As Schreiner notes, the best argument for the perpetuity of the Sabbath is probably the argument that the Sabbath is a creation ordinance. Exodus 20:8-10 details the Sabbath command, and verse 11 grounds the command in God’s resting on the seventh day [1].
On the surface this argument seems quite formidable. Generally, when the NT appeals to creation in reference to some teaching, the teaching is binding for today. Take for example:
- Marraige between one man and one woman (Matt 19:3-12; cf Gen 2:24).
- The prohibition of homosexuality (Rom 1:26-27).
- The prohibition of woman having authority over men in the church as pastors (1 Tim 2:12-13)
- The freedom to marry and eat any food (1 Tim 4:1-4)[2].
The Sabbatarian’s argument runs as follows:
Premise 1: Commands rooted in creation are binding today.
Premise 2. The Sabbath Command is rooted in creation (Ex 20:11).
Conclusion: Therefore, the Sabbath command is binding today.
The problem with this argument is premise 2: “The Sabbath Command is rooted in creation”, or perhaps more precisely, the problem is with the word “rooted.” I believe that the following will demonstrate that the Sabbath command is not “rooted” in creation as an ordinance, but as Schriener notes, as an “anaology.”[3] In the Sabbath command, Israel mirrors God’s rest by resting on the seventh day. However, God’s resting wasn’t a command/ordinance (there’s no command in Gen 2, nor is the word “sabbath” used). Rather, it was a pointer to a greater rest; a rest that we might enter (Psalm 95; Heb 3-4). God’s rest in creation has different application depending upon what covenant you are under.
This will come out more clearly in our considerations below, but perhaps another example of this sort of thing will be helpful before we proceed.
Consider this text:
“For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground. For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy. This is the law about beast and bird and every living creature that moves through the waters and every creature that swarms on the ground, to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean and between the living creature that may be eaten and the living creature that may not be eaten.
Leviticus 11:44-47
What was the basis of the Israelites dietary laws? The text tells us: “Be holy, for I am holy.”
This shows us unmistakably that truths about God can have different applications depending upon which covenant you are under.
God is has always been, and will always be holy. Under the Old Covenant, Israel mirrored this eternal truth about God by dietary laws (among other things). Under the New Covenant, we know that all foods are clean (Mark 7:19; 1 Tim 4:1-4). Under the NC, the application of God’s holiness is: “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Pet 1:14-16).” Dietary laws are not any part of our application of the truth of God’s holiness; but they were for the Isrealites under the Old Covenant.
In the same way, God’s resting on the seventh day also has application for today. However, the application of this act of God is different under the New Covenant than it was under the Old. Under the New Covenant, God’s seventh day rest is applied in:
- Coming to Christ for rest now (“Today if you hear His voice…” Heb 3-4). In Matthew 11:28-30, cf the following two accounts (intentionally placed in this order by Matthew) of Jesus’ actions demonstrating that He is “Lord of the Sabbath” in Matt 12. See also Heb 4:3 “we who have believed enter (present indicative verb) that rest”
- The eschatological rest we will enter either when we die, or when Christ returns (Heb 4:11). Cf also the fact that the seventh day has no evening/morning, and Heb 3-4 says that it is open for us to enter by faith.
Now, for some considerations showing that it is improbable that the Sabbath should be considered a “creation ordinance.”
- The NT plainly teaches that those in the NC are not under the Sabbath command (See: Sabbatarianism Pt. 4: Colossians 2:16-17. Also see: Sabbatarianism Pt. 5: Romans 14:5).
- There is no Sabbath command in Genesis. No sabbath command is given until Ex 16, after the people of Israel have been brought out of Egypt and constituted a nation, Yahweh’s chosen people. All that is mentioned in Gen 2 is God resting on the seventh day; a day incidentally, without evening or morning (which has implications for Heb 3-4).
- There is no record of anyone man or woman keeping the sabbath prior to Ex 16. Neither Adam, nor the patriarchs, nor anyone else was ever said to have kept the sabbath.
- The sabbath was specifically said to be a sign of the Old Covenant (Ex 31:13). The Old Covenant has passed away, and with it, the sign of that covenant. See Sabbatarianism Pt 2: The Structure of the Decalogue as a Key to its Nature
- Nehemiah 9:13-14 seems to explicitly teach that the Sabbath command was first given at Sinai. Though he was a sabbatarian, John Bunyan did not believe that the Sabbath was a creation ordinance, and he uses Neh 9:13-14 (among other arguments) to demonstrate this. For his full treatise, see: https://biblehub.com/library/bunyan/the_works_of_john_bunyan_volumes_1-3/questions_about_the_nature_and.htm
- Not everything in creation is eternally binding. We are not bound to be vegetarians, or nudists, or farmers, though all these are aspects of man’s state in creation.[4]
- When it comes to marraige, divorce, homosexuality, gender roles, and dietary matters, appeals to creation come from the NT and are clearly establishing these matters as creation ordinances, whereas the Sabbath command the reference to creation is in the OT and appears to be only by way of anaology.[5]
- Gentile nations are often reproved for their wicked immorality, but never for sabbath breaking.
- The Sabbath command does not appear to be written on mens hearts; not even presumably regenerate men’s hearts, who God promises will have His law written on their hearts (E.g. John MacArthur, Paul Washer, Todd Friel, etc). Not even Sabbatarians themselves seem to take the Sabbath command with the same seriousness as the other commands they consider moral, because they do not exercise church discipline on men like MacArthur etc. See: Sabbatarianism Pt 1. Sabbatarianism and G3 2020.
