I
share my response to the latest article in the hope that it may encourage
anyone who has been confronted with this teaching regarding Sabbath-keeping.
Thankfully, obedience to the ten commandments is NOT necessary for
eternal life. While you have presented a good example of Domino-theology (if
the first premise is true, all the other points must also be true), James was
not teaching the church to rely on the ten commandments, or to keep the Sabbath
(nowhere in the New Testament is the church given the command to keep the
Sabbath).
He was
actually calling us to "the law of liberty" (1:25; 2:12), which is
the gospel. The New Testament makes very clear that “the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from
the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:2). Paul had already
stated that, “The very commandment that promised life proved
to be death to me” (Rom 7:10). When he tells us that “the law of the Spirit of
life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death,” he means
that what we have in the gospel sets us free from what we had in the law.
God was very clear when he
revealed, “yet we know that a person is not justified by works
of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in
Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of
the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified” (Gal 2:16). Sabbath
keeping was given as part of the law of Moses. If “by works of the law no one
will be justified,” the law of Sabbath keeping cannot be necessary to eternal
life.
“So then, the
law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by
faith. But now that faith has come,
we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith”
(Galatians 3:24-26). Notice that the “law was our guardian.” It was only our
guardian “until Christ came”. When Christ came we could now be “justified by
faith”. Now that we have received Jesus Christ by faith “we are no longer under
a guardian,” hence no longer under law. We are sons of God through faith, not
through keeping the Sabbath.
Paul instructed,
“Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or
with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance
belongs to Christ” (Colossians 2:16-17). The Sabbath was “a shadow” of
what was to come. Christ has come, so we are no longer living in his shadow,
but in his substance.
When Jesus said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest” (Matt 11:28), he invited us out of the shadows of law-keeping, into the substance
of himself. Instead of a day of rest, we now had a life of rest.
Since the
New Testament makes so many statements about the law coming to fulfillment in
Christ, if all us Gentiles over the past 20 centuries were to believe we are to
keep the gospel through Sabbath-observance, there would be somewhere in the New
Testament that would tell us that. Since Jesus calls us out of the shadows of
the Sabbath into the substance of his rest, we honor his holiness by finding
our rest in him every day of the week.
Unless otherwise
noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible,
English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)
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