The Christian Sabbath

The following is an excerpt from What Baptists Believe (1913, pp. 162-170) by O.C.S. Wallace (1856–1946), an exposition of the New Hampshire Confession of Faith.

XV. Of the Christian Sabbath, from the 1833 New Hampshire Confession of Faith:

We believe that the first day of the week is the Lord's Day, or Christian Sabbath (Acts 20:7; Gen. 2:3; Col. 2:16-17; Mark 2:27; John 20:19; 1Co. 16:1-2); and is to be kept sacred to religious purposes (Exod. 20:8; Rev. 1:10; Ps. 118:24), by abstaining from all secular labor and sinful recreations (Isa. 58:13-14); by the devout observance of all the means of grace, both private (Ps. 118:15) and public (Heb. 10:24-25; Acts 11:26); and by preparation for that rest that remaineth for the people of God (Heb. 4:3-11).

Sabbath-day means rest-day.

It is apparent that from the beginning it was the will of God that man should rest one day in seven. Man seems to have been so created as to have required not only rest during a part of each day of twenty four hours, as the rest of sleep at night, but also to rest during one of the days of the week. Where this need has been recognized, and there has been the most consistent respite from accustomed toils, with such relaxation, recreation, or change of activity as were most in harmony with the conception of healthful rest, man has made greatest progress in the higher developments of character and achievement. In the earliest writings of history we find a rest-day recognized, and while we only later find the reason for it recorded, there is ground for believing it contrary to the will of God from the beginning, and contrary to His will now, for any race or class or community of men to lack one day of rest in seven.

The Hebrews were commanded to keep the day of rest holy.

The first temptation that would meet men on their day of respite from toil would be to make the day unholy. From the beginning idleness has been fraught with moral danger.

Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.

There was need of an explicit command in respect to the hallowing of the Sabbath or rest-day, if that day was not to become a curse instead of a blessing. Holy employment of the hours of the day, and holy engagement of the mind, came to be required. It came to be not only a rest-day when ordinary duties ceased, but a religious day, when God was worshiped, his law pondered, his goodness exalted, and when the hearts of the people were especially summoned to allegiance to their God.

God blessed the Sabbath day in many ways and exalted it before the eyes of the people. As they obeyed the Sabbath law they were prospered, and adversity overtook them when they disobeyed it. Some of the darkest chapters of the history of the Hebrews are those chapters which tell of the calamities which overtook the people when they desecrated the Sabbath day.

In the beginning, the Sabbath day commemorated the completing of the works of creation.

God was represented as working six great days and resting the seventh. In like manner men were to work six of their days and rest the seventh. When the law was put into effect among the Hebrews as a new nation, the inheritors and possessors of the promised land, there was an additional reason given them for hallowing the Sabbath day: it was to be a commemoration of their deliverance from Egypt. Not only was a day of rest needed to repair weary bodies and refresh jaded minds; not only was it fitting that on this day of quiet rest men should be aware of their fellowship with God both in work and in rest; but also it was required of those chosen people, whom God called out of the land of Egypt, delivering them from slavery and oppression, and exalting them to become a nation, that, on this day of rest and religious fellowship, in particular they should count their mercies and give thanks and worship to their Deliverer.

The Christian Sabbath has a greater deliverance to commemorate than that which the Hebrews celebrated.

It commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That was a deliverance of the Son of man from death. It marked his victory over the grave. But his resurrection was more than an individual victory. By his victory he led captivity captive. As he lifted himself from the grave he lifted from the prison-house of death all who believe in him. As Moses led the Hebrews across the Red Sea and on their journey towards Canaan, so Jesus Christ, rising from the dead, led his people from the realm of death and despair to the land of the heavenly promise. This was a greater deliverance; infinitely greater in quality; greater also in virtue of the number affected by it. The deliverance accomplished by Christ was not for a single race, nor for a single generation. By his resurrection all believers of all races and lands and of all ages were delivered. The Christian Sabbath commemorates this deliverance.

With the establishment of Christianity, the rest-day passed from the seventh day to the first day.

The seventh day had been the rest day of the Hebrews, their holy day. The first day became the holy day of the Christians. Christ made it significant by rising from the dead on that day. And, so far as the record indicates, in every instance of his appearing to his disciples after his resurrection it was on the first day. The New Testament indicates that it was the practice of the apostles to meet on the first day of the week. It may be that Jesus gave them an explicit command so to do; but of this we have no revelation. It may be that they were divinely guided by the facts of the resurrection and the appearances of Jesus to commemorate the day which he had thus hallowed. But whatever the fact or facts that guided them, that the early disciples were led to keep holy the first day of the week, sanctifying it to Christian uses, is clear and full of meaning.

This change from the seventh to the first day of the week had wonderful significance.

The young church was delivered from the fetters and the weights which the Pharisees had put upon the seventh day. During Christ's ministry he had protested again and again against the Pharisaic perversion of the seventh day. His final protest against that perversion may be regarded as his lying in the grave on the seventh day and rising on the first day, so making the first day the most glorious of all days, in that it witnessed the resurrection of the Son of God from the dead.