- In the earliest centuries of the church there is no historical evidence that the church kept a sabbath. It was clear that they observed the Lord’s day, but they did not consider Lord’s day observance as a replacement of the Sabbath, or a fulfillment of the fourth command. Rather, we actually find distinctions being made between these days (more on this later). This is remarkable considering that if the apostles establised the Sunday sabbath at each church they planted, no evidence exists to show this, especially when you consider the persecution that would have arisen among gentile converts (most of whom were slaves and lower class citizens) who suddenly refused to work on Sundays!
- The Sabbath command, engraved on stone in Ex 20 commands rest on the “seventh” day. Creation ordinances are generally thought to be written on men’s hearts, and inherently unchanging. However, sabbatarians allege that this creation ordinance changed from the 7th to the first day. This seems inconsistent with what it means to be a “creation ordinance.”
One final side-note related to the last point. My sabbatarian brothers often argue for the change of the Sabbath from the 7th day in the old covenant to the 1st day in the new covenant essentially by noting that under the covenant of works, we “work, then rest”, but under the covenant of grace we “rest, then work.” The idea that we rest in Christ before we do any meaningful work is true enough; but one thing is striking. The bible never makes this application to the sabbath command. The sabbath is always, and only a seventh day reality, dealing with work, then rest. This is consistent through and through, and continues to be the application even when we come to the NT (Heb 3-4).
It is true that we rest in Christ, and receive salvation by Him alone before we do any meaningful work; but this is only theological postulating, and not an application that Scripture ever actually makes to the sabbath command. I believe this same sort of theological postulating leads prysbeterians to conclude that just as circumcision was the sign of the old (“administration” as they would say since they believe in one “covenant of grace”) covenant, baptism is the sign of the new covenant, and since infants received circumcision under the old covenant, they should be baptized under the new. One can understand how that conclusion is reached via theological postulating, and there is a sense in which baptism is the sign of the NC, but the conclusion that infants should be baptized is simply not supported exegetically. I believe a similair phenomena takes place with this sort of argument for a 1st day “sabbath.”
[1] Wellum, Dr Stephen J., and Brent E. Parker, eds. Progressive Covenantalism: Charting a Course between Dispensational and Covenantal Theologies. Chapter 6. “Good-bye and Hello: The Sabbath Command for New Covenant Believers.” B&H Academic, 2016. p. 167-168.
[2] Schreiner. 168.
[3] Schreiner 169.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
Grace Alone 
hank you for posting this. I came to the same conclusions many years ago. “What we do not have here, or anywhere else prior to Exodus 20, is:
1. Any record whatsoever of God commanding man to do likewise (rest on the seventh day) from Eden to Sinai;
2. Any precedents in any of the historical accounts recorded in God’s revelation of any of His people observing “rest” on the seventh day in obedience to a command of God;
3. Any penalty invoked or imposed for failure to do so from Eden to Sinai.
This silence may not legitimately be used to dress up the “seven day pattern” as a “creation Sabbath” after the fashion of the Covenant theologians who follow the Puritans rather than the Continental Reformers. To do so is to go beyond the bounds of Scripture, to practice eisegesis, and to handle the teaching of God’s Word in an extremely cavalier manner. That dog don’t hunt!
The basis for pre-Sinai Sabbatarianism is much like that of paedo-sprinkling. Don’t look for it in Scripture expecting to find it, because it is not there. You will end up like John Reisinger’s philosopher who is by definition a blind man searching for a black cat in a dark room that isn’t there!”
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Amen brother! I haven’t read Reisinger much but I keep hearing about him I’ll have to check him out
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Furthermore, if it is a “creation ordinance,” and was then written in stone in the Sinai covenant, two conclusions necessarily follow: 1) the day cannot be changed; and 2) Paul could not have written what he did about this in his epistles.
On the first: It is quite preposterous to countenance a change of the Law being required by a change of the priesthood (Heb. 7, esp. vv. 12 and 18), and then to propose a change of the day while retaining a sabbath “principle” as A. A. Hodge and other Covenant Theologians have done, and persist in doing. Quite a bit more than a “jot or a tittle” change of the Law (Mt. 5:18; Lk. 16:17) is involved in this insistence! To retreat from the “seventh day” to a “one day in seven principle” while insisting on it as a “creation ordinance” tied to the seventh day of creation is…well, to avoid using the word preposterous again I will resort to ludicrous!
On the second: The seriousness of the Sabbatarian error was no light matter or thing of indifference to Paul. Nor did Paul only address this error in Colossians 2 and Romans 14. See Galatians 4:10-11 — “Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.” I find it incredible that anyone could imagine Gal. 4:10-11, Col. 2:16-17, or Rom. 14:5-6 being written while the Old Covenant was in force.
In accordance with the administration of the New Covenant Paul has made it explicit that:
1) anyone judging another about day-keeping has committed sin so serious as to be assuming the prerogative of Christ (Rom. 14:1-12), and,
2) anyone allowing another to judge them about such day-keeping is guilty of sin as well (Col. 2:16-17).
It is quite inconceivable to me how anyone can imagine Rom. 14:5-6; Gal. 4:10-11; and Col. 2:16-17 being written under the Mosaic administration of a sabbatarian system enforceable by capital punishment, to say nothing of the exposition of the significance of the Sabbath itself in Hebrews 3-4. When the sabbatarianism of the English Reformation is examined in the light of these passages (and others) it fails the test of Scripture.
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