And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; 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; And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, 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 2:13-17)

This text, on the surface, seems to settle the debate on whether the Sabbath is still valid for us today. This is especially true when you consider that the original Greek texts do not contain the word for “days” after “Sabbath”. This was added by the translators. So it more accurately reads, “Let no man therefore judge you … in the Sabbath.”

Both those who hold a Sabbatarian (believe the Sabbath is still valid) and those who don’t usually understand and agree that all of the Jewish holy days could be referred to as Sabbaths and that Jesus’s death made them no longer morally obligatory for God’s followers. The big question is whether the weekly Sabbath was included.

Sabbatarians point to the phrase “which are a shadow of things to come” and compare it to Exodus. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it” Exodus 20 : 8-11. They claim that it points back to creation and dates from that time. One Anti-Sabbatarian argument is that it points forward to the rest we have in Jesus and dates from the Exodus. This ties into the question of whether the weekly Sabbath is part of the Jewish Law or if it is part of God’s moral law.

These two related questions are the points I will focus on as I believe they are the most legitimate to the debate. But before we get into that I wish to address a few other arguments sometimes brought up but are fairly irrelevant. I will quickly to through some of them and explain why.

They point out various examples of legal hairsplitting the fanatical Sabbatarians have sometimes engaged in. This is irrelevant because we should only be concerned with what God wants and His desires are not altered by the actions of those claiming to represent Him.

It is also sometimes suggested that Sabbatarians are hypocrites by by telling people to keep the Sabbath but not enforcing the death penalty described in the Mosaic law for breaking the Sabbath. At the same time I do not know of any Christian Church that stones adulterers or children who misbehave, as described in the mMosaic law for breaking the commandments concerning adultery and honoring your parents. But they all advocate following those commandments. Most of the Ten Commandments carried severe legal consequences in the Mosaic law, none of which are enforced by the general Christian population today. But all Christian churches still encourage their members to keep the Ten Commandments. They even encourage their member to come together once a week to worchip God (the core principle of the Sabbath even if it is on a different day).

They argue that there was no command recorded in scripture to keep the Sabbath prior to the Exodus. There was also no explicit command not to murder recorded in Eden, but God still punished Cain for murdering Able. This example shows that the absence of a record of a command does not preclude the possibility of the principles still being in place. The Bible does not contain every record of everything.

I am sure there are many more that I am unaware of, but if you use those same arguments on the commandments concerning following other gods worshipping idols, murder, theft, etc., you will see that using those arguments against the Sabbath on these others (that the Christian churches generally support) will bring them into question as well. Therefore we will confine the bulk of this analysis to the two questions of whether the weekly Sabbath was part of the Mosaic Law and whether it existed in Eden as a memorial of Creation.

First we will begin by examining whether or not the Sabbath existed prior to the Exodus from Egypt as a memorial of Creation. There are four texts that are the most important.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

(Gen 2:1-3)

And he said unto them, This is that which the LORD hath said, To morrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto the LORD: bake that which ye will bake to day, and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning. And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade: and it did not stink, neither was there any worm therein. And Moses said, Eat that to day; for to day is a sabbath unto the LORD: to day ye shall not find it in the field. Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the sabbath, in it there shall be none. And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none. And the LORD said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws? See, for that the LORD hath given you the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day.

(Exodus 16:23-30) (The earliest explicit record of Sabbath keeping).

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

(Exodus 20:8-11)

Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee. Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.

(Deuteronomy 5:12-15)

Obviously the Sabbatarians and Anti-Sabbatarians have two separate schools of thought on how to interpret these verses. Sabbatatians follow this basic model. God created the earth in six days and rested on the seventh day. During that week God sanctified the weekly Sabbath. When God brought the the Hews out of Egypt God told them that they must start keeping the Sabbath because He freed them and was forming them into a nation. Within this theory, the Sabbath was a part of the basic moral code kept by the followers of God along with worghiping only God, not murdering, stealing, bowing down to idols and all the other Ten Commandments that the Christian churches generally don’t question. There are two things that God says that support this theory. At the end of the first week the Jews kept the Sabbath as a nation, some members of the congregation don’t listen and go out to collect manna on the Sabbath. God makes the comment “How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?” Exodus 16 : 28. Also, when the Ten Commandments are listed in Exodus, God begins the fourth one with “remember”. Both of these comments make the most sense in the context of God’s faithful followers keeping the Sabbath long before, but neglecting it during the captivity and now God is telling them that, since He brought them out of Egypt, they will have to start again.

