“Must a Chris­t­ian keep all the Ten Com­mand­ments?” or “What about the fourth com­mand­ment, the Sab­bath?” Such ques­tions are fre­quent­ly asked by peo­ple who study the Bible.

In the fol­low­ing text we want to explain what atti­tude we as Chris­tians should have toward the Sab­bath. We will also briefly go into the mean­ing of this Old Tes­ta­ment com­mand­ment in more gen­er­al terms and how it was ful­filled in the New Tes­ta­ment.

1 To Whom and When Was the Sabbath Given?

In the Ten Com­mand­ments it says:

Observe the Sab­bath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God com­mand­ed you. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the sev­enth day is a Sab­bath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daugh­ter or your male ser­vant or your female ser­vant, or your ox or your don­key or any of your live­stock, or the sojourn­er who is with­in your gates, that your male ser­vant and your female ser­vant may rest as well as you. You shall remem­ber that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an out­stretched arm. There­fore the Lord your God com­mand­ed you to keep the Sab­bath day. (Deuteron­o­my 5:12–15)

The main pur­pose of the Sab­bath com­mand­ment was that God’s peo­ple should ded­i­cate (at least this¹ ) one day of the sev­en-day week entire­ly to God.

In addi­tion, we can see from this pas­sage that the Sab­bath was a reminder of the Exo­dus from Egypt. The Israelites were to grant their slaves a day of rest and remem­ber that they too had been slaves. They should there­fore be fair with their slaves. Com­pare Exo­dus 23:12:

Six days you shall do your work, but on the sev­enth day you shall rest; that your ox and your don­key may have rest, and the son of your ser­vant woman, and the alien, may be refreshed.

In the light of these thoughts we should also con­sid­er the fol­low­ing vers­es:

You are to speak to the peo­ple of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sab­baths, for this is a sign between me and you through­out your gen­er­a­tions, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanc­ti­fy you. You shall keep the Sab­bath, because it is holy for you. Every­one who pro­fanes it shall be put to death. Who­ev­er does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his peo­ple. Six days shall work be done, but the sev­enth day is a Sab­bath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Who­ev­er does any work on the Sab­bath day shall be put to death. There­fore the peo­ple of Israel shall keep the Sab­bath, observ­ing the Sab­bath through­out their gen­er­a­tions, as a covenant for­ev­er. It is a sign for­ev­er between me and the peo­ple of Israel that in six days the Lord made heav­en and earth, and on the sev­enth day he rest­ed and was refreshed.’ (Exo­dus 31:13–17)

Here it is clear­ly stat­ed that the Sab­bath was giv­en as a sign of the covenant between God and the peo­ple of Israel.

You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heav­en and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and com­mand­ments, and you made known to them your holy Sab­bath and com­mand­ed them com­mand­ments and statutes and a law by Moses your ser­vant. (Nehemi­ah 9:13–14)

From this pas­sage we can see that the Sab­bath was not some­thing known from the time of cre­ation, but God made it known to the peo­ple of Israel when he gave them the law. We can also see from the oth­er books of the Bible that the Sab­bath was not observed before the time of Moses.

So I led them out of the land of Egypt and brought them into the wilder­ness. I gave them my statutes and made known to them my rules, by which, if a per­son does them, he shall live. More­over, I gave them my Sab­baths, as a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanc­ti­fies them.
… and keep my Sab­baths holy that they may be a sign between me and you, that you may know that I am the Lord your God. (Ezekiel 20:10–12 + 20)

Here it is clear­ly stat­ed twice that the Sab­bath is the covenant sign between God and his peo­ple, whom he led out of the land of Egypt.

From all these pas­sages we can see that God gave the Sab­bath to the peo­ple of Israel when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, so that it might be a sign of the covenant made with them. This was a law that was giv­en exclu­sive­ly to Israel, as a sign that was to dis­tin­guish them from all the oth­er nations, and that is not found among any oth­er nations either.

2 How Shall We Understand the Expression That God Rested on the Sabbath Day?

Some argue with Gen­e­sis 2:2–3 that God gave the Sab­bath com­mand­ment as ear­ly as the cre­ation, and since God him­self rest­ed, we too must observe the day of rest, because this is a “law of cre­ation”.

And on the sev­enth day God fin­ished his work that he had done, and he rest­ed on the sev­enth day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the sev­enth day and made it holy, because on it God rest­ed from all his work that he had done in cre­ation.

If we want to under­stand God’s nature, we must also exam­ine the vers­es that speak clear­ly about the fact that God nev­er stops work­ing.

