K. Runia. Trowel & Sword. November 1965
When we study the NEW TESTAMENT concerning its teaching about the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Sunday, we soon discover several remarkable features.
(1) There is HARDLY ANY MENTION OF THE SUNDAY in the New Testament.
Twice we read of ‘the first day of the week’ (Acts 20:7 and I Cor. 16:2). The Jews had no special names for the first six days of the week and therefore simply called them: the first, second, etc, day. Once only we read of the day of the Lord’ (Revel. 1:10). In both cases the reference is to the DAY OF THE RESURRECTION. Christ rose on ‘the first day of the week’ (cf. Matt. 28:1; Mk. 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1a), and therefore this was ‘the day of the Lord’, that is, the day of the Lord Jesus Christ (and not: the day of Yahweh, as in the Old Testament the sabbath is called ‘a sabbath to the Lord your God’, Ex. 20:10). In none of these passages is there any reference to the sabbath. Nowhere is it said: the first day of the week is the Christian version of the Old Testament sabbath. Nowhere are the Christians commanded to rest on this day. All that we read is that they came together on this day for worship. Acts 20:7 speaks of being gathered together ‘to break bread’, while Paul on that day preached till midnight. We also read the exhortation ‘not to neglect to meet together’ (Heb. 10:25), which refers to all Christian meetings, but, no doubt, in particular also to the meetings on the first day of the week. From various extra-Biblical sources, too, we know of the custom to meet together on the Sunday. The Roman author Pliny, who was governor of Bithynia, wrote in a letter to the Emperor Trajan (c. 112 A.D.) :
“The Christians affirm the whole of their guilt or error to be that they were accustomed to assemble together on a fixed day, before it was light, and to sing hymns to Christ as a God, and to bind themselves by a Sacramentum, not for any wicked purpose, but never to commit fraud, theft,..; after which it was their custom to separate, and to assemble again to take a meal, but a general one, and without guilty purpose”.
And about 150 A.D. Justin Martyr writes:
“And on the day called Sunday there is an assembly in one place of all who live in cities or in the country, and the memoirs of the apostles of the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits: then, when the reader has ceased, the president gives his exhortation to the imitation of these good things. Then we all stand up together and offer prayers and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread is brought and wine and water, and the president in like manner sends up prayers and thanksgivings according to his ability, and the congregation assents saying the Amen. And each one participates of the things over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the hands of the deacons. And they who are well-to-do, and willing, give each one as he wills, according to his discretion, and what is collected is deposited with the president, and he himself helps the orphans and widows and those who are in want through sickness or other cause, and those who are in bonds, and the strangers who are sojourning; and in a word he takes care of all who are in need. And we all have our common meeting on the Sunday because it is the First Day, on which God, having changed darkness and matter, made the world, and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For they crucified him on the day before Saturday and on the day after Saturday, which is Sunday, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, he taught them these things which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.”
However, neither in the New Testament itself, nor in any of the early writings of the fathers do we read about any prohibition of labour on the Sunday. In fact, we know that the early Christians worked on this day. Many of them were slaves and HAD TO work! For this reason they had their meetings before dawn and in the evening. Only gradually this pattern has changed and eventually the whole day became a day for worship. During the reign of Constantine the Sunday became an official, public holiday. The next stage was that Sunday labour was officially forbidden by both church and state (although in 392 the church father Jerome still wrote that on the Lord’s Day they went to church but on returning they took up their allotted tasks, making garments for themselves or others (William Hodgkins, Sunday – Christian and Social Significance, 1960, p. 28).
(2) What does the New Testament say about the SABBATH?
In the GOSPELS we read several statements of JESUS about the sabbath. More than once He was involved in a ‘sabbath conflict’ with the Pharisees and on these occasions He expressed His views quite clearly. We cannot deal with them all at length, but summarise them in the following points.
(a) Jesus Himself keeps the sabbath (of. Luke 4:16), but this is not surprising, nor is it binding for us. Until the time of His own crucifixion and resurrection the Mosaic law was still in force and as THE fulfiller of the law of God Jesus subjects Himself voluntarily to this law and its curse!. For the same reason He was also circumcised on the eighth day.
