How Do the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day Differ?

Most Christian people talk about ‘‘keeping the Sabbath” as though it were a Christian duty. Is it? What is the Sabbath? What relation has it to the Lord’s Day, the Sunday of our present week-day reckoning?
WHILE everything, or nearly everything, in the doctrine and habits of Jesus was intolerable to the Pharisaic party, then all powerful in Judaism, it was His attitude toward the Sabbath which made His presence and teaching insufferable. For this He was hunted to His death. That the Sabbath was a boon, not a burden; that it was made for man, not man for the Sabbath—this could not be borne.
All Divine institutions designed for the blessing and help of man become perverted in man’s use of them. The Sabbath is a notable illustration.
Historically, three Sabbaths are described in the Scriptures:
I. THE SABBATH OF GOD.
“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good . . . and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it; because that in it he rested from all his work” (Gen. 1: 31; 2: 2, 3). The word Sabbath itself, as all know, means simply “cessation”—rest. 
The fourth chapter of Hebrews interprets the Sabbath of God. “For we who have believed, do enter into that rest . . . for he hath said somewhere of the seventh day on this wise, And God rested on the seventh day from all his works” (Heb. 4: 3, 4). At the end of the creation, God rested in a work which was perfect, and “finished” (Heb. 4: 3). The sin of man broke that rest, and at last, God wrought through the Cross of Christ, another work, perfect and “finished.” Nothing needed to be added, nothing could be added, to creation work; nothing needs to be added, can be added, to redemption work. God rests in it. Of that rest, the first, or creation rest was but a lovely type. And when the sinner is willing also to “cease from his own works” in perfect satisfaction with that which so perfectly satisfies God, he enters into God’s own rest about it all. So much for the first use of “Sabbath.”
II. THE SABBATH GIVEN TO ISRAEL.
From creation to the Exodus, that is for 2,500 years, the Sabbath is not once mentioned. The reason is obvious; where sin existed, there could be no rest till redemption had come in, and this had been accomplished (typically) in the Passover (Exod. 12: 12, 13), and in the outbringing of Israel. To that people (Exod. 16: 23-30) the Sabbath rest was revealed, and most beautifully in connection with God’s perfect care for his people in the gift of manna. At Sinai, the Sabbath was incorporated in the Mosaic system of laws for the commonwealth of Israel (Exod. 20: 8-11), and invested with the character of a “sign” between Jehovah and Israel—a perpetual reminder to Israel of their separation unto him (Exod. 31: 13-17). The Sabbath was observed by complete rest (Exod. 35: 2, 3; comp. Num. 15: 32-36).
Apart from its connection with the annual feasts, the Sabbath was not made a day of religious service or obligation. It was simply and only a day of sweet rest for man and beast,—a humane provision for man’s needs,—“the sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2: 27).
The picture is not of temple and sacrifice, but of green fields where weary beasts graze or lie down; of weary servants at rest; of happy groups of friends going through the corn. One day in every seven, when burdens were laid down and the hard stress of life relaxed. And so important some such pause and breathing spell is to human welfare that the Word of God is the record of His tremendous emphasis upon “My Sabbaths.”
III. THE PHARISEES’ PERVERSION OF THE SABBATH.
At the time of the manifestation of Jesus Christ, there was an institution among the Jews falsely called the Sabbath. God’s sweet rest day had been absorbed into the hard system which grew up among the Jews during the Babylonian captivity. Cut off from the temple, the synagogue came into being—a thing wholly unknown to the Divine legislation for Israel. It began innocently and naturally as groups of exiled Jews would meet for prayer and the reading of the law. Then came into existence that mass of tradition, comment and rabbinical interpretation gathered subsequently into the Talmud.
Our Lord. found the observance of the day incrusted with evasions, restrictions, and religious ceremonial wholly unknown to the law; and it was his vindication of the real and lovely purpose of the Sabbath which aroused the fury of the hard legalists of the time.
Most unfortunately, the Puritan system restored with many differences of detail, the Sabbath of the stern legalists rather than the beautiful rest day of Jehovah. The act of our Lord and his company of joyous disciples, recorded. in our lesson (Mark 2: 23-28), would have affected a Puritan deacon, on his stern way to a cold meeting-house to hear two prodigious sermons, very much as the Pharisees were affected.
