“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” — Exodus 20:8-11

I was recently asked by a Seventh Day Adventist about why “traditional Christianity” changed the Sabbath to from Saturday to Sunday. By traditional Christianity they meant those older strains of the faith such as Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Anglicanism.

They also wanted to know “Why Christians don’t follow all of the 10 commandments.”

In this post, I want to go over some of the ways in which the 3rd Commandment lives on in Christianity, and why it is perfectly acceptable to worship on Sunday.

First things first- Christians are not under any obligation to obey the Mosaic Law. This is because the Law of Christ under the New Covenant has brought the Old Covenant to its fulfillment. However, all ten of the commandments can be found reiterated in some form in the New Testament- usually relativized around the person of Jesus Christ. I won’t rehash the theological debates that the early church held on this matter.

I propose that, for most of its history, Christianity has promoted the Fourth Commandment in three unique ways.

①The First Way

In the most literal meaning of the commandment, we “remember the Sabbath” and “keep it holy” every year on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter.

Holy Saturday is known as the “Great Sabbath” in Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Even in the Anglican Church, the collect for Holy Saturday refers to it as a “Sabbath.”

O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the

crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and

rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the

coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of

life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever. Amen. – Book of Common Prayer

Now, Wikipedia tells me that out of the 2.42 billion adherents to Christianity in the world today,

there are 1.4 billion Catholics, 85 million Anglicans, and 356 million Orthodox Christians. So we can say that in the most literal sense, for the bulk of Christians the Sabbath has not been “changed” to Sunday, and it is still remembered and kept holy (albeit on a yearly basis).

②The Second Way

From a careful reading of particularly John 5 (“I am working and my Father is working”), it becomes apparent that the purpose of the Sabbath is to cease from our works and do the works of God instead. In that sense, we have entered a perpetual Sabbath, as we are to always be carrying out God’s will. This is foreshadowed, typologically, in the way that the Levitical Priests were apparently exempt from the command to do no work on the Sabbath:

■Matthew 12:5-7 “Or have ye not read in the law, that on the sabbath days the priests in the temple break the sabbath, and are without blame? 6 But I tell you that there is here a greater than the temple. 7 And if you knew what this meaneth: I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: you would never have condemned the innocent.”

Jesus explains that, under the Mosaic Law, priests were allowed to do work on the Sabbath (lighting fires, slaughtering animals, etc.) and that this was acceptable because they were doing the works of God. Now, a New Temple and priesthood (that is, Christ himself and his followers) has been instituted. The holy place has been shifted.

In my opinion, the Epistle of Peter picks up on this theme and carries it through to its logical conclusion:

■1 Peter 2:5 “Be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.”

■1 Peter 2:9 “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own; that you should show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light”

In the New Covenant, what was once relegated to the Levitical Priesthood has been poured out onto all who have been Baptized.

(Note: this is not suggest the notion that actual apostolic authorities such as priests and bishops are equal to church laymen. It is simply suggesting that even a layman under the New Covenant is equivalent to even a priest under the Old).

To restate this as an argumentum a fortiori:

If it was okay for the Levitical priests to light fires and work on the Sabbath, how much more okay is it for us, a Royal Priesthood, to do the works of the Lord (offering spiritual sacrifices) on Saturdays?

Now, an interesting contrast here is the direction that Rabbinical Tradition ended up going with the 4th Commandment.

If you go to Israel today, you’ll find that some find elevators have no buttons. They stop on every floor, because to press a button on the Sabbath is “working.”

(Though even this seems to be under attack )

Some rabbis have outlawed nose picking on the Sabbath because that is a form of “sorting” which is “work”.

The Essenes, back in Jesus’ day, forbade building toilets within 3000 cubits of the city of Jerusalem. But, 3000 cubits is more than they were allowed to walk on the Sabbath, so they literally couldn’t defecate on the Sabbath.

③The Third Way

There is a third and final way that Christians are to keep the Sabbath: we keep it when we fall asleep in Christ and ultimately rest from our labors. I will let Matthew and Hebrews explain.

■Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

■Hebrews 4:1-9 “Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest is still open, let us take care that none of you should seem to have failed to reach it. 2 For indeed the good news came to us just as to them; but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. 3 For we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said,

“As in my anger I swore,

‘They shall not enter my rest,’”

though his works were finished at the foundation of the world. 4 For in one place it speaks about the seventh day as follows, “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” 5 And again in this place it says, “They shall not enter my rest.” 6 Since therefore it remains open for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, 7 again he sets a certain day—“today”—saying through David much later, in the words already quoted,

“Today, if you hear his voice,

do not harden your hearts.”

8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not speak later about another day. 9 So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; 10 for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his. 11 Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through such disobedience as theirs.”

To sum up: while Christians are exempt from the Law of Moses, under the Law of Christ the Sabbath command is brought to its ultimate spiritual fulfillment.

It seems to be a common myth spreading through the internet that Roman Emperor Constantine “changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday” and that therefore Sunday worship is a purely Pagan innovation. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The early Church was composed of both Jewish and Gentile believers in Christ, and for the first few centuries, it seems that worship services were held on both the Sabbath (Saturday) as well as the Lord’s Day (Sunday) to commemorate the Resurrection. With time, however, the demographics shifted such that the Church became mainly composed of Gentiles, and thus the tradition began to focus primarily on Sunday as the day of worship.

It should be noted that Sunday had a special significance in Jewish culture as not only the First Day of the week, but also the “Eighth Day.” If God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, then the Eighth Day (or so went Jewish mystical tradition) was “one step beyond” the current created order. Eight was thus the number of “new creation” or “transcendence.”

The Epistle of Barnabas, a First Century apocryphal Text, reveals that this Eighth Day symbolism heavily influenced the Early Church:

‘Finally He saith to them; “Your new moons and your Sabbaths I cannot stand.” Ye see what is His meaning; it is not your present Sabbaths that are acceptable [unto Me], but the Sabbath which I have made, in the which, when I have set all things at rest, I will make the beginning of the eighth day which is the beginning of another world. Wherefore also we keep the eighth day for rejoicing, in the which also Jesus rose from the dead, and having been manifested ascended into the heavens.’ – (Barnabas 15:8-9)

And it isn’t only a product of the Second Temple era. Below I will share some revealing Old Testament verses which deal with the mysterious “Eighth Day.”

■“On the eighth day, which is most solemn, you shall do no servile work: “ – Numbers 29:35

■“And on the eighth day the infant shall be circumcised: “– Leviticus 12:3

■“And they celebrated the feast seven days, and on the eighth day there was a solemn assembly according to the ordinance.” – Nehemiah 8:18

■”And the days being, expired, on the eighth day and thenceforward, the priests shall offer your holocausts upon the altar, and the peace offerings: and I will be pacified towards you, saith the Lord God. “ – Ezekiel 43:27

As we can see, Sunday worship had nothing to do with the “sun” for the Jews, but its significance as the day of New Creation cannot be understated.

Now, one thing that I want to draw attention to is the fact that the Jewish festival of Sukkot, or the Feast of Booths (sometimes called the Festival of Tabernacles) was also held on the Eighth Day. The Prophet Zechariah foresaw a day when all the Gentile nations would go up to worship the Lord for this festival.

■”Then it will come about that any who are left of all the nations that went against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Booths.” – Zechariah 14:16-17

This verse, I believe, is typologically fulfilled every week at the celebration of the Eucharist by Gentiles all over the world on the Eighth Day.

Now, I certainly cannot deny that Jewish Eighth Day Worship and Pagan Sunday Worship did indeed make for an easy cross-cultural bridge in terms of evangelization. Yet it would be needlessly reductive to simply say that the early Church worshipped on Sunday because they saw Roman Pagans doing so. They had theologically deep (and very Jewish) reasons for wanting to do so.

As an aside, there are a number of peculiar synchronicities with the number Eight and Christianity.

For one thing, nearly all Baptismal Fonts have traditionally had 8 sides.

For another, the name “Jesus” in Greek Gematria equals to 888.