on the 1st day, the day of observance for the Sabbath is now the 1st day of the week instead of the 7th day of the week.  That has been the confession of the Reformed churches since the time of the Reformation (obviously that is a general statement, and I recognize that Calvin’s view in the Institutes seems to even be different from his view in his commentary on Deuteronomy, which is slightly different than how the English Puritans formulated it).

In this last post, I’m going to briefly discuss what I believe Sabbath observance entails for believers in the church.  But before I do that, let me make one very important note: While I have my own convictions on this matter that shape my own personal practice of Sabbath observance, I also recognize that when it comes to the practical outworking of obeying the 4th commandment, there are genuine differences even among Reformed Christians about what that ought to look like.  I hold to my own convictions strongly, but that does not mean that I look down on those whose convictions are different than my own.  What I find the most helpful is honest discussion of the issues and encouragement to continually reflect on how we can follow Christ faithfully.

Basic Contours of Application

(1) Since the Hebrew word for Sabbath means “to cease” or “to rest,” and since the 4th commandment clearly states that the Sabbath day is to be devoid of our normal work, my basic conviction is that I should not work on the Sabbath.  Thus whatever my normal job is, I avoid those endeavors.  For me, that includes both my labors for my job as a teacher (grading papers, doing lesson plans), and my job as a student (writing papers, taking tests, etc).

But what about those who have necessary jobs, like doctors, policemen, etc?  I think Jesus makes it pretty clear in Matthew 12 that there are two classes of tasks/jobs that can legitimately performed on the Sabbath: those involving necessity or mercy.  In other words, food is necessary for life.  I am not required to fast on Sunday.  So we can put together a meal (though getting it together the night before is probably ideal).  If one’s job involves mercy, such as healing the sick, protecting the innocent, rescuing the distressed (Jesus gives the example of an ox that has fallen into a ditch, needing rescue), then that is legitimate.  Will the lines on those types of things always be clear?  Probably not, but that seems to at least be the general guideline that we’re given.

Probably one of the more controversial areas that this leads to is the question of eating at restaurants on the Sabbath.  While many would say that since we have to eat, it’s fine to eat out at a restaurant on Sunday, my own conviction is that this is both unnecessary (I can eat a simply prepared meal from the night before at home), and taking away the possibility of rest for those employed by that restaurant.  In other words, I don’t think I should make them work when I would not work there myself on the Sabbath.  But I also realize that in the Reformed world, most probably wouldn’t agree with me, so we have to be careful to exercise charity on this question of application.

(2) The primary function of the day after rest is that of worship and spiritual rest.  The people of God have always taken the time away from their ordinary activities in order to dedicate that time to the Lord.  Thus I believe we have the New Testament pattern of the believers gathering on the first day of the week in order to worship, pray, hear the word, celebrate the sacraments, and fellowship together.  Accordingly, I believe that this ought to be the fundamental priority on the Lord’s day for the Lord’s people.  If I’m not working on the Lord’s day, but I’m always skipping worship in order to stay home and play video games, I might have missed the point altogether.

(3) Another controversial question that I’ll address is that of recreation.  The issue is much larger than I can deal with in this short post (the prohibition of recreation in the Westminster Standards is the most commonly taken exception in the PCA today).  But let me offer a few thoughts, though I can hardly say that they are completed formulated.  First, I believe that in general, we ought to not be pursuing our own recreations on the Lord’s Day.  In other words, we should be focusing on worship, on being with the Lord’s people, on showing to a watching world that we are different even in the way we spend our time.  Secondly, however, as I’ve studied Scripture, I don’t believe that this prohibits all forms of “recreation.”  If we have a gathering of believers, who, after perhaps spending time studying the word and praying, wish to play a game of cards or listen to some music as a means of fellowship, this seems to me to be a legitimate way to spend the Lord’s day.  If my wife and I after church want to walk around the park and talk, this seems to me to be a legitimate to be refreshed, to get rest, and to spend profitable time together.  Thirdly, recreation that would cause others to work (sports which involves paying referees, etc) falls under the first point that I made.  Lastly, as with many such points of specific application, believers are bound to see things a little differently, and we ought to strive to view each others’ views with respect and love, as well as to encourage each other to follow God’s word faithfully, and not just tradition (whether it be strict or loose tradition).

