The Sabbath

and the Lord's Day

The Old Sabbath Repealed*

*This chapter is taken from "The Sabbath" by D. S. Warner.

we are plainly told that the new creation restores the soul to the image of the Creator. "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision but a new creature" (Gal. 6:15). By seven translations it is very properly translated, "A new creation."

  In many places redemption is compared to the creation. Take, for instance, the creation of light. "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6).

  They who are of the first Adam are earthly; they of the second Adam are heavenly. The law, including the seventh day, was not given for the righteous, but for the ungodly, the earthly. Will God translate us from the earthly into the heavenly and yet leave us under the Sabbath that was made for the earthly? How utterly ridiculous the idea that the second Adam should come into this sin lost world, start a new creation, and leave us under a Sabbath that identifies us with the fallen Adam and the world that lieth in iniquity!

  Behold the striking analogy. When God completed the work of creation, "he rested from his labors, and was refreshed." And twenty five hundred years later, when he saw fit to command a day of utter abstinence from labor, he chose that day which commemorated the finishing of creation, so that in its observance the children of Israel not only commemorated the miraculous hand of God which had brought them out of Egypt, but also kept before their eyes the fact that God is the Creator of all things. Such a remembrancer was needed by a people only born after the flesh, and who were soon to enter a land flooded with gross idolatry, where God was not known as the Creator. But how ridiculous the idea that redeemed and illuminated Christians, who know God, even the one true and living God, need a Sabbath to keep them from deifying some other object besides the Creator.

  The seventh day Sabbath, therefore, embodied no element that made it unchangeable and unrepealable. It was a positive statute, created wholly by the decree of the divine Law giver, and was therefore subject to removal by his decree. when with the rest of the code in which it [98] was embodied, it had served its time and object, and when God moved forward in the order of his plan, and the new dispensation and creation sprang forth. It was a sign that God had sanctified Israel, that is, separated them from the heathen nations. It was a sign or memorial of that nation's deliverance out of Egypt, and it passed away when that nation forfeited their place as the chosen people of God, soon to be dispersed again among all nations. It was a shadow of things to come and was nailed to the cross with all the other shadows and types. It was a part of the covenant written on stone; and the New Testament teaches in the most positive manner, and by a large number of passages, that that covenant was abolished; that Christ himself, the mediator of the new testament, took away the first that he might establish the second. Therefore, it not only was repealable, but actually was repealed by authority of Him who has all power in heaven and earth; and in so doing he showed that he is "lord of the Sabbath also."

  And should any law teacher attempt to argue that the Sabbath of the Jews survived that Sinaitic law because it was introduced before the general giving of the law, as seen in Exodus 16, we answer, So was the Passover instituted prior to the ministration of the law on Sinai, even before Israel came out of Egypt (Exodus 12), and yet it I passed away with the death of the first covenant and its shadows. It and its sister "sign," the Sabbath, were both incorporated in the law system given on Sinai, and both passed away with it. The old Sabbath, then, is dead and gone. And is there any occasion for mourning over its decease? Have we lost anything in the death and decay of the old covenant, since Christ is the "mediator of a better covenant, established upon better promises"? Is  there anything mournful in the death of that "wherein we [the Jews] were held," since we are married to Christ?  Those desiring to be teachers of the law now tell us at "we are not under the law, only in the sense that we obey the law, and therefore do not come under its condemnations." How directly this conflicts with the Word of God. It teaches that we are "not under the law," and l are "delivered from the law," just as a woman is no longer [99] under the obligations of the marriage covenant after her husband is dead. The law that bound her in obedience has passed away. "She is freed from that law." His lips are silent. He issues no commands; she obeys none from him. Thus, by the plain illustration God teaches us that the converted Jew is not under the law, nor under obligations to obey it.

The Jewish Sabbath Abolished

  "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.... Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days; which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ" (Col. 2:14 17). Here is a clear, positive statement that the Sabbath was taken out of the way by nailing it to the cross, and therefore no one has a right to judge us for its non observance. This single declaration of Paul's refutes all the theories of Sabbatarians. There it stands and mocks all their efforts. All kinds of twists and turns have been made to explain away its meaning, but it defies their doctrines. The Sabbath was nailed to the cross. When "that which was written and engraver in stones" was "done away" and "abolished," as Paul declares in 2 Corinthians 3, the Sabbath went with it; for it lay in the very heart of the Sinaitic covenant, which "vanished away" (Heb. 8:13).

  The law was but a shadow ( Heb. 10 :1 ), and Paul classes the Sabbath as one of those shadows that have passed away. An attempt is made to identify the "sabbath days" of Col. 2:16 with the feast days and holy days of the law, monthly and yearly. This is a poor argument. Paul includes all the holy days of the Jews in the "meats" and "drinks," "holy days," and "new moons"; so there is nothing left for the "sabbath days" but the weekly Sabbath. The word "sabbath" is found in the New Testament sixty times. Adventists themselves admit that fiftynine times it means the weekly Sabbath. but in the sixtieth [100]

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