Jesus Christ “was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God” (Rom. 15: 8); He came but to the “lost sheep of the house .of Israel” (Matt. 10: 5, 6); and as Israel’s minister and prophet, He cleared the law from that mass of traditional interpretation which had, in effect, taken the place of the Word of God.
With splendid courage, Jesus attacked the Pharisaic spirit at the point of its hard perversion of the Sabbath. They could have borne, with irritation indeed, but perhaps without open breach; His low company, eating with unwashen hands, and the like; but His brave recovery of His Father’s sweet rest-day from hard formalism and religiosity was not to be allowed.
IV. THE CHRISTIAN LORD’S DAY. 
The Lord’s day takes, or should take, its whole meaning and use, first, from the example of the Lord Jesus on the day of his resurrection—the first Lord’s day; and second, from the usage of the Apostolic Church.
What a day that first Lord’s day was! Rising from death and the grave, our Lord met the women with His great word, “O joy!” How regrettable that it should have been veiled under that ineptitude, “All hail.”  “O joy!” death is defeated, sins are left in My grave, and the world is waiting for My Gospel. Joy to poor Peter who has been in his Lord’s secret presence. And how the day was filled with service! “Go tell my brethren.” Just as the work had begun with the message, “Come and see,” so now that there is a Gospel to preach, the joyous, ringing word is, “GO TELL.”
And then He must walk out to Emmaus with the discouraged, perplexed ones till they too caught the burning heart and could not rest till they had “told.”
And that is the new day. From the resurrection on, we have the Sabbath mentioned only in connection with the Jews, and that soon ends. In the Epistles, there is caution against entanglement with the Sabbath, perverted by “the commandments of men.” The disciples meet on the first day of the week to remember the Lord in the breaking of bread, and the first day assemblies were blessed with the free ministry of the gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12), in that “better way” of love. And finally, the closing vision of Scripture is given to a Christian apostle who was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.”
How holy in the reverence and diligent service of all Christians should that day be! And that is the true defense of our holy day. Not by compulsion of law, but in the free energy and joy of the Holy Spirit may its precious hours have their true sacredness.
It seems peculiarly regrettable that there should have come into modern usage the expression “the Christian Sabbath,” for it tends to perpetuate a confusing together of two things which, in most respects, differ. The Lord’s day and the Sabbath both have the obedience to the principle of one-seventh of the time for man’s need; but in other respects, there is contrast as striking as the resemblance. One is the seventh day, the other the first; the seventh day commemorates God’s rest in creation, the first day Christ’s resurrection. On the seventh day, God rested, on the first day Christ was ceaselessly active, and inspired a like activity in his disciples. “Go tell” was His great word. The Sabbath rests upon law, the Lord’s day upon voluntary devotion and the spirit of service.
HOW SHOULD CHRISTIANS KEEP SUNDAY?
Does the first day of the week mean to us what it meant to Christ? Can we settle the question how to observe the Lord’s Day better than to see how the risen Jesus Himself observed it, and follow His example?
Observe the dispensations and the Scriptures harmonize,” is a saying as old as St. Augustine, and it is true that failure at this point introduces utter disharmony. It makes necessary innumerable explanations which, after all, do not explain. It forces methods of interpretation which take us far from the natural and lexical meanings of plain words and leave us perilously near to justifying the infidel taunt, “You can prove anything from the Bible.”
The evil consequences of such confusion have been greatest in the failure to discriminate the dispensations of law and of grace. The first and most fatal of the heresies was the attempt to mingle in one system of doctrine, the law of Moses with the grace of God. It is not only the first of the heresies but has been the most successful.
Its first preachers were Jewish believers, sincere in faith but not free from legal bondage, who followed Paul upon Gentile ground with the teaching that the Gentile converts were under the law. It is not necessary to suppose these men to have been insincere or malicious. Knowing that all redemption was under the Abrahamic covenant, and that circumcision was essential to the bringing of even a Jew, a lineal descendant of Abraham, within the covenanted salvation, it seemed incredible to them that Gentiles, men “without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise” (Eph. 2: 12) could pass by a simple act of faith into that salvation.
Against this form of legalistic teaching, the Council of Jerusalem, composed of Apostles and elders, uttered its decree.