(4) The question of Sabbath-keeping does become difficult in its application when believers live in contexts that are socially and politically not supportive of the practice.  Obviously, America is becoming less and less supportive of it, but at least Sunday is, for many professions, a normal day off of work.  But in other contexts, such as in Muslim-majority countries, this can be a difficult question for believers, for the day off of work is generally Friday, not Sunday.  Consider the question of a believer who must take a taxi in order to get to church in such a context.  Is that violating the Sabbath?  That and other related questions are difficult to figure out, and perhaps it is best to not be quick to judge, but rather quick to reflect and pray that God would guide his people in a variety of situations to consider how they can best follow him in a world that does not reflect the same values that he has given to his people.

And that’s where I will leave this truncated series on the Sabbath and Sunday.  My thoughts may have been half-baked, possibly unclear, and probably not helpful, but nonetheless, it has encouraged me to continue to think through both the biblical instructions on this issue as well as the difficult work of applying what God has said to life in modern society.

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Posted by on Dec 12, 2010 in Christian Life | 5 comments

Exploring the Sabbath and Sunday (4)

[See Parts 1, 2, 3, and 5.]Having looked the pattern God gave in creation for Sabbath rest and the most common objection from the New Testament to Sabbath observance, I now must look at another important question: if the Sabbath was the seventh day of the week in the Old Testament, then why do Christian churches worship on Sunday?  Or perhaps more importantly, must we keep the Sabbath on Sunday, and if so, why instead of Saturday?

What I’m going to say is absolutely nothing new in terms of arguments for the transition from Saturday to Sunday.  And given that I’ve dragged this series long on enough, I will simply write out in summary form the arguments for the change of day, and then end with a few questions that I’m still wrestling through as I think about this issue.  Before I mention these arguments though, it goes without saying that all of this is dependent on the material I wrote in previous posts.  That is, if the Sabbath command is no longer binding, and if it is not a creational ordinance, then the question that this post addresses is irrelevant.

The Basic Arguments

(1) There is no text in the New Testament that explicitly suggests that Christians must worship on the 1st day of the week instead of the 7th because the Sabbath day has changed.  If there was, all debate would be over.

(2) Jesus’ resurrection occurred on the 1st day of the week, and so the 1st day of week came to have great significance for those who celebrate Christ’s resurrection as the ultimate mark of God’s victory over death and hell.  (See Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; and John 20:1 for mention of the 1st day being the day of Christ’s resurrection.)

(3) The apostles do not seem to have required Gentile Christians to keep the 7th-day Sabbath.

(4) While we do not have apostolic command regarding the change of day, we do seem to have an apostolic example regarding when Christians are to worship.  For example, here are some references to 1st-day meetings in the New Testament: Matt. 28:1-10, Luke 24:13-52, John 20:1, 19, 26, Acts 2:1, 20:6-7, 1 Cor. 16:1-2.  In particular, the passages in Acts and 1 Corinthians refer to the meetings of believers as called by the apostles and church leaders on the first day of the week.  Why was the first day the day for meeting together to worship, to break bread, to pray, and to collect offerings for the church?  It seems most likely that they gathered on that day to celebrate Christ’s resurrection as his people.

Again, all of this is dependent on the Sabbath having continuing validity in the new covenant era.  So if one rejects the premise that the Sabbath is part of the moral law, he will necessarily reject Sunday as a “Christian Sabbath.”  But as I weigh the issues, this accounting of the evidence seems most compelling.  Having said that, here are some questions I’m continuing to think through:

(1) Did Christians suddenly stop working on the 1st day and begin working on the 7th day?  If so, why do we not have a record of a Jewish outrage over this?

(2) If there was not such a sudden break in practice, what implications does that have for our practice of Sabbath-keeping?