The Anti-Sabbatarians viewpoint is that the Sabbath did not exist before the Exodus. That it was given to the Jews as a sign of their rest from centuries of forced labor which can be interpreted as a shadow of the rest to come in Christ. According to this theory the mention of God sanctifying the Sabbath during Creation week in Genesis was a footnote added by Moses who presumably wrote it during the wilderness wandering. Essentially it was saying that God was sanctifying the Sabbath as a memorial of Creation now that He had freed His people from bondage and wished to memorialize that by creating the weekly Sabbath to commemorate Creation even though it was actually being created as a memorial of the Exodus and symbolized our rest in Christ.

The Sabbatarian point of view flows much more logically from the texts in question whereas the Anti-Sabbatarian point of view does not flow logically from it. Rather it seems to represent an attempt to interpret the texts to support a preformed idea. The Sabbatarian model takes the statements in the Bible as they are given and uses only minimum amount of logical interpretation to make the pieces fit. It lets the scriptures speak for themselves the most.

However, choosing between the two models boils down to which sounds more reasonable, which differs from person to person. The answer will be more obvious depending on whether the Sabbath is part of the ceremonial law that was nailed to the cross or part of the basic moral law contained within the nine of the Ten Commandments that mainstream Christianity will not argue against being valid since before the fall.

The Ten Commandments was spoken by God to the Jews at Mount Sinai and carved by His finger into two tables of stone. They were later placed into the central compartment of the Ark of the Covenant. The law was given by God to Moses. Moses transcribed the law onto parchment scrolls which were placed into the side of the Ark of the Covenant. Let’s look at whether the Ten Commandments can be considered part of the same law and ordinances that was nailed to the cross.

The Ten Commandments were spoken directly by God to His people. The laws and ordinances were given to Moses to give to the people. God instructed Moses as the first national leader of the Jewish theocracy in the laws that should govern it. The Ten Commandments were given directly to the people with no intermediary (more personal and no possibility of them being relayed incorrectly) as part of the personal relationship between God and His people.

God Himself inscribed the words of the Ten Commandments. This was a very personal act on His part and was not entrusted to a human. The law and ordinances were entrusted to His servant Moses to inscribe which is a much less personal act. This again reflects the personal nature of the Ten Commandments as the moral code between Him and His people versus the national, impersonal nature of the law.

The Ten Commandments were not only inscribed by God Himself, they were inscribed on stone, which is one of the most enduring and unchanging of the earthly elements which reflects the enduring and unchanging nature of God. The law was inscribed on parchment, which is made from animal skins and so had only recently come into existence. Parchment lasts a long time, but eventually crumbles and decays, further reflecting the fact that it was a set of temporary laws meant to govern the temporary Jewish theocracy. Yes, the theocracy was temporary even though the Jews have returned to Israel because it is no longer a theocracy, but is a secular state that the Jewish culture can call home.

This difference between the Ten Commandments and the laws and ordinances was recognized by the fact that the Ten Commandments were placed n the heart of the Ark of the Covenant while the Torah (books of the Law) was placed in a side compartment.

Evidence that Paul made a distinction between the Ten Commandments (including the Sabbath) and the ordinances that were nailed to the cross is found when he said, “Let no man therefore judge you … in respect of any holy day, or of the New Moon or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come.” The listing of the holy days, New Moon and Sabbaths occurs in the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament). As such, it would be very familiar to a Pharisee like Paul, which is probably why he used it. However, this phrase is usually used to refer to the weekly Sabbath. Now Paul adds a phrase, “which are shadows of things to come.” This indicates that he was clarifying his intentions by specifying that he was not using it in the standard manner. By taking the trouble to say that he was referring to Sabbaths that were shadows of things to come indicates that he does not consider all of them to be that. This supports the theory that the weekly Sabbath points back to Creation as explicitly stated in Exodus and not forward to Jesus as explicitly stated nowhere in scripture. Also it indicates that he was separating the weekly Sabbath from the other holy days (also referred to as Sabbaths) that pointed forward to the Christ.