My help comes from the Lord, who made heav­en and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slum­ber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will nei­ther slum­ber nor sleep. (Psalm 121:2–4)

But Jesus answered them, “My Father is work­ing until now, and I am work­ing.” (John 5:17)

Every good gift and every per­fect gift is from above, com­ing down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no vari­a­tion or shad­ow due to change. (James 1:17)

God’s nature is eter­nal and unchang­ing, so that he “does not faint or grow weary” (Isa­iah 40:28). In light of these state­ments, the cor­rect under­stand­ing of Gen­e­sis 2:2–3 can be found. Instead of under­stand­ing these vers­es lit­er­al­ly, it is impor­tant that we see them in accor­dance with oth­er state­ments in the Bible.

When it is stat­ed here that God rest­ed on the sev­enth day, blessed and sanc­ti­fied it, this tells us that rest and peace are as much a part of God’s nature as his work and activ­i­ty. This state of rest express­es

• God com­plet­ed his cre­ative work and saw that every­thing was very good, it was per­fect, did not need any improve­ment, cor­rec­tion, mend­ing. God rejoiced in his work, cel­e­brat­ed it because he cre­at­ed it because of his love (Psalm 104:31).

• The pas­sage also express­es that the goal of cre­ation is rest — not pas­sive rest, but com­mu­nion with God when we glo­ri­fy Him and He has time for us. We can expe­ri­ence this even in this life, but it will be com­plete only in eter­ni­ty. This is why the New Tes­ta­ment inter­prets rest on the sev­enth day as the eter­nal fel­low­ship in heav­en (Hebrews 4:10–11: “to enter God’s rest”).

• He cre­at­ed man in his own image. Thus, for man, too, the goal of life is not rest­less work and toil, but a rela­tion­ship with his Cre­ator. Man should not lose him­self in his activ­i­ties, but have the high­er goal in mind. God is always active and yet always at rest.

• God found rest in his per­fect work. This also teach­es us that we can find rest when we do His will.

Peo­ple can learn a lot from Gen­e­sis 2:3 and from the sto­ries of cre­ation in gen­er­al. They teach us spir­i­tu­al­ly impor­tant things, but we should not con­clude from them that God is sub­ject to time and refrained from work­ing for 24 hours. The Old Tes­ta­ment was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten for the Israelites, which is why the way of expres­sion is Jew­ish. So here the act of God’s cre­ation is described in the frame­work of a sev­en-day week that ends with the Sab­bath rest. The Israelites were there­by encour­aged to keep the Sab­bath, which was often neglect­ed in their his­to­ry, an expres­sion of their unfaith­ful­ness to God.

3 How Did Jesus Deal With the Sabbath?

Even though Jesus kept the Jew­ish laws, he did not dif­fer­en­ti­ate between days in his devo­tion to serve the peo­ple. As the sit­u­a­tion in which his dis­ci­ples were pick­ing the ears of corn on the Sab­bath shows (Matthew 12:1–8), Jesus believed that God does not val­ue for­mal obser­vance of Sab­bath pro­hi­bi­tions, but rather con­demns or vin­di­cates us accord­ing to our hearts’ atti­tude.

To the indig­na­tion of his oppo­nents, Jesus also healed sev­er­al times on the Sab­bath, for exam­ple by mak­ing some mud and putting it on the eyes of a blind man (John 9:6–7). In anoth­er sit­u­a­tion, he asked a man who had been healed to car­ry his bed (John 5:8–10). John writes about this:

This was why the Jews were seek­ing all the more to kill him, because not only was he break­ing the Sab­bath, but he was even call­ing God his own Father, mak­ing him­self equal with God. (John 5:18)

Jesus also said:

For the Son of Man is lord of the Sab­bath. (Matthew 12:8)

With these state­ments Jesus want­ed to expose the hyp­o­crit­i­cal reli­gios­i­ty of his crit­ics. In the Ser­mon on the Mount (Matthew 5) we see what atti­tude Jesus had towards the law. In verse 17 he said that he did not “come to abol­ish it, but to ful­fil it.” He then gives some exam­ples in which he says: “You have heard that it was said… but I say to you…”. For exam­ple, he extend­ed the com­mand­ment “You shall not com­mit adul­tery” to refer to impure thoughts and looks, “You shall not mur­der” he referred to hatred and con­tempt; he also taught new things about swear­ing or love towards ene­mies. Jesus gave the Old Tes­ta­ment laws a deep­er con­tent, name­ly their orig­i­nal content—this also applies to the Sab­bath. Even if it is not men­tioned here, we see that he ful­filled the Sab­bath com­mand­ment in his life in a per­fect way through his dai­ly devo­tion and love.

