KOSHER FOODS AND HOLY DAYS

Hugo McCord

In the Methodist Church I was taught that Sunday is the Christian sabbath, and that a Christian must keep Sunday sacred. In my hometown, “blue laws” kept stores closed on Sunday.

However, in 1923, in a tent meeting conducted by L. L. Brigance (of Freed-Hardeman College), when I was 12 years old, I was convinced that I should be immersed to wash my sins away. After I had responded to the invitation and had made the good confession, I was taken to the city’s swimming pool, where brother Brigance baptized me.

On the next Sunday, after the Lord’s Supper in a widow’s home, my dad in the afternoon was going to a baseball game, and usually I went with him. But with the Methodist teaching that Sunday is the Christian sabbath still in me, I did not go to the ball game.

Afterward I learned that in Christianity there are no holy days (Galatians 4:11-12; Colossians 2:14-16). I learned that, though Sunday is unforgettable with a memory of the Lord’s resurrection, and is called the “Lord’s day” (Revelation 1:10), it is no more sacred than any other day.

I came to admire knowledgeable first century Christian slaves who most often had non-Christian owners. Being knowledgeable, those slaves wanted to assemble with other Christians for the Lord’s Supper each Lord’s day, but their pagan masters required them to work in their fields from sun up to sun down seven days a week.

How refreshing it was to learn that the Christian slaves arranged for services with the Lord’s Supper before daylight on the Lord’s day, and then went to work in the fields. Being knowledgeable, they did not think that Sunday was a sabbath, and they did not think it a sin to work on Sunday.

In Paul’s day, some new Christians at Rome were not as knowledgeable as those slaves. They were “weak in the faith” (Romans 14:1). Some, being Jews, had not learned that in Christianity there are no sacred days (Galatians 4:10-11; Colossians 2:14-16). Consequently, they still esteemed “one day” (namely, the sabbath) “above” the other days (cf. Romans 14:5).

Moreover, being Jews, they had never eaten certain meats (camel, rabbit, pig, Leviticus 11:1-8), nor any marine life without scales and fins (shrimp, clams, scallops, catfish, Leviticus 11:9-12), all of which were non-kosher dietary items. They had not learned that in Christianity

every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer (1 Timothy 4:4).

In addition, some new Gentile Christians at Rome ate “only vegetables” (Romans 14:2), having not yet learned that in Christianity it is not wrong to eat flesh.

Both the uninformed Jews and the Gentiles were sincere Christians, and it would have been wrong to reject them. Those untaught Christians were not to be condemned:

Who are you to condemn another man’s servant? It is the concern of his own master whether he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for the Lord can make him stand (Romans 14:4).

To force them to change their practices without a change of knowledge was “sin” (Romans 14:23).

Paul used the word “faith” in Romans 14 with two different meanings. First, he spoke of the new Christians as being “weak in the faith” (v. 1), that is, they were weak in their knowledge of Christianity. Second, he used the word “faith” without the definite article, to refer to any individual’s belief or opinion (dialogismos, v. 1), as in v. 22: “Hast thou faith? have it to yourself before God.”

In other words, if you have a belief, an opinion, a conviction, about days or foods, do not force others to follow your pattern. If someone follows your pattern, because of you, then that one has “condemned” himself, for he has no personal “faith” in what he is doing, and “whatever is not of faith is sin” (v. 23). A synonym for Paul’s second use of “faith” is the word “conviction,” which is used in the Freed-Hardeman translation:

Hold to yourself the conviction you have before God. Blessed is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. The one who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he lacks conviction; and everything which is not of conviction is sin (Romans 14:22-23).

However, as time goes along, these new Christians would learn more fully that in “the faith” (in “Christianity”) all days are alike and all foods are kosher (kasher, right, proper).

Today millions of people who believe in Jesus observe Christmas day and Easter Sunday as holy days. We rejoice that they want to honor the Lord. But they have not learned that in Christianity all days are the same.

However, knowledgeable Christians, like the first century slaves, exhort one another, “and so much the more as” they “see the day,” the first day of the week, “approaching,” for on that day they plan to attend the assembly with other Christians (Hebrews 10:25), and to remember in the Supper the suffering of the Lord, and to rejoice in his glorious resurrection on the first day of the week.