The Sabbath Today

I never gave much thought that the Sab­bath is a bind­ing require­ment in the New Covenant era until I started attend­ing my cur­rent church. They hold a Sab­batar­ian posi­tion which says that the Sab­bath is a per­pet­ual ordi­nance for God’s peo­ple from the cre­ation of the earth to the new heav­ens and new earth. The posi­tion is largely found in reformed cir­cles influ­enced by early reformed the­olo­gians. The 1689 2nd Lon­don Bap­tist Con­fes­sion of Faith has the fol­low­ing to say on the issue:

“As it is the law of nature, that in gen­eral a pro­por­tion of time, by God’s appoint­ment, be set apart for the wor­ship of God, so by his Word, in a pos­i­tive moral, and per­pet­ual com­mand­ment, bind­ing all men, in all ages, he has par­tic­u­larly appointed one day in seven for a sab­bath to be kept holy unto him, which from the begin­ning of the world to the res­ur­rec­tion of Christ was the last day of the week, and from the res­ur­rec­tion of Christ was changed into the first day of the week, which is called the Lord’s Day: and is to be con­tin­ued to the end of the world as the Chris­t­ian Sab­bath, the obser­va­tion of the last day of the week being abolished.”

Instead of writ­ing a polemic on my under­stand­ing of the Sab­bath in redemp­tive his­tory I’ll give links to arti­cles that clearly sum­ma­rize how I under­stand the issue. But I do want to make the fol­low­ing the­sis points:

  1. The Sab­bath was not an ordi­nance from cre­ation but from Sinai.
  2. The Sab­bath was a sign of the Old [Mosaic] Covenant that has since passed.
  3. The Sab­bath was a type of the escha­to­log­i­cal rest to be found in the com­ing Messiah.
  4. The prac­tice of set­ting one day in seven aside has been replaced by con­se­crat­ing every day to the Lord.
  5. The mod­ern posi­tion of Sab­batar­i­an­ism is incon­sis­tent at best and a gross mis­un­der­stand­ing at worst of God’s reg­u­la­tion of Sab­bath activ­ity (or lack thereof).
  6. The “Lord’s Day” is not to be equated with the Jew­ish Sabbath.

Arti­cles on the Sabbath

  1. A Redemptive-Historical Under­stand­ing of the Sab­bath
  2. Sab­batar­i­an­ism Re-examined
  3. Are the Sab­bath laws bind­ing on Chris­tians today?