4 What Was the Attitude of the First Christians With Regard to the Sabbath?

The first thing we notice is that we can­not find a sin­gle pas­sage in the New Tes­ta­ment² where Chris­tians are admon­ished for neglect­ing the Sab­bath. But con­sid­er­ing that the Sab­bath had been giv­en to the peo­ple of Israel, it was nat­ur­al that both Jesus and the apos­tles kept the Sab­bath com­mand­ment ³ . But this does not show that they did so because they regard­ed it as nec­es­sary for sal­va­tion, nor does it show that we too should keep the Sab­bath today. For us the sit­u­a­tion of the Chris­tians who came from the Gen­tile nations is more rel­e­vant.

One impor­tant ques­tion is whether we find even a sin­gle hint in the New Tes­ta­ment that Chris­tians who were not of Jew­ish ori­gin should also keep the Sab­bath. When the Apos­tles gath­ered togeth­er in Jerusalem to decide upon what Chris­tians who had con­vert­ed from pagan­ism should observe, four points were men­tioned which were con­sid­ered nec­es­sary for main­tain­ing fel­low­ship with Jew­ish Chris­tians, and for the pur­pose of reach­ing Jews with the Gospel. Keep­ing the Sab­bath was not one of them. None of the apos­tles dared to put the yoke of the law on the Gen­tile Chris­tians. They were only expect­ed to abstain from idols⁴, for­ni­ca­tion⁵, the flesh of stran­gled ani­mals, and the eat­ing of blood (Acts 15:10–21).

Paul wrote to the Romans:

One per­son regards one day above anoth­er, anoth­er regards every day alike. Each per­son must be ful­ly con­vinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord, and he who eats, does so for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who eats not, for the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God. (Romans 14:5–6, NASB)

The fact that some­one regards “one day above anoth­er” is a clear indi­ca­tion that the Sab­bath was still being observed by some Jew­ish Chris­tians. There was no oth­er day that some had “observed the Lord”. Paul did not want every­one to keep the Sab­bath and the food laws. From the con­text (vers­es 2 and 14) we can even see that he con­sid­ered those who kept the Law (here the Sab­bath and the food laws) to be weak. The Jew­ish Chris­tians, on the oth­er hand, who had under­stood that they no longer need­ed to keep the Law, he calls strong. If he does not require these Jew­ish Chris­tians to keep the Sab­bath, how much less would he expect Gen­tile Chris­tians to do so?

The New Tes­ta­ment also con­tains let­ters to church­es where some Gen­tile Chris­tians were in dan­ger of turn­ing to the Law. Paul admon­ished them very severe­ly:

For­mer­ly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worth­less ele­men­tary prin­ci­ples of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and sea­sons and years! I am afraid I may have laboured over you in vain. (Gala­tians 4:8–11)

Let us con­sid­er Paul’s argu­men­ta­tion: The Gala­tians were for­mer­ly Gen­tiles and had served idols. Their reli­gious prac­tices had no pow­er to bring them close to God. Now they are return­ing to that same lev­el. The fact that they now observe days and months (which refers to the Sab­bath and oth­er Jew­ish fes­ti­vals) is regard­ed by Paul as turn­ing back to the weak and poor ele­ments — that is, to the same lev­el as the pagan fes­ti­vals and rit­u­als by which they had been enslaved (vers­es 8 and 9).

In oth­er places he writes to them:

I am aston­ished that you are so quick­ly desert­ing him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turn­ing to a dif­fer­ent gospel […] (Gala­tians 1:6)

and:

O fool­ish Gala­tians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was pub­licly por­trayed as cru­ci­fied. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spir­it by works of the law or by hear­ing with faith? Are you so fool­ish? Hav­ing begun by the Spir­it, are you now being per­fect­ed by the flesh? Did you suf­fer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who sup­plies the Spir­it to you and works mir­a­cles among you do so by works of the law, or by hear­ing with faith? (Gala­tians 3:1–5)

All these are very seri­ous admo­ni­tions addressed to Chris­tians. If they once come to believe in Jesus, but then turn to the Law (which includes observ­ing days), they will not be saved.

