Theological Directory (by Topic) - Sabbath

Quotes

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy" -- Exodus 20:8

"..call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable.." -- Isaiah 58:13

"we, according to the instruction we have received, should on the day of the Lord's resurrection and on that day alone, also refrain from all anxiety, putting aside our worldly business"
-- Tertullian in his treatise on prayer

"Christians should not Judiaze and be idle on Saturday, but shall work on that day; but the Lord's day they shall especially honor, and, as being Christians, shall, if possible, do no work on that day."
-- The Council of Laodicea

"[God] first rested, then blessed this rest, that in all ages it might be sacred among men"
-- John Calvin in his Commentary on Genesis

"That a weekly Sabbath is to be religiously observed in the Christian church. We not only find no repeal of the fourth commandment in the New Testament, nor any reason for the repeal of it; but, on the contrary, we find it expounded by our Saviour, and vindicated from the corrupt glosses of the Scribes and Pharisees, who, as in other things they were profanely loose, so in this they were superstitiously strict. Several occasions Christ took to show that works of necessity and mercy are no violations of the Sabbath rest; as Luke 13:14; John 5:18; 9:14; and especially Matt. 12:1ff. Had the law of the fourth commandment been to expire presently our Saviour would not have been so careful to explain it; but it is plain he designed to settle a point which would afterwards be of use to his church, and to teach us that our Christian Sabbath, though it is under the direction of the fourth commandment, yet, it is not under the arbitrary injunctions of the Jewish elders."
-- Matthew Henry in The Sabbath; A Serious Address to Those that Profane the Lord's Day.

"The spirit of the Fourth Commandment was not interfered with by the change in the smallest degree: the Lord's Day, on the first day of the week, was just as much a day of rest after six days' labor, as the seventh-day Sabbath had been."
-- J.C. Ryle in Sabbath: A Day To Keep

"The Sabbath is a creation ordinance (Gen. 2:2-3) which men were obliged to observe even before the coming of the Mosaic law. Compare Exodus 20:10-11 for its interpretation of Gen. 2:2-3. All men are subject to the Sabbath law (note that Christ did not say that the Sabbath was made for Israelites in Mark 2:27, but for generic 'man'). Man's moral obligation to Sabbath observance is placed right along side the nine other universally moral words of the Decalogue, which was written by the very finger of God. When man observes the Sabbath he is rightfully imitating his Creator; the Sabbath rest is patterned after the creation rest of God...Moreover, the ceremonial and sacrificial aspects of the Older Testament cycle of feast days ('new moon, Sabbath year, Jubilee, etc.'), along with those cyclic observances of feasts, were 'put out of gear' by Christ's work of redemption. Hence Colossians 2:16f. looses us from the ceremonial elements of the Sabbath system (the passage seems to be referring specifically to feast offerings), and such passages as Romans 14:5f. and Galatians 4:10 teach that we need not distinguish these ceremonial days any longer (as the Judaizers were apt to require). As Christ provides for entrance to the eternal Sabbath rest of God by His substitutionary death upon the cross, He makes the typological elements (e.g. offerings) of the Sabbath system irrelevant (things which were a shadow of the coming substance according to Col. 2:17; c.f. Heb. 10:1, 8). By accomplishing our redemption Christ also binds us to the observance of that weekly Sabbath which prefigures our eternal Sabbath (c.f. Heb. 4)."
-- Greg Bahsen in Theonomy in Christian Ethics

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