“I GO TO CHURCH ON SATURDAY”

Hugo McCord

A friendly neighbor, when I asked him to go with me to church on Sunday, said, “I go to church on Saturday, just as Jesus did, for he kept the Ten Commandments.”

Indeed, Jesus, being “a Jew” (John 4:9), went “to the synagogue on the sabbath” (Luke 4:16), according to the fourth of the “Ten Commandments” (Exodus 20:1-17). But that does not mean that Jesus’ disciples today (“Christians,” Acts 11:26, both “the Jew and the Greek,” Romans 10:12) are to “Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8).

When Jesus died “He set aside the law, with its commandments and regulations” (Ephesians 2:15). “He erased the handwriting, with its decrees, that was against us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14). “Therefore, let no one judge you in food and drink, or with regard to a feast or a new moon or of sabbaths” (Colossians 2:16).

Thus all ten of the “Ten Commandments,” originally written on “two tables” of “stone” by “the finger of God” (Exodus 31:18), have, in God’s wisdom, been “set aside” (Ephesians 2:15), “erased,” and nailed “to the cross” (Colossians 2:14).

However, the meaning of nine of the ten God has transplanted into the “new covenant” of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:6), a “better covenant” (Hebrews 8:6). “If the ministry of death, engraved in letters on stones, was glorious, . . . will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?” (2 Corinthians 3:7-8).

Yes, the meaning of nine of the ten is in the “New Testament”: 1, Ephesians 4:6; 2, 1 John 5:21; 3, 1 Corinthians 10:31; 5, Ephesians 6:2; 6, 1 John 3:15; 7, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10); 8, Ephesians 4:28; 9, Ephesians 4:15; 10, Colossians 3:5.

But the fourth of the ten has not been replaced by another “holy” day. Sunday, the first day of the week, though of special memory because it was the day of the Lord’s resurrection (Mark 16:9), and apparently called “the Lord’s Day” (Revelation 1:10), is not set apart in the New Testament as the Jews were commanded to “remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.”

A Christian who “considers a certain day as more sacred than other days” is doing it “in his own mind” (Romans 14:5), not by divine instruction. “He who regards a day highly does so for the Lord” (Romans 14:6), but not by divine instruction. What he does in itself is harmless, doing it of his own thinking, “for the Lord” and “he thanks God” (Romans 14:6).

But what he is doing is dangerous. Paul was “afraid that I may have labored for you [the congregations in Galatia] in vain,” because they were “observing days and months and seasons and years” (Galatians 4:10-11).

The statement by my friendly neighbor that he goes to church on Saturday because Jesus kept Saturday sacred is inconsistent in three ways:

(1). He would also have to say that male babies 8 days old are to be circumcised today because Jesus was circumcised when he was 8 days old (Luke 2:21). But circumcision was one of the commandments that was nailed “to the cross” (Colossians 2:14). “Christ liberated us for freedom. Therefore, stand firm, and do not wear a yoke of slavery. I, Paul, assure you, if you receive circumcision, Christ will not profit you at all. Again I testify, to every man who receives circumcision, that he is a debtor to keep all of the law” (Galatians 5:1-3). “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is worth anything” (Galatians 6:15).

On the other hand, “What counts is a new creation” (Galatians 6:15). Christ circumcises sinners today, male and female: “You [all Christians] were circumcised by him without hands: Christ’s circumcision strips off the sins of the flesh. You were buried with him in immersion, in which also you were raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:11-12).

(2). My friend would also have to say that Christians today must eat of the Passover feast (Exodus 12:11, 17, 43) because Jesus ate of the Passover feast (Matthew 26:17-19; Luke 2:41). The Jewish Passover feast, a remembrance of God’s bringing their fathers “out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 13:17), pointed to Christ “our Passover Lamb” (1 Corinthians 5:7) bringing us out of the guilt of sin (Matthew 26:28). Accordingly, Jesus asks his disciples to partake of the Lord’s Supper, saying, “Do this in memory of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24).

(3). My friend would also have to say that Christians today must not only eat of the Passover feast because Jesus did so, but they also must go to Jerusalem for that feast because Jesus did so (John 2:13). Even non-Jews understood that for Jews it was “necessary to worship in Jerusalem” (John 4:20).

But Jesus showed that his “last will and testament” (Hebrews 9:16) was to become operative after his “death” (Hebrews 9:17), saying to a Samaritan woman, “the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither in this mountain [Gerizim] nor in Jerusalem. . . . The hour comes when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeks such worshipers. God is spirit, and they who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:21-24).

Though earthly Jerusalem religiously today is not sacred, the name “Jerusalem” is more meaningful than ever, and will be throughout eternity. Over against “the Jerusalem which now is” is heaven, “the Jerusalem which is above” (Galatians 4:26), to which Jesus has gone to prepare: “many rooms are in my Father’s house” (John 14:1). The “Father’s house,” said God, is “my throne” (Isaiah 66:1). It is called “the heavenly Jerusalem” where are “myriads of angels” and “the church of the firstborn people (who are enrolled in heaven)” and “Jesus (the mediator of the new covenant” and “the eternal Spirit” (Hebrews 9:14; 12:22-23). Also pictured is “the holy Jerusalem” (Revelation 22:10), “the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven” (Revelation 3:12; 21:2) to meet the saved “in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

5-23-2001