There was a sim­i­lar dan­ger in Colos­sae:

There­fore let no one pass judg­ment on you in ques­tions of food and drink, or with regard to a fes­ti­val or a new moon or a Sab­bath. These are a shad­ow of the things to come, but the sub­stance belongs to Christ. (Colos­sians 2:16–17)⁶

The Chris­tians there were also threat­ened by the dan­ger of accept­ing human teach­ings and keep­ing the law. It fol­lows that the Gen­tile Chris­tians kept nei­ther the Law nor the Sab­bath.

The bib­li­cal pas­sages quot­ed in this sec­tion are just a few exam­ples that can be bet­ter under­stood by read­ing the entire con­text in each case.

5 Are We Supposed to Keep the Sabbath According to the Ten Commandments?

Some peo­ple assume that the Mosa­ic law con­sists of two kinds of laws: the moral law (the law of God), which is found in the Ten Com­mand­ments, and the cer­e­mo­ni­al law (the law of Moses), which includes sac­ri­fi­cial ordi­nances, cir­cum­ci­sion etc. They con­sid­er the moral law to be eter­nal­ly valid—for all peo­ple at all times, includ­ing Chris­tians today—whereas the cer­e­mo­ni­al law is con­sid­ered to have found its end with Jesus. In the Bible, how­ev­er, we do not find any dis­tinc­tion in this respect, e.g. in Nehemi­ah 8,1+8 the Law of Moses and the Law of God are used inter­change­ably.

We can see sev­er­al exam­ples in which Jesus did not only refer to the Deca­logue⁷ when he spoke of com­mand­ments. For exam­ple, when the rich young man asked him which com­mand­ments he should keep in order to have eter­nal life, he answered him:

And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the com­mand­ments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not mur­der, You shall not com­mit adul­tery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false wit­ness, Hon­our your father and moth­er, and, You shall love your neigh­bour as your­self.” The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be per­fect, go, sell what you pos­sess and give to the poor, and you will have trea­sure in heav­en; and come, fol­low me.” When the young man heard this he went away sor­row­ful, for he had great pos­ses­sions. (Matthew 19:17–22)

Jesus did not men­tion all the com­mand­ments of the Deca­logue (not even the Sab­bath). On the oth­er hand, he speaks of a com­mand­ment that is not found in the Ten Com­mand­ments: You shall love your neigh­bour as your­self! (Leviti­cus 19:18). Lov­ing one’s neigh­bour means much more than not tak­ing what belongs to him (steal­ing) or not killing him. Jesus wants to make it clear what is most impor­tant: We are to be per­fect by fol­low­ing him. He encour­aged the rich young man not only to give a part (to keep some com­mand­ments), but to put all his heart into doing every­thing for God.

This is the atti­tude to which Jesus encour­aged peo­ple in var­i­ous ways. Also in the sit­u­a­tion when Jesus was asked which was the most impor­tant com­mand­ment, he answered:

Jesus answered, “The most impor­tant is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The sec­ond is this: ‘You shall love your neigh­bour as your­self.’ There is no oth­er com­mand­ment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29–31)

Jesus gave a new com­mand­ment (John 13:34–35). He explained to his dis­ci­ples in a much deep­er way what they should do and what they should not do: It would be very bad to be con­tent with not killing one’s broth­er, but to be angry with him (Matthew 5:22). Not only is com­mit­ting adul­tery very evil, but also look­ing at a woman lust­ful­ly (Matthew 5:27). Jesus did not abol­ish the Law and the Ten Com­mand­ments (Matthew 5:17), but rather clar­i­fied the deep­er mean­ing of the Law. God taught peo­ple very basic moral prin­ci­ples and laws through the Ten Com­mand­ments, which even those who seek jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in their deeds can agree with (Matthew 23:23). Only those who choose to love God and their neigh­bour with all their heart will also under­stand that fol­low­ing Jesus means giv­ing every­thing and set­ting no lim­its to their devo­tion.

Paul explains in his let­ter to the Romans in chap­ter 7:4–7 that we have died to the Law and so can serve in the Spir­it in a new way.

Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speak­ing to those who know the law—that the law is bind­ing on a per­son only as long as he lives? For a mar­ried woman is bound by law to her hus­band while he lives, but if her hus­band dies she is released from the law of mar­riage. Accord­ing­ly, she will be called an adul­ter­ess if she lives with anoth­er man while her hus­band is alive. But if her hus­band dies, she is free from that law, and if she mar­ries anoth­er man she is not an adul­ter­ess. Like­wise, my broth­ers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to anoth­er, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were liv­ing in the flesh, our sin­ful pas­sions, aroused by the law, were at work in our mem­bers to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, hav­ing died to that which held us cap­tive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spir­it and not in the old way of the writ­ten code. What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to cov­et if the law had not said, “You shall not cov­et.” (Romans 7:1–7)

Paul com­pares dying to the Law through Christ to a mar­ried woman whose hus­band has died. The Law in vers­es 4–6 must also refer to the Ten Com­mand­ments, because he men­tions a Deca­logue com­mand­ment in verse 7 (you shall not cov­et).