But the demand that Gentile converts should be circumcised was but one part of the legal propaganda, and against the whole attempt to put the church under law in any form or part, the Apostle Paul, to whom had been committed the revelations made necessary by the new “mystery,” the church (Eph. 3: 1-10), launched the tremendous argument and revelation which we know as the Epistle to the Galatians. The attempt to turn aside the force of that Epistle by relating it all to that part of the law which we term “ceremonial,” is not exegesis but mere evasion. And the proof is at hand; a Gentile Christian could not keep the ceremonial law. That part of the Mosaic legislation required an altar, a temple, and a priest. These were in Jerusalem, and in hostile hands; and furthermore, ten years after the Epistle to the Galatians was written, altar and temple were destroyed, and the priests slain or sold as slaves. There is at least consistency in the church of Rome; for, having adopted the Galatian error of confusing together law and grace, an altar and a priest were provided, and the real presence of the Lord alleged to be in the consecrated wafer.
But the Epistle goes far beyond mere ceremonial, it takes us back of the law to the covenant with Abraham, and declares of the law that it “cannot disannul,” or “make of none effect,” the promise of pure grace in the covenant that was confirmed four hundred and thirty years before the law was given. And the next evasion, that the law if not a means of life, is at least a rule of life, is met by three clear statements:
(1) The Christian life is vital,—the outliving of the in living Christ (Gal. 2: 20);
(2) It is a produced life,—“the fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5: 22, 23); and
(3) It is a by faith life, not a life under tutors and governors, nor under the schoolmaster (Gal. 3: 25). And lest there should be any question at this point, there is given the allegory of the two sons of Abraham (Gal. 4: 19-31), the plain meaning of which is that things which differ must not be confused together.
Romans is, if possible, even more explicit. The contrast of law and grace—Moses and Christ—in Romans 10: 4-10, and the emphatic statement, “Ye are not under the law, but under grace,” is final. It is probable that the legalistic teaching holds the minds of many earnest believers because of a lurking fear that grace opens the door to sin and spiritual anarchy. So far from that, Romans points out how, and why, it is only through grace that “the righteousness of the law” is ever fulfilled. The Apostle indignantly asks, “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish the law” (Rom. 3: 31). Grace is not a way of escaping obedience; it is a way, and the only way, of securing obedience—not, indeed, to “the letter which killeth” (2 Cor. 3: 6), but to the whole will of God (Rom. 8: 2-4).
In short, a new covenant has come in, of which Christ the Son, not Moses the servant, is the Mediator (Heb. 8: 10-13). It is declared to be a “better” covenant; not, needless to say, morally better, for that it could not be, but efficaciously better, as accomplishing through Divine power that which law had never, in one single instance (Rom. 3:19), accomplished. There is no “if” in the new covenant—God makes Himself responsible for all things.
And yet again, there is no question of abolishing the law. Under the reign of grace, it is relegated to its true ministry, of an “instruction in righteousness” and a “ministration of death, written and engraven in stones” (2 Cor. 3: 7), that men might flee from its condemnation to the Cross, and that “The righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us” through the Spirit (Rom. 8: 2-4).
Again, grace by no means abandons the believer to self-will. He is, indeed, “not under the law” (Rom. 6: 14), but he is “under grace.” His very acceptance of Christ implies submission to the processes by which grace enables, cleanses, perfects (Phil. 4: 13; Eph. 5: 25-27; 1 John 3: 2).
Immense emphasis goes with the fact, open to the most cursory reading of the Epistles—that portion of the Scriptures especially written to and for the church—that every ethical provision of the law. reappears as Christian precept. No great fundamental principle of righteousness embodied in the Mosaic legislation is omitted. But the sabbatarian is obliged to face the significant fact that not once in all those writings is the Christian exhorted to keep the Sabbath! Once only does the word appear:
“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” (Col. 2: 16); and all these are characterized as “shadows” of Christ. The contention, then, that the Sabbath has passed over into the dispensation of grace, with only a change from the seventh to the first day of the week, is destitute of Biblical authority.