It is easy to see how great a blessing this change of day was to the Christian church. If it had been bound by the seventh day, the fetters of Pharisaism would have been upon the church. Escape from the thralldom of an arrogant legalism would have been well near impossible. This would have hindered the work of the church among the Jews. It would have hindered it also among the Gentiles. In the providence of God the day was changed. The Christian Sabbath commemorated the resurrection of Christ, and the rest day became a glorious day in its spirit, its memories and the holy uses to which it was put by those who had learned the mind of the Master.

Christian believers are under a sacred obligation to hallow the Christian Sabbath.

All the force of past commandments is here concentrated. Only the form and day have changed: the substance remains. And as redemption is greater than the giving of the land of Canaan to a nation, so is the meaning of the Sabbath greater to Christians than the old Sabbath to the Hebrews who came up from the land of Egypt. Their Sabbath was to be different from other days. Our Sabbath must be different from other days. If they failed to hallow their Sabbath, they were guilty. If we fail to hallow our Sabbath, we are guilty.

The specific regulations of the Mosaic law, for application in Palestine among an agricultural and pastoral people, do not apply in every instance to all our modern conditions of life; but the underlying principle applies, and we are guilty if we evade it. The Christian Sabbath is a day for rest, for remembering God and our Savior Jesus Christ, for such employment and activities only as are in harmony with that great word of Christ, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27).

This word is against seven days of labor in the week.

The man who deliberately chooses an employment in which he has no rest day, and especially if his motive be that he may get seven days' pay each week, is breaking God's law. The man who becomes so immersed in business during the six days of the week that the Sabbath is spent in planning his business instead of worshiping his God, is breaking God's law. The man who counts it a light thing, when convenience seems to call, to start the machinery of weekly toil on the Sabbath, is setting an evil example and showing that he has small appreciation of the sacredness of the day which Christ hallowed by his resurrection from the dead. There are works of necessity, religion and mercy which may properly be done on the Sabbath. Beyond this, he who labors on the Sabbath is sinning against his God, against society, and against his own soul.

Amusements and pleasures which would lead the soul from God cannot be indulged in on the Sabbath without sin.

There are amusements and pleasures which are sinful any day of the week, and should be rejected by all Christian people; but when these amusements and pleasures are engaged in on the holy Sabbath day, the sin is the more heinous. There are other amusements and pleasures which in themselves are not sinful, if engaged in at proper times, in proper places and with the proper spirit; but to engage in these on the Sabbath day is to desecrate the day. Games and sports, in the house or in the field, at home or abroad, are out of harmony with the spirit and purpose of the Lord's day. These tend to destroy its sanctity, nullify its purpose, and make it a day of fatigue instead of rest, of moral deterioration and waste instead of moral and spiritual upbuilding.

The duties belonging to the Sabbath day are not negative only.

The old Hebrew commandment was positive, "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy" (Exo. 20:8). Christ, by his example and precepts, taught that the Sabbath was a day not simply to abstain from ill doing, but to engage in well doing: it is lawful for a man to do good on the Sabbath (Mt. 12:12). Idleness is not the best rest. A day of indolent ease is not usually a day of rest in any proper sense. There are acts of worship, of helpfulness to the untaught or suffering or friendless, which are full of the spirit of Christ. He who would keep the Christian Sabbath holy will not find it difficult to make a program, which, while giving new vigor to the current of his own life, will multiply blessings among other men.

In this positive activity in harmony with the spiritual idea, there will be activity of the mind.

Care should be taken to see that this activity is consistent with the spirit and purpose of the Sabbath. This care will be exercised in the choice of reading. To send our thoughts directly away from religious truth and duty by our reading is to desecrate the day. To engage in conversation in which unworthy impulses or attitudes of the mind are stimulated or caused, is to desecrate the day. The Sabbath day is a day to encourage noble thinking, to stimulate holy desires, to strengthen godly purposes, to reflect upon the things which make for righteousness and peace. He who lets his mind run in base paths on the Sabbath desecrates the day and harms his soul.

The Sabbath should be a day of religious exercises both private and public.

It is the duty of believers to assemble for worship. Those who forsake the assembling of themselves together lose spiritual help and fail in their duty as servants of God. We have social obligations. As companies of believers engaging in glad worship, we bear a strong testimony to those who are without. We cannot release ourselves from this obligation without failing in one of the noblest uses of the Sabbath possible to men.

But the duty of private acts of devotion is not less binding. The Sabbath is a day when believers should read such books, and especially the Bible, as are adapted to help them forward in grace. Happy the man who loves God and his Sabbath with a love so real and fervent that, engaging in religious duties at home and abroad, he shall have joy in the things of God and no taste for the things of the world.

In all Sabbath observance, there should be remembrance of the rest that remains for the people of God.

This hope Christ gave to his disciples. By this hope the apostles were sustained in their labors, pains and persecutions. The hope of heaven gave to the early Christian message brightness and power. In all acts of spiritual quickening, the future world has brightened before the eyes of men with a glorious promise. In the hurry and noise of daily life we tend to forget that there is another and better world. We busy our thoughts with what is here and now. The Sabbath day is a day in which to remember that one has here no continuing city. It may become, and properly observed will become, a foretaste of that heavenly Sabbath to which the years are carrying us rapidly. On that day it is fitting that we seek to prepare ourselves for the rest that is to come.