As can be seen from the sub­se­quent teach­ings of Paul (Romans 7 and 8), free­dom from the law does not mean descend­ing below the lev­el of the Mosa­ic law, but the oppo­site: to be able to fol­low of Jesus in devot­ing our lives to God. It is in this way that the Sab­bath com­mand­ment also finds its deep­er ful­fil­ment.

6 Conclusion: Sabbath, Sunday or Every Day?

Indeed, it is very impor­tant for our rela­tion­ship with God that we ded­i­cate our time to Him. The ear­ly Chris­tians took time each day to pray togeth­er, encour­age and help each oth­er (Acts 2:37–47; 5:42, Hebrews 3:12–14). We believe that it is nat­ur­al for every Chris­t­ian to use all his free time to build God’s king­dom. We are hap­py that we do not have to work on Sat­ur­days (Sab­baths) as well as on Sun­days and that we can use the time on week­ends com­plete­ly to meet with broth­ers and sis­ters in faith and thus praise God togeth­er and help oth­er peo­ple to find the way to him.

The New Tes­ta­ment ful­fil­ment of the Sab­bath is not in observ­ing a spe­cial day (nei­ther Sab­bath nor Sun­day), but is found in the fact that Chris­tians ded­i­cat­ed their lives to God every day. Nor does the New Tes­ta­ment pro­vide any indi­ca­tion that the Sab­bath should be replaced by Sun­day. Can we real­ly believe that the great­est spir­i­tu­al bat­tle in his­to­ry, accord­ing to Jesus, is whether we should observe Sat­ur­day or Sun­day as a day of rest? When some­one argues about whether to keep the Sab­bath or Sun­day, it shows that he has not yet under­stood Jesus’ mes­sage. (Oth­er top­ics that can help clar­i­fy our thoughts are: “The life of the first Chris­tians”, “The Church in the New Tes­ta­ment”).

God does not want us to fol­low cer­tain forms, but rather that we give our­selves com­plete­ly for Him, seek­ing His will. If we high­light a day in this way, even though the New Tes­ta­ment teach­es us a high­er stan­dard of devo­tion, does­n’t this show a lack of will­ing­ness to give the rest of the days com­plete­ly for God?

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first com­mand­ment. And a sec­ond is like it: You shall love your neigh­bour as your­self. On these two com­mand­ments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37–40)

We are aware that this is a very broad sub­ject. Not all ques­tions can be answered in this short arti­cle. You are wel­come to con­tact us with any ques­tions you may have.

1. God’s main com­mand­ment has always been: You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength! (Deuteron­o­my 6:5). The believ­ers who want to give their whole life to God serve God every day with all their heart, prais­ing and glo­ri­fy­ing Him. Already at the time of the Old Tes­ta­ment this was nat­ur­al: Psalm 35:28; 61:9; 71:8, 15, 24; 72:15; 145:2, 1 Chron­i­cles 16:37. Those who trust God call on Him every day: Psalm 86:3; 88:10. That is why they were expect­ing the Mes­si­ah, so that “we will serve Him with­out fear, in holi­ness and right­eous­ness before Him all our days” (Luke 1:74–75). What bet­ter way to sanc­ti­fy a day? ↩
2. In con­trast to the Old Tes­ta­ment: e.g. Nehemi­ah 13:15–22; Isa­iah 58:13–14; Jere­mi­ah 17:19–27 ↩
3. This can be assumed for the ear­ly days of the com­mu­ni­ty. But after the Gospel had reached the Gen­tiles, there are legit­i­mate rea­sons to assume that Peter (Gala­tians 2:14) and Paul (1 Corinthi­ans 9:19–22), for exam­ple, renounced keep­ing the Sab­bath. ↩
4. i.e. meat sac­ri­ficed to idols ↩
5. i.e. inter­mar­riage of rel­a­tives ↩
6. Here the fes­ti­vals are arranged accord­ing to their annu­al fre­quen­cy: annu­al, month­ly and week­ly Jew­ish fes­ti­vals. ↩
7. The Ten Com­mand­ments ↩