(3) If the day changed to Sunday, did other aspects of OT Sabbath-keeping practice change as well? E.g., non-participation in events common to the other days of the week?

I don’t have the answers to all of these questions yet.  But as I think through the Sabbath, those are some questions that deserve further consideration.  In my last post, I’ll talk about how I view the practice of Sabbath-keeping today, dealing with some practical questions (working, eating out, recreation, etc).

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Posted by on Oct 25, 2010 in Christian Life |

Exploring the Sabbath and Sunday (3)

[See Parts 1, 2, 4, and 5.] In my first two posts, I looked at the pattern God gave in creation: six days of work and one day of rest.  While I am confident that I have not proven the case beyond doubt, the first two posts at least illustrate the basics of my view.  But that hardly makes the question any easier, for now I need to look at what the New Testament has to say about the Sabbath.  In particular, I’m going to look at a passage that is often thought of as indicating that the Sabbath has been abrogated in the New Covenant: Colossians 2:16-17.  There are 2 other similar (not identical) passages: Romans 14:5-9, and Galatians 4:8-11.  For the sake of short posts and limited time, I’ll only look at the Colossians passage, but I think the same basic reasoning applies to the other passages, though they should each be examined on their own merits as well.

Colossians 2:16-17

Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

The non-sabbatarian interpretation of these verses is that it clearly confines Sabbath-keeping to the old covenant order that passed away with the coming of Christ.  And I must admit, on the surface, that does indeed seem to be what the passage is suggesting.

The typical sabbatarian response is that when verse 16 says, “Sabbath,” it is not referring to the weekly Sabbath of the 4th commandment which is grounded in creation.  Rather, it is referring to the extra Sabbaths that the Israelites were commanded to keep in the Old Testament.  If you do a search in the Old Testament for “Sabbaths,” particularly in conjunction with “new moons” (they occur together about 30 times in the OT), you’ll see that while it certainly does often refer to the weekly Sabbath, there were also various other Sabbaths (literally meaning a ceasing/resting) commanded by God for Israel to keep.  So the traditional argument is that those extra Sabbaths (which were very clearly tied to the ceremonial system of sacrifices and festivals) merely pointed forward to Christ, and so are no longer operative in the New Covenant.

What do I do with those two views? To be honest, I think that there are significant issues on the surface that have to be dealt with from the perspective of each view.  The non-Sabbatarians must grapple with the creational nature of Sabbath observance.  They must determine whether this passage (and the other two mentioned above) is enough to outweigh the way that the Old Testament presents the weekly Sabbath in relation to creation.

Sabbatarians, of course, must grapple with the fact that–let’s be honest–their reading of the text isn’t immediately apparent.  I deeply feel the weight of this point.  However, at the same time, I believe that a case can be made for both views.  I find it very difficult, though, to see a case for tying the weekly Sabbath to the ceremonial system in the Old Testament.  It seems very clear to me from Genesis that Sabbath-keeping is the imitation by man of God’s pattern set forth in creation, a pattern which is therefore not tied to sin, and therefore not tied to the sacrificial system.

Summary: While I admit that the prima facie understanding of Colossians 2:16-17 (and the other similar passages) would seem to lend weight to the non-Sabbatarian view, I don’t see how that view can deal with the Sabbath pattern given in creation.  So as I think through the difficult question of the Sabbath, I see the creational grounding of the Sabbath to be clearer and weightier, and so that influences how I understand Colossians 2:16-17 and other similar passages.

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Posted by on Oct 17, 2010 in Christian Life | 6 comments

Exploring the Sabbath and Sunday (2)

[See Parts 1, 3, 4, and 5.] In my last post, I basically argued that the Sabbath was rooted in the pattern God gave in his work and rest in creation, as well as that given the importance placed on it in the Old Testament.  I had intended to move on to two other issues: (1) the change from the seventh day to the first day, and (2) the three passages in the NT that are often taken as abrogating the Sabbath.  However, thanks to some good thoughts in Scott’s comment, I think it would be better to first look a little deeper at the issue of “creation ordinance.”  As I said in the comments, the issue of the Sabbath is really predicated on three “ifs”:

If the Sabbath command is clearly part of creation, if the Sabbath is not tied to the ceremonial system, and if the New Testament doesn’t abrogate the Sabbath command, then the Sabbath is still binding on Christians (though the nature of the obligation, such as which day of the week, would still have to be discussed).