What we have is a day which rests, not upon law but upon love—the first day of the week, or, the Lord’s day. The resurrection of Christ was the rebirth of Christianity, if not its very birth. The believers won to faith by the personal ministry of our Lord were Jews who had received Him as the promised Messiah. With His crucifixion, that hope died. “We trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel,” was the despairing confession of the Emmaus disciples. With the possible exception of Mary of Bethany, none of His own had understood His thrice repeated announcement of His death and resurrection. Astonishment and incredulity but slowly gave way to intense joy when His rising again could no longer be doubted. All things now became possible for Israel and for the Gentile world. No day of the old dispensation could be compared with this day. One has but to read the passages in Acts and in the Epistles which refer to the resurrection of Christ to see how vital it was, both to personal faith and to Christian doctrine. And this supreme fact was associated, especially in the minds of the Apostles and the first believers, with a day,—a day memorable above all days, save the day of Calvary. It was not, under grace, it could not be a day of legal obligation. It was congruous with the Sabbath before the latter became embodied in the stern edict from Sinai. It preserved the principle of a day for God and for man, one-seventh of time.
The question at once arises, inevitably and rightly, how shall this new day for the new dispensation, with its new body the church, be observed?
Let it at once be said that the new dispensation has no Leviticus. The believer who must have rules and prescribed forms for anything save the Memorial Supper (1 Cor. 11: 23-30) will not find them in the Scriptures. For such he must resort to “the commandments of men” (Col. 2: 8, 16). But if he is willing to seek the guidance of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and to go in the fellowship of those who from the very presence of Christ tarried to receive the baptism in the Spirit, and of those who walked in that fellowship, he will have no real difficulty.
And first of all, it is an immense fact that Christ Himself was with His disciples on the first Lord’s day. Think for a little, what that day meant to Him, and to them.
It was a day of supreme joy to Jesus. He struck the key-note in his salutation to Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary,” of “Joy!” (Matt. 28: 9—Greek chairo.) Atonement was complete! He was indeed “delivered for our offences,” but He “was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4: 25). That ringing cry, “Joy!” must surely resound through all Lord’s days.
And how clear it is that not completed redemption alone was in that cry but restored fellowship with His own. He had been very tender in the upper chamber the night before His crucifixion. It seems strange to us, but it cannot be doubted that next to His Father, we are dearest to His heart.
And now, with that open grave behind Him, there is a world-Gospel to preach, and that too is in His resurrection cry, “Joy.”  “Go tell,” is the new word. What a contrast with law! Under law “the priests went always in” (Heb. 9: 6); under grace the priests—for all Christians are priests—go always out—out with the message of grace till the ends of the earth have heard. The law never had a missionary!
Joy in an accomplished redemption eternally effectual; joy in the fellowship of saints; joy in the grandest conceivable service. Are not these the broad lines of Lord’s day observance?
Later, we find the believers meeting on the first day of the week to break the bread of remembrance in fellowship (Acts 20: 7). These church meetings were naturally teaching meetings as well (1 Cor. 14: 23-40) and took their place in the great fellowship as local churches.
The day has thus come to have a sacredness which does not rest on law, but upon love, fellowship, and service.
Many other questions arise. May any part of the Lord’s day be rightly used in recreation or occupations not incompatible with the spirit of the day? There is but one answer: “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind” (Rom. 14: 5). But whatever may be the subject concerning which questions arise that are not settled by explicit Scripture, prayer in a submissive and yielded spirit will surely bring light. It is one of the ways of God in grace to keep the believer thus dependent.
A question also naturally arises as to the designation of the day. It seems natural to perpetuate the word Sabbath, but the substitution of the ancient word for the new day has not only been tried but has wrought the disastrous result of confusing together two fundamentally different things. Out of that substitution has come the notion that the dispensation of grace has kept the sabbath of the Jews with but the change of day from the seventh to the first. No wonder it is asked, by whose authority? It is fitly asked: “Can it be that one of the commandments of God has been set aside and superseded by an institution of man?” The answer is that the Christian Lord’s day and the Jewish sabbath are different days, and neither is an institution of man. From Isaiah 66: 23, it is evident that in the kingdom age, or millennium, the sabbath will again be observed. And let us bring all questions to the test of that first Lord’s day which began “very early in the morning” is a joy meeting with the Lord, went on in fellowship and service, and ended in “peace” (Luke 24: 36).
Douglaston, Long Island, N. Y.
“The Sunday School Times” January, March 1918