(b) Jesus opposes the formalistic misuse of the sabbath and the legalistic emphasis on the sabbath rest by the Pharisees. As in all His teaching Jesus utterly rejects such formalism and legalism.
(c) Jesus nowhere says that the sabbath is a creation ordinance. In the case of marriage and divorce He refers to the institution of marriage at the time of the creation (cf. Matt. 19:3ff. – ‘He who made them from the beginning’, followed by the quotation from Gen. 2:24), but He never does this with regard to the sabbath. Many commentators read an allusion to the creation-aspect of the sabbath in Mk. 2:27 (‘the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath’), but this is an inference that finds no ground in the text itself, nor in the context. The Lutheran scholar R.C.H. Lenski rightly says: “Jesus is not speaking of Sabbath observance prior to the giving of the law on Sinai; for the entire discussion deals with the regulations that were delivered through Moses”.
(d) Jesus explicitly places the sabbath in Messianic light. ” The Son of man is lord even of the sabbath’ (Mk. 2:28). Kuyper explained this in a trinitarian way: as the Son, Jesus has, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, instituted the sabbath at the creation, but this is certainly not a correct interpretation. The text clearly speaks of Jesus as the MESSIAH, as appears from the title ‘Son of man’. AS THE MESSIAH Jesus is the Lord of the sabbath. For was the sabbath not given to point to Him? Lenski says: “The entire ceremonial law, all the forms of Jewish worship, in particular the Sabbath with its divine regulations, were given to Israel by God… as part of the great plan of salvation to be wrought out by the Messiah. The Sabbath was part of the preparation to fit Israel for its coming Saviour.”
(e) Jesus clearly shows that the sabbath was meant as a blessing for man. It speaks of God’s rest, into which one day man shall enter too. Man is not subordinate to the institution, but the institution is meant to serve man.
When we read the ACTS OF THE APOSTLES we first notice that in the early days after Pentecost the apostles in Jerusalem apparently still observed the Jewish custom of worship. In Acts 3:1, for example, we read that Peter and John went up to the temple ‘at the hour of prayer’. It is not impossible that at first they still observed the sabbath day as well. Later on we also read that during his missionary journeys Paul used to go to the synagogue on the sabbath, but this, of course, was a matter of missionary approach rather than of religious observance. It is very striking that at the famous Conference at Jerusalem, described in Acts 15, the point of the sabbath is not mentioned at all. Apparently there was no problem yet. But the situation changed, when the Judaisers began to insist on the keeping of the sabbath by the Gentiles. Precisely this fact has led to the complete disappearing of the sabbath from the Christian scene.
This leads us to PAUL. Three passages in particular are of importance here. First of all there is ROM. 14:5, which gives the general rule: “One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind’. It is not clear which days Paul means. Some think of special fast-days, others of special Jewish feast days, others again of all feast days, including the sabbath. One thing, however, is evident: Paul gives, as a general rule, the exhortation: ‘Do not judge and condemn another on this point, but let every one do what he thinks he has to do BEFORE GOD’.
The next passage that asks our attention is GAL. 4:9,10. Paul is speaking here to a congregation that is in danger of falling back in a pre-christian keeping of the law. Judaisers have tried to bring them again under the yoke of the law. This very fact arouses the apostle’s indignation and he writes: ‘Now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves you want to be once more. You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years!’ Although Paul does not mention the sabbath explicitly, nearly all exegetes agree that he refers to them, when he speaks of ‘days’. This, of course, would mean that according to the apostle these sabbaths should no longer be observed.
