I’ve written a little about Sunday and Sabbath recently. I don’t seem to be the only one talking about the subject. This article takes a different position to me, arguing that Christians are not under an obligation to observe Sunday as Sabbath. Like the author, Luke Plant, I don’t think that the question is of first importance, it’s not an issue on which you can lose your salvation, not something we are going to divide on. However, I thought it would be helpful to respond to his arguments.
First, citing the Westminster Confession, Luke argues that we can only command and teach “what the Bible teaches, and what must be deduced from it.” He quotes the bit that says:
Chapter 1. VI. The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.
However, he then goes on to say:
“…we are not free to extrapolate, “read between the lines” or “join up the dots” in any way we please, but must teach all of what Scripture explicitly says and what necessarily flows from it, according to its own logic, and only that.”
This is a little bit confusing because deduction involves exactly what Luke says we are not to do. When we teach on the Trinity, we may not be so comfortable with language about reading between the lines but yes, we are extrapolating and joining up the dots. Systematic Theology is very much about doing that!
To give another example, we would believe monogamy to be something required of all Christians and rooted in Creation. Yet, is there an explicit command around this? The only explicit requirement is for elders to be “one-woman-men”. Yet I would suggest that we understand by joining the dots, reading between the lines and extrapolation that it is a reasonable and necessary influence that all Christians should be monogamous.
The question of course is whether we have extrapolated and joined the dots correctly, whether the things we are teaching “necessarily flow”.
Secondly, Luke argues that precepts and explicit instruction are better than example. On that basis, he argues that the New Testament does not explicitly refer to the Lord’s Day as Sabbath. I find that this over divides the Old Testament from the New. If there were complete absence of precept in any of Scripture, then we would be struggling. However, if a precept is clearly taught in the Old Testament, in the Law and as I’ve noted before, closely related to other continuing commands on murder, adultery, etc, then I would argue that examples of people observing the precept and how they went about it are perfectly adequate.
Thirdly, he argues that “the Sabbath is not a creation ordinance.” He basis this on Adam being commanded to work but not to rest. Again, he is looking for that explicit precept. However, there is much that would have been clear to Adam in terms of creation that wasn’t explicitly stated. The only command explicitly given was “don’t eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”
That it is a creation ordinance, flows out of the pattern of God’s creation. Just as the truth that we are made in God’s image makes “Do not kill” a creation rooted command, so too does the pattern of God working six days and resting on the seventh give the context for Sabbath observance.
This links into a further point. The command as we have it isn’t in fact to create a Sabbath, or is it in fact to cease work. Rather, the command is to remember to sanctify/set apart the Sabbath. The sense is that the day is already there, it’s created. Even the idea of “remembering” points as with the other laws in the Ten Commandments not to something new that started to Sinai but to something already understood and already observed.
Indeed, Jesus will describe the Sabbath as something made for man, a reminder that it is something created and given before there is a command concerning it. We might note that this affirms the sense that we are dealing with a creation ordinance and there is an implication there that we will want wider society to enjoy its benefits through common grace.
We need to be careful about confusing command and explanation. As I said, the command “Is remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.” The rest of the text described the things you should do to help one another do that. Hence, as I’ve argued previously, the “rest” of the Sabbath is not about time off to sleep and for recreation but rather that we cease from certain tasks in order to enjoy the fruit of our labours together and before God. Sabbath observance is about worship.
For those reasons, I don’t find Luke’s exegesis or argument compelling. I think that his article primarily describes a reaction to the kind of legalistic sabbath that I also spoke against in my first article. However, I think there’s more helpful ways of countering that kind of legalism.
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Faithroots 