J.C. Ryle
I ask the attention of all professing Christians, while I try to say a few plain words on the subject of the Sabbath. I have no new argument to advance. I can say nothing that has not been said, and said better too, a hundred times before. But at a time like this, it becomes every Christian writer to cast in his mite into the treasury of truth. As a minister of Christ, a father of a family, and a lover of my country, I feel bound to plead in behalf of the old English Sunday. My sentence is emphatically expressed in the words of Scripture: let us “keep it holy.” My advice to all Christians is to contend earnestly for the whole day against all enemies, both without and within. It is worth a struggle…
Let me, in the first place, consider the authority on which the Sabbath stands. I hold it to be of primary importance to have this point clearly settled in our minds. Here is the very rock on which many of the enemies of the Sabbath make shipwreck. They tell us that the day is “a mere Jewish ordinance,” and that we are no more bound to keep it holy than to offer sacrifice. They proclaim to the world that the observance of the Lord’s Day rests upon nothing but Church authority and cannot be proved by the Word of God.
Now, I believe that those who say such things are entirely mistaken. Amiable and respectable as many of them are, I regard them in this matter as being thoroughly in error. Names go for nothing with me in such a case. It is not the assertion of a hundred divines—living or dead—that will make me believe black is white or reject the evidence of plain texts of Scripture…The grand question is, “Were their thoughts worth credit?—were they right or wrong?”
My own firm conviction is that the observance of a Sabbath Day is part of the eternal Law of God. It is not a mere temporary Jewish ordinance. It is not a man-made institution of priestcraft.1 It is not an unauthorized imposition2 of the Church. It is one of the everlasting rules that God has revealed for the guidance of all mankind. It is a rule that many nations without the Bible have lost sight of and buried, like other rules, under the rubbish of superstition and heathenism. But it was a rule intended to be binding on all the children of Adam.
What saith the Scripture? This is the grand point after all. What public opinion says or newspaper writers think matters nothing. We are not going to stand at the bar of man when we die. He that judgeth us is the Lord God of the Bible. What saith the Lord?
1. I turn to the history of creation. I read there, “God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it” (Gen 2:3). I find the Sabbath mentioned in the very beginning of all things. There are five things that were given to the father of the human race in the day that he was made. God gave him a dwelling place, a work to do, a command to observe, a help meet to be his companion, and a Sabbath Day to keep. I am utterly unable to believe that it was in the mind of God that there ever should be a time when Adam’s children should keep no Sabbath.
2. I turn to the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai. I there read one whole commandment out of ten devoted to the Sabbath Day, and that the longest, fullest, and most minute of all (Exo 20:8–11). I see a broad, plain distinction between these Ten Commandments and any other part of the Law of Moses. It was the only part spoken in the hearing of all the people; and after the Lord had spoken it, the Book of Deuteronomy expressly says, “He added no more” (Deu 5:22). It was delivered under circumstances of singular solemnity and accompanied by thunder, lightning, and an earthquake. It was the only part written on tables of stone by God Himself. It was the only part put inside the ark. I find the law of the Sabbath side by side with the law about idolatry, murder, adultery, theft, and the like. I am utterly unable to believe that it was meant to be only of temporary obligation.
3. I turn to the writings of the Old Testament Prophets. I find them repeatedly speaking of the breach3 of the Sabbath side by side with the most heinous4 transgressions of the Moral Law (Eze 20:13, 16, 24; 22:8, 26). I find them speaking of it as one of the great sins that brought judgments on Israel and carried the Jews into captivity (Neh 13:18; Jer 17:19-27). It seems clear to me that the Sabbath, in their judgment, is something far higher than the washings and cleansings of the ceremonial law. I am utterly unable to believe, when I read their language, that the Fourth Commandment was one of the things one day to pass away.
4. I turn to the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ when He was upon earth. I cannot discover that our Savior ever let fall a word in discredit of any one of the Ten Commandments. On the contrary, I find Him declaring at the outset of His ministry that He came not to “destroy the law…but to fulfil,” and the context of the passage where He uses these words satisfies me that He was not speaking of the ceremonial law, but the moral (Mat 5:17). I find Him speaking of the Ten Commandments as a recognized standard of moral right and wrong: “Thou knowest the commandments” (Mar 10:19). I find Him speaking eleven times on the subject of the Sabbath, but it is always to correct the superstitious additions that the Pharisees had made to the Law of Moses about observing it and never to deny the holiness of the day. He no more abolishes the Sabbath than a man destroys a house when he cleans off the moss or weeds from its roof. Above all, I find our Savior taking for granted the continuance of the Sabbath when He foretells the destruction of Jerusalem. “Pray ye,” He says to the disciples, “that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day” (Mat 24:20). I am utterly unable to believe, when I see all this, that our Lord did not mean the Fourth Commandment to be as binding on Christians as the other nine.