That this is indeed his view, appears from the third passage, COL. 2:16,17. Here he openly speaks of the sabbath. The first verse is very much like Rom. 14:5, but it is more specific: ‘Therefore let no one pass judgement on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath’. In the next verse he gives the reason: These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance (the body) belongs to Christ’. It is unmistakably clear that for Paul the sabbath belongs to the past, for – and this is very important – it was typological. It was a shadow that pointed towards Christ.This does not mean that it was unimportant. Lenski rightly says: “We should not think slightly of the shadow. It was no less than the divine promise of all the heavenly realities about to arrive. The shadow proved the actuality and even the nearness of the realities, for only an actual body and one that is not far away casts a shadow. So the shadow called out all the faith and the hope of the Old Testament saints.’ Yet it is not the reality itself. The reality, the substance, the fulfilment is in Christ. In Him we find what the sabbath foreshadowed. In Him we find the real rest from sin, its guilt and its power, but also from the law and its curse. (Paul has described this in the verses 9-13). And therefore the sabbath has come to its definite end. The shadow is good for its time; by means of it faith and hope embrace the coming realities; but when men prefer the shadow instead of the realities, they end with nothing, for even the shadow has disappeared when the shining heavenly realities stand in its place’.
We should further note that Paul, neither here, nor anywhere else in his epistles, speaks of the Lord’s Day as the New Testament prolongation of the Old Testament sabbath. H.N. Ridderbos says in his commentary: “The way Paul writes about the sabbath proves that for him the fourth commandment of the Decalogue has no continuing significance”.
This is actually all that the New Testament says about our problem. There is, of course, also a reference to the sabbath in Hebrews 4, but this is clearly in a figurative, spiritual sense. The author speaks of the eschatological ‘sabbath rest’, which ‘remains for the people of God’ (vs. 9).
We can SUMMARISE the New Testament teaching as follows. The sabbath has been abrogated, for it has been fulfilled in Christ. No one is any longer bound to it, although there is still liberty to keep the day, as long as it is not in a Judaising way and spirit. The new people of God have an altogether different day: the day of their Lord, the day of His resurrection, for on this day the new, everlasting life has begun. NOWHERE, however, does the New Testament say, or even suggest, that the Sunday has come in the place of the sabbath, or that the two are essentially the same.
In fact the Sunday is never prescribed, nor is it even suggested that it was ‘instituted’ by the Lord. It has gradually and naturally developed into the fixed day of worship, and its central aspect is the celebration of the resurrection of the Lord in common worship. In the whole New Testament there is no reference to the Decalogue on the point of Sunday celebration. In fact, as late as the fourth century, the church fathers still speak of the resurrection only. In 326 Athanasius, writing on Ps. 118:24 (‘This is the day which the Lord has made’), asks: ‘What day can this be but the resurrection day of the Lord, the day which brought salvation to all nations? Which had received its name from Him, namely, the Lord’s Day’ (Hodgkins, p. 28).
We believe therefore that it is fully scriptural when one of the famous Reformed confessions of Switzerland, the so called Second Helvetic Confession, declares: “We believe neither that one day is holier than another, nor that rest by itself is acceptable to God, but yet we keep the Lord’s day and not the Jewish Sabbath, BY A VOLUNTARY OBSERVANCE”, (Ch.24)
K. RUNIA
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Comment From Last Week
Thanks Bert and Pieter
Wow… your “T&S Revisited” of May 11th brought back some memories. I’m old enough to remember the original article’s publication. I was just 20 at the time but I recall the discussion and debate that this article and subsequent ones generated in our family and in our church community – with friends of my parents on either side of the debate. Some held to the Westminster Confession’s rather more stringent view of the Sunday Sabbath while others were content with the Heidelberg Catechism’s more relaxed view on the subject.
The articles also had some significant implications for me nearly tweny-five years later. The town of the church I was serving at that time also had a Presbyterian Church – not the PCA but a much smaller breakaway denomination. Soon after arriving there I looked up the pastor of this church and told him I was looking for fellowship with like-minded pastors. When he learned that I was an ordained CRCA pastor he told me in no uncertain terms that he could not possibly have fellowship with me. When I asked him why, he told me that it was because back in the Sixties our churches had had this disagreement over the interpretation of the Sunday/Sabbath question and that the denomination had never decided on the one view or the other but had allowed both views to peacefully coexist in the denomination. I must say that evcer since I have felt sad that for this man it was “a hill to die on” – in the sense that it was cause for him to have nothing to do with CRCA or with me as one of its ordained pastors.
Keep up your good work of making the past come alive.
S.D.G.
John Westendorp
T&S Revisited 
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