If we admit that Jesus did not abolish the Fourth Commandment, either by his teaching or his practice, we are still left with some “controversial” statements from the pen of the Apostle Paul. In Colossians 2:16 Paul wrote, “So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths.”
Some believe that this text clearly and directly shows that there is no longer any obligation to keep God’s command to remember the Sabbath day. But this view does not stand up to a careful consideration of the apostle’s words.
The word “sabbath” in the New Testament refers only and always to the seventh day sabbath—Saturday—or to Jewish feasts or holy days. Paul is therefore asserting that Christians are under no obligation to observe the Jewish religious calendar. Paul lumps the Jewish holy days in with the Jewish food laws. The Christian is not required to observe them–no matter what the “Judaizing” teachers insist. Paul is addressing the subject of things that are 1) Jewish and therefore 2) indifferent. But obedience to the Ten Commandments does not fall into either of those categories. Obedience to the Ten Commandments is not exclusively for the Jews, and it is not a matter of indifference. The Christian must remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. The Christian, however, obeys this command by making the first day of the week God’s day, not the seventh. Paul’s statement is indeed damaging to the notion that we must still observe the seventh day as a sabbath, but it does nothing to overturn the Fourth Commandment or to wrench it from its place in God’s moral law.
We are reminded of the danger of twisting the Scriptures to suit our native laziness and selfishness. As Paul wrote, “Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, from which some, having strayed, have turned aside to idle talk, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm” (1Timothy 1:5-7).
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