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It is true that the Jewish sabbath is on Sat. The common consensus is that Sun, the Lord’s day, is the day Jesus rose from the grave (Rev 1.10). That’s the reason we have church on Sun.

Early Christians (many of whom were non-Jews) had debates on how Jewish the church had to be. They debated circumcision among other issues, like eating meat sacrificed to idols, Sabbath day, going to the temple, etc. ( 1 Cor 7.19-20, Gal 5.5-7, Gal 6.14-16) . It’s clear that the early church decided that non-Jews did not have to be circumcised nor did they had to celebrate Jewish holy days (Col 2.15-17). It’s also clear that Christians aren’t under the law: if we were we couldn’t drive to church, eat catfish, or wear polyester. If fact, that was Jesus’ indictment against the law. The scribes and elders placed too heavy burden on the people. On the Sabbath, you couldn’t walk more than x feet, couldn’t lift more than y weights, couldn’t cook any other food than z. If you remember, Jesus himself “broke” the Sabbath when he and his disciples picked grain ( Mark 2.23-28) and even healed on the Sabbath ( Luke 13.10-17)

Instead, many scholars believe that the Sermon on the Mount is designed to outline how Jesus expected his disciples to live, and it’s the Sermon on the Mount and rest of Matthew 5-7 that describe what should be Christian behavior (loving enemy, meekness, etc), not the 10 commandments . So the 10 commandments make sense only through our understanding of Jesus.

I agree with scholars who believe that Christians aren’t governed by moral imperatives but instead, by virtue. That is, Jesus didn’t leave us a list of rights and wrongs, but virtues/characteristics that we live our lives by.

For example, the highest virtue is love–self-giving. Faithfulness is another virtue which means we not only remain true to God but also to our spouse (Command 7). We are people who are radically truthfully (Command 9). There’s no virtue about which day we worship, but living in relationship is a virtue. So we meet with each other and we God on a regular basis.

In short, yes, the Sabbath is technically sundown Fri to sundown Sat. Evidence from the New Testament shows that early Christians did not keep the Sabbath. Based on these conclusions, we aren’t obligated to observed Sat as a day of rest or worship. (It really can’t be more definitive than Col 2.15-17.)

There are a couple of books dealing with these and other ethical issues that might be of interest:
The Moral Vision of the New Testament by Richard Hays
Kingdom Ethics by Stassen and Gushee
Christian Ethics by Norman Geisler
and for good measure The Politics of Jesus by John Yoder

I hope this helps. If I can clarify further, please let me know.

biblegateway book id consensus Evotational jesus rose jewish sabbath sun Filed under Evotational |