Why don't Christian worship on Saturday?
Image via WikipediaCertainly the appropriate worship of God is incredibly important. But the Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:8-11) is one of the most misunderstood of all the Ten Commandments.
The Fourth Commandment deals with one aspect of the worship of God, a vast subject in the Bible.
Jesus confirmed that the greatest commandment in the law is to, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). This command to worship the Almighty is monumental – and something we all fail to achieve on any consistent basis.
The foundation and purpose of the Fourth Commandment is rooted in the very beginning of Scripture. Genesis 2:2-3 announces, “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.”
Thus the purpose was twofold: first, as a joyful celebration of who God is and his glorious work of creation, and second as a life pattern – a time of spiritual refreshment in following the Lord, who rested from his work on the seventh day.
When Christ came to earth as the God-man Jesus, he sharply criticized the Jewish religious leaders’ interpretation of the Sabbath. He authoritatively said it was legitimate to heal on the Sabbath (Luke 13:14), to rescue a sheep from a pit on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:11), or to pluck grain to eat for lack of adequate food (Luke 6:1-5).
Jesus boldly proclaimed that he was the Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28), with a new overarching maxim: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). In essence Jesus condemned the spirit of judgment that was missing the heart of the law.
Says The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church: “Though the primitive Christians largely continued to keep the seventh day (Saturday) as a day of rest and prayer, the fact that the Resurrection and Coming of the Holy Spirit had taken place on the first day of week soon led to the observance of that day (i.e., Sunday), to the exclusion of the Jewish Sabbath on Saturday.”
Key passages for the Christian observance of Sunday, the “first day of the week,” include Revelation 1:10, where the text is “certainly” referring to Sunday, according to scholars; Acts 20:7, which is the Bible’s first mention of a Sunday gathering; and 1 Corinthians 16:2.
You might want to look them up. Indeed, there are no New Testament commands for Christians to observe Saturday. Here’s an important and clarifying statement by Paul in Colossians 2:15-16: “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he (Christ) made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day” (emphasis added; see also Romans 14:5-6).
Since the death of the apostles, church history has featured at least three broad movements of proper Sabbath day interpretation (with various distinctions within these broad groupings). The first is Sabbatarianism, which teaches that the Sabbath must be kept on Saturday. This is held by such groups as the Seventh-day Adventists.
The next major view essentially transferred worship from Saturday to Sunday. Many holding this so-called “Sunday Sabbath” position affirm that there is a moral imperative to observe a day of rest after six days of labor.
It is argued that the Ten Commandments represent the essence of the moral law and thus are universal in practice, which would include the Fourth Commandment. Proponents of this broad view include some in the early Eastern church, Augustine, Aquinas, many Reformers, and the Puritans.
A third broad perspective argues that since the Sabbath was part of the ceremonial or Mosaic Law (e.g., Exodus 35:3, Leviticus 23:2-3,Numbers 29:9), a New Testament or New Covenant believer is not bound biblically to keep the Sabbath, although he or she is free to do so in Christ. Martin Luther taught in his Larger Catechism (1529) that the Sabbath “is altogether an external matter, like other ordinances of the Old Testament, which were attached to particular customs, persons, and places, and now have been made free through Christ.”
For more background on these movements see the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. For other nuances of Sabbath interpretation held by informed followers of Christ, see Five Views on Law and Gospel.
So there seems to be freedom of conscience among Christians concerning this issue; in fact, Paul says the topic should not be divisive among believers. Nonetheless, virtually all mature Christians concur that it is important to take one day per week and to spend extra time with God for spiritual refreshment, reflection, and rest, whether it be Sunday, Saturday, or some other day of the week based on life or vocational circumstances.
