Are Christians Required to Keep a Seventh Day Sabbath?

I have some dear friends who believe that the Bible teaches that we Christians are required to keep a seventh day Sabbath. In this message I am not seeking to disparage anyone who takes this view but simply do what I always do — go to the word of God for understanding on the issue. This may help many who have concerns about the Sabbath.

Let me begin with this declaration from Jesus during His sermon on the mount: “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill” (Matt. 5:17). None of the law, including the Sabbath, has been abolished but Jesus has fulfilled it completely. Jesus fulfilled the law by sending His Holy Spirit and coming to dwell in us and lead us in His righteousness. He promised that He would send the Holy Spirit who would “convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16: 8). The Spirit in us would be the judge of sin, righteousness and judgment.

The writer of Hebrews quotes from Jeremiah 31 concerning this new covenant in the Holy Spirit:

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away (Heb. 8:10–13).

We notice several things in this statement. First, this is a new covenant. Secondly, this covenant would involve God’s laws being put into the minds and hearts of the people. Thirdly, people will know the Lord not based on some external influence but on the basis of this inward presence of God through His Spirit. Lastly the writer of Hebrews says that the old covenant would be made obsolete because of this inner working of the Spirit in the hearts of the people.

When Jesus said He would fulfill the law He was referring to the Ten Commandments which includes the Sabbath day command (Ex. 20:8–11). Jesus fulfilled the Sabbath law and the other laws by writing them on the minds and hearts of His people and sending His Holy Spirit to lead them and empower them in keeping them in their lives. Because of this spiritual nature of the law in our hearts, the first covenant has been made obsolete and was fading away (Heb. 8:13).

Paul wrote to the Romans on this subject saying “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” Paul was obviously including the Sabbath in this statement. Some make certain days special and others see all days alike. Each person must make sure that he is hearing from God so he can be “fully convinced.”

The apostle scolds the Galatians saying, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh” (Gal. 3:3)? So, what were they doing that was so foolish? They were “observing days and months and seasons and years” (4:10). He expressed his concern saying “I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain” (v. 11).

Paul’s ministry was to show how they were redeemed from captivity to the law to a life of faith in Christ. The law was merely a guardian to teach us until the Messiah came so that we could be justified by faith. Now we no longer need a guardian because we are all children of God through faith in Him (Gal. 3:23–26). The One who fulfilled the law sent us the Holy Spirit so we could live in righteousness in His power. All of that includes the Sabbath.

Some dear Christians will refer to following passage and others concerning the Sabbath to try to show that the seventh day Sabbath is a perpetual law that never ends:

You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the LORD, sanctify you.’ . . . It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’ (Ex. 31:13, 17).

The passage appears to say that the Sabbath goes on and on and is a forever commandment as it is written. First of all, the commandment does continue forever in the lives of God’s people in that Christ fulfills the law by bringing it to our hearts in the Holy Spirit. This is what the writer of Hebrews means when he says

So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience[a1] (Heb. 4:9–11).

The readers knew that the weekly Sabbath was removed in Christ but the writer of Hebrews reminds them that a Sabbath rest remains for God’s people. It is that rest of soul when we cease from our religious works trying to please God. We enter His rest by allowing Him to perform His will in us. We let go and let God, so to speak. We “strive to enter that rest” by seeking Him daily not by ceasing from work on one day of the week but by daily resting in Him from the works that we think would grant us salvation apart from the cross. The writer of Hebrews spent the entire first three chapters showing that Christ was higher than the angels, and is our Apostle and Priest and in this verse He argues that we must enter our rest in Him by ceasing from our fleshly, religious works.

There are statements that speak of other practices being forever such as the priesthood: “you shall gird Aaron and his sons with sashes and bind caps on them. And the priesthood shall be theirs by a statute forever” (Isa. 29:9; ESV). We see here that the priesthood, as well, was fulfilled in Christ and is forever in Him who is our High Priest. In Christ we have an eternal priesthood and an eternal rest in Him.

Several passages written by Paul indicate that Christians are living in Christ’s fulfillment of the law. Paul wrote to the Colossians:

Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day — things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. (Col. 2:16).

Paul warns us that we should not to be judged regarding food, drink or keeping a festival, new moon or Sabbath day. The apostle says that these are “a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.” Christ is the substance of these outward observances because they are fulfilled in Him. These things were a mere shadow stretching forward to when God’s laws in Christ through the Spirit would be written in our hearts. A time had come when we are led by the Spirit, not by outward religious observances (Rom. 8:12–14). There were apparently efforts to require Gentile converts to keep the Jewish law. Paul instructs these Gentile believers not to be judged regarding the law since they now were indwelt by the One who had fulfilled the law and was empowering them by the Spirit to keep it.

This is why the leaders of the church met in Jerusalem in Acts 15. Some Jewish converts were insisting that “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses” (v. 5). So an intense debate took place over the question of whether or not the Gentile converts in Paul’s ministry should be required to keep the law and be circumcised. After much discussion this conclusion was reached:

For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well” (Acts 15:28, 29).

Notice that there was no mention of the Sabbath or any of the Ten Commandments except perhaps the Seventh concerning adultery. This was because the leaders in Jerusalem realized that Christ had fulfilled the law and that the law was simply a shadow leading to the real substance in Him.

In Isaiah God reminds us that He is after our hearts not our outward performance of religion. He actually says that He wants no vain offerings, incense, new moon celebrations, Sabbath and convocations. He warns us saying “I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly” (Isaiah 1:13). He told King David “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:17).

Today’s church would do well to realize that God is after our hearts not our religious sacrifices that have been replaced by the Lamb of God who completed them and filled them full with His life.