8. Sabbath as Conviction

 Thus far:

1. The Memory Verse Approach
2. Adventures in Interpretation
3. Adventures in Jewelry
4. Beginnings of Context
5. Adventures in Hair, Part I
6. What was 1 Corinthians 11 really about?
7. Keeping the Sabbath
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7. So should we follow the Seventh Day Adventists and start meeting on Saturdays, the seventh day of the week? 

Here's where we get to the crucial part. In Colossians 2:16, Paul and Timothy tell the Colossians not to let anyone judge them because of their non-observance of laws relating to "food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath." The mention of the Sabbath suggests that the "philosophy" that Paul and Timothy are warning about is a Jewish one or at least a pseudo-Jewish one. From the description, it is more religious than philosophy as we think of it.

What do Paul and Timothy tell this overwhelmingly Gentile congregation (cf. 2:11)? He tells them not to let anyone condemn them if they do not keep the food laws or the Sabbath as the Jews do. That is to say, he does not require Gentile believers to keep the Jewish Sabbath.

Let that sink in. They don't say, "You don't have to observe Saturday specifically, but be sure to take one day of rest to keep the Ten Commandments." They don't say, "Keep the principle of the Sabbath although you don't have to keep the letter." Paul simply tells the Gentile Colossians that they are not obligated to keep the Sabbath.

8. The Wesleyan Discipline used to have a statement in the Special Directions about "merchandizing on the Sabbath." Again, it was moved from membership requirements at some point to this special section so that the values of the traditionalists remained on the books, but the rule was not technically required. Clever politics again. 

(Again, mind you, the Sabbath was never Sunday in the Bible, so we never kept the biblical Sabbath in our history. This rule was about Sunday, which is never the Sabbath in Scripture.)

I was present at the General Conference where that language was completely removed. There was a brief rabbinic moment. A person representing the older holiness wing of the church stood up and said, "I wonder what Nehemiah would say about what we are doing given how strongly he forbid Israel from buying and selling on the Sabbath."

Then someone else stood up and read from Romans 14:5-6: "One person considers one day above another. Another person considers every day the same. Let each be fully convinced in his or her own mind. The one who minds the day minds it to the Lord." The context of this statement is Paul talking about how Christians with different convictions should get along with each other. Clearly, matters of the Jewish Law are under discussion, especially the food laws.

Romans 14 won the day at the General Conference. The prohibition on merchandizing on the Sabbath was removed from The Discipline

9. Paul's instruction in Romans 14 was to 1) operate on the basis of faith and giving glory to God and 2) be fully convinced. You can be wrongly convinced, of course (14:22). 

So one person is truly and fully convinced of what God requires of them. (Some people no doubt fool themselves or try to get away with things, but God is not fooled. That's God's business to sort out.) Then, another person is truly and fully convinced of something else. They both will stand individually before God.

So one person -- probably Jewish -- believes he or she must keep the kosher food laws. No pork. No blood. No eel. Another believer -- probably Gentile -- wants to eat pork. "Let each be fully convinced in his or her own mind." Both are equally spiritual in God's eyes if they are truly operating from faith.

Similarly, one person -- probably Jewish -- believes he or she must set aside sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday as a Sabbath. They will not work on this day. They will not buy or sell on this day. No problem, Paul says. "Let each be fully convinced in his or her own mind." 

But another person -- probably Gentile -- treats every day as God's day. They give every day to the glory of God. They live for the Lord on every day. They do not set aside a Sabbath or a special day of rest without work. Paul considers this person of equal spirituality to the other person if he or she is truly operating from faith.

Romans 14 indicates that two people can do exactly the same thing and one be sinning while the other isn't. The key is whether the action proceeds from faith (Rom. 14:23). One person does not set aside the Jewish Sabbath but does so fully convinced that it is not required of him or her and in full faith, giving every day to the Lord equally. He or she is not sinning. 

Another doubts significantly. He or she also does not keep the Sabbath but deep down really believes they should. He or she is not truly convinced and is actually resisting the Lord. That person is sinning.

10. On a side note, as someone who struggled with doubt, I don't think that Paul had the kind of navel-gazing in mind that I used to do when he talks about not having faith. James' comments on the "double-minded man" were once torture to me (Jas. 1:6-8). However, I believe hyper-introspection is largely a modern phenomenon, perhaps a hangover from the Romantic era of the late 1700s/early 1800s. 

I suspect Paul and James would look at young hyper-introspective Ken as crazy. "What's wrong with you man?" Being double-minded, I suspect, was about having clearly divided loyalties, not about neurotic introspection. Introspective doubts are doubts about yourself, while the doubts Paul and James have in mind are doubts about serving God.

11. I had a Sabbath discussion once with someone from my holiness background and presented what seems to me the clear teaching of Paul. There are no passages in the New Testament that instruct believers to keep the Sabbath. In fact, Jesus himself was criticized for not keeping the Sabbath the way his opponents thought it should be kept. His response was that he was Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28).

Mind you, I assume that most Jewish Christians -- including Paul -- largely continued to observe the Sabbath. But it seems to me that Gentile believers felt less constrained to keep it. And Paul does not seem to have put any pressure on them to keep it.

In the discussion I had with someone, the other person noted that the Sabbath commandment goes back to creation (Exod. 20:11). Doesn't that imply that it is universal, that it is built into the universe?

My response? "I know. Isn't it crazy? Paul doesn't care." 

That is to say, it doesn't seem to be of any concern to Paul that he is telling Gentile believers that they do not have to keep one of the Ten Commandments. It doesn't seem to bother him that, in a real sense, he is making the keeping of the fourth commandment culturally or individually relative. If you are a Jew, keep it. If you are not, it's a matter of personal conviction.

This seems to me the clear meaning of the text. Only our own faulty assumptions make it difficult. Paul doesn't seem to care. Whether Gentiles keep the Jewish Sabbath is a matter of personal conscience and conviction for him.

11. This is where we step back and talk about hermeneutics...