So what I would like to get at in this post are those first two ifs.  In other words, two questions must be answered: Is Sabbath observance part of the commands given to Adam before the Fall? Was the Sabbath tied up with the ceremonial system, such that it would pass away with the coming of Christ?

The Sabbath in Creation

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and wall the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. [Genesis 2:1-3]

As is obvious from those verses, no explicit, positive command regarding Sabbath observance is recorded in the creation account.  There is no, “Thou shalt keep the Sabbath” in Genesis.  However, I believe that there are several indicators–in Genesis and elsewhere–that indicate that the Sabbath was indeed part of the obligations of man to God in creation.  I’ll mention two:

(1) Genesis 2 says that God “blessed the seventh day and made it holy.”  This blessing and making holy was founded on the pattern that God gave in resting on the seventh day.  The question is this: what does “making it holy” mean?  “Making holy” means to set something apart.  That is, it’s no longer ordinary, no longer the same, it is set apart for a specific purpose.  What is that purpose?  It seems to me that the text provides the answer: “…because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”  In other words, what is the foundation for saying that it is set apart? The foundation is that God did the work of creation for six days and then rested one out of seven.  This pattern, then, is the way in which the Sabbath is set apart. In other words, it is difficult for me to see what meaning there would be in God making holy/setting apart the seventh day, if it was not meant as an obligation for man to imitate the pattern of God in creation.  So while certainly there is no direct, “Thou shalt keep the Sabbath” in Genesis, it seems to me that the wording of verse 3 strongly implies that part of man’s duty toward God before the fall was to rest one day in seven.

(2) The second point that I think is helpful is this: If the Sabbath is a creational obligation on mankind, then we would expect to see some indication that men before the giving of the Mosaic Law kept the Sabbath.  And I think we do have such an example in Exodus 16.  In that passage, Moses says, “Six days you shall gather it [manna], but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none” (16:26).  The Israelites were not supposed to gather manna (i.e., work) on the seventh day, because it was Sabbath.  This is prior to the giving of the Mosaic, ceremonial law (Exodus 20), and so it seems that Sabbath-keeping was understood to be part of man’s obligation toward God from creation forward.  And this thought leads me to my thoughts on the second question, “Was the Sabbath tied to the ceremonial system?”

The Sabbath, the Ceremonial Law, and Christ

In the (hardly complete) studies I’ve done on this issue, the above points lead to one final point that suggests to me that the Sabbath is still binding.

It seems to me that since the Sabbath was instituted at creation, and since the 4th commandment specifically appeals to creation as the reason for the Sabbath, and since the Israelites seemed to have kept the Sabbath even prior to the giving of the Mosaic Law, then it seems to me that the Sabbath cannot be tied to the ceremonial system.  The ceremonial system was given in response to sin.  It was specifically intended to point forward to Christ (Hebrews 8-10 make this clear).  The Sabbath (along with the other 9 commandments, and the two greatest commandments) points backward to creation (the creation narrative and the reason given for the Sabbath in the 4th commandment).  There was no sin in creation.  Thus the Sabbath was not given because of sin.  The ceremonial law was.  Christ came to fulfill the ceremonies that pointed forward to him because atonement for sin had to be made.  I cannot see how the Sabbath is tied to that system, since I believe that it was part of man’s obligation to God before sin existed.

I’d love to hear feedback on these thoughts, as they’re hardly complete or perfect.  They simply represent my thoughts on the issue as I currently see it.  In the next post, I’ll look how the New Testament does talk about the Sabbath, and what implications those passages have for the topic.

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