5. I turn to the writings of the apostles. I there find plain speaking about the temporary nature of the ceremonial law and its sacrifices and ordinances. I see them called “carnal” and “weak.” I am told they are a “shadow of good things to come” (Heb 10:1)—“a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ” (Gal 3:24), and “imposed on them until the time of reformation” (Heb 9:10). But I cannot find a syllable in their writings that teaches that any one of the Ten Commandments is done away. On the contrary, I see St. Paul speaking of the Moral Law in the most respectful manner, though he teaches strongly that it cannot justify us before God. When he teaches the Ephesians the duty of children to parents, he simply quotes the Fifth Commandment: “Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise)” (Rom 7:12; 13:8; Eph 6:2; 1Ti 1:8). I see St. James and St. John recognizing the Moral Law as a rule, acknowledged and accredited among those to whom they wrote (Jam 2:10; 1Jo 3:4). Again, I say that I am utterly unable to believe that when the apostles spoke of the Law, they only meant nine commandments and not ten.
6. I turn to the practice of the apostles, when they were engaged in planting the Church of Christ. I find distinct mention of their keeping one day of the week as a holy day (Act 20:7; 1Co 16:2). I find the day spoken of by one of them as “the Lord’s day” (Rev 1:10). Undoubtedly, the day was changed: it was made the first day of the week in memory of our Lord’s resurrection, instead of the seventh—but I believe the apostles were divinely inspired to make that change, and at the same time wisely directed to make no public decree about it.5 The decree would only have raised a ferment6 in the Jewish mind and caused needless offence; the change was one that it was better to effect gradually, and not to force on the consciences of weak brethren. The change did not interfere with the spirit of the Fourth Commandment in the smallest degree: the Lord’s Day, on the first day of the week, was just as much a day of rest after six days’ labor, as the seventh-day Sabbath had been. But why we are told so pointedly about the “first day of the week” and the “Lord’s Day,” if the apostles kept no one day more holy than another, is to my mind wholly inexplicable.
7. I turn, in the last place, to the pages of unfulfilled prophecy. I find there a plain prediction that in the last days, when the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth, there shall still be a Sabbath. “From one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD” (Isa 66:23). The subject of this prophecy no doubt is deep. I do not pretend to say that I can fathom all its parts, but one thing is very certain to me: in the glorious days to come on the earth, there is to be a Sabbath, and a Sabbath not for the Jews only, but for “all flesh.” And when I see this, I am utterly unable to believe that God meant the Sabbath to cease between the first coming of Christ and the second. I believe He meant it to be an everlasting ordinance in His Church.
I ask serious attention to these arguments from Scripture. To my own mind, it appears very plain that wherever God has had a church, in Bible times, God has also had a Sabbath Day. My own firm conviction is that a church without a Sabbath would not be a church on the model of Scripture.
Let me close this part of the subject by offering two cautions, which I consider are eminently required by the temper of the times.
For one thing, let us beware of undervaluing the Old Testament. There has arisen of late years a most unhappy tendency to slight and despise any religious argument that is drawn from an Old Testament source, and to regard the man who uses it as a dark, benighted, and old-fashioned person. We shall do well to remember that the Old Testament is just as much inspired as the New and that the religion of both Testaments is in the main, and at the root, one and the same. The Old Testament is the gospel in the bud; the New Testament is the gospel in full flower. The Old Testament is the gospel in the blade; the New Testament is the gospel in full ear. The Old Testament saints saw many things through a glass darkly, but they looked to the same Christ by faith and were led by the same Spirit as ourselves. Let us, therefore, never listen to those who sneer at Old Testament arguments. Much infidelity begins with an ignorant contempt of the Old Testament.
For another thing, let us beware of despising the law of the Ten Commandments. I grieve to observe how exceedingly loose and unsound the opinions of many men are upon this subject. I have been astonished at the coolness with which even clergymen sometimes speak of them as a part of Judaism, which may be classed with sacrifices and circumcision. I wonder how such men can read them to their congregations every week! For my own part, I believe that the coming of Christ’s gospel did not alter the position of the Ten Commandments one hair’s breadth. If anything, it rather exalted and raised their authority. I believe that, in due place and proportion, it is just as important to expound and enforce them, as to preach Christ crucified. By them is the knowledge of sin. By them, the Spirit teaches men their need of a Savior. By them, the Lord Jesus teaches His people how to walk and please God. I suspect it would be well for the Church if the Ten Commandments were more frequently expounded in the pulpit than they are. At all events, I fear that much of the present ignorance on the Sabbath question is attributable to erroneous views about the Fourth Commandment.
Notes:
1 priestcraft – influence and work of priests.
2 imposition – making something required by a rule.
3 breach – breaking.
4 heinous – extremely wicked.
5 The Jews had a regard for their Sabbath above almost anything in the laws of Moses…Therefore, Christ dealt very tenderly with them in this point. Other things of this nature we find very gradually revealed. Christ had many things to say, as we are informed, which yet He said not because they could not as yet bear them and gave this
reason for it: it was like putting new wine into old bottles (Joh 16:12).—Jonathan Edwards
6 ferment – agitation; excitement.
From “The Sabbath” in Knots Untied, in the public domain. Courtesy of Chapel Library.
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J. C. Ryle (1816-1900): English Anglican Bishop and author; born at Macclesfield, Cheshire County, UK.