HOW IS JESUS OUR SABBATH REST? UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LAW AND GRACE
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE OLD COVENANT AND THE NEW COVENANT
One thing that I’ve learned in all my years in business is that we can learn a lot by asking questions. Over the past 5 ½ years of sharing with others what God has shared with me on Facebook, I’ve seen many comments and have had many questions directed at me. Here I have put together some questions on LAW and GRACE and the SABBATH. I hope that these questions and answers will give you a better understanding of God’s eternal word.
LAW AND GRACE
There is so much conflict among Christians about law versus grace. Some Christians conclude that only by grace can anyone be saved while others determine that the law must be kept, and still others say that keeping the law leads to the grace which saves. Because this issue has to do with the way of salvation, the conflict over different views can be intense. I’m sure that 80% of all difficulty in local churches would end if God’s people would recognize the difference between law and grace, and if they would see the difference between God’s program for national Israel and God’s program for the church (the bride of Christ). There are some churches that preach law many times more than they preach grace, and they tell people that if they don’t live up to the commandments, they will lose their salvation. As a result, many church members serve the Lord through fear instead of by love.
WHERE DOES IT SAY THAT THE LAW WAS GIVEN ONLY TO ISRAEL?
We read in Romans 9:14, Nehemiah 9:13-14, and Exodus 20 that the Mosaic Law was never given to any other nation or people but to the Children of Israel. The Apostle Paul said, “For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things contained in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves (Rom 2:14).”
God gave the Mosaic law to the people of Israel to set them apart from other nations around them, to define righteousness and to define sin. The law was given to one nation to prove that no one can be saved by God’s perfect law. No human can meet God’s perfect standard. God tried it out on the Jewish nation for 1500 years and proved that not a single person on the face of the earth is able to keep the Mosaic law. The law was proven unable to change the hearts of people (Rom. 8:3) and this is why God had to send down to earth His perfect sinless Son to take our punishment on Himself – his life for ours – paying our debt to God in full and forever freeing us from God’s righteous condemnation. The blood of Jesus covers our sins so that God sees us as perfect as His own Son (Isa.53:4-6; 2 Cor. 5:21).
MEANING OF THE LAW
Most people when they think of the law immediately think of the Ten Commandments, but the law consisted of many more commandments and precepts besides the Ten Commandments. When you read the expression “the law,” it means the entire law that God gave to Israel through Moses – ceremonial laws, judicial laws, moral laws, etc.
When we study the commandments of the Bible, we must be careful to distinguish between the commandments given to Israel, the commandments given to the Church, and the commandments given prior to the time of Moses. This is what we mean by “rightly dividing the word of truth” as spoken of in 2 Timothy 2:15. Many of the commandments that God gave Israel are repeated in the church epistles (letters written to the churches extending from the book of Romans to Jude), but nowhere do we find a command for believers in this Church Age to keep the Sabbath, pay tithes or offer animal sacrifices.
Regarding the Ten Commandments, these 10 precepts were given to Israel at Sinai, as we’re told in Exodus 20:1-2. The Israelites were the only people brought up out of the land of Egypt, and to quote the Ten Commandments and leave off the introduction telling for whom they were intended is to misapply Scripture.
Gods’ commandments for believers today under the New Covenant that came into effect on Christ’s death are found in 1 John 3:23 – that we should believe on Christ Jesus and to love one another. That’s it. We don’t have to worry about any previous commandments other than these two. Galatians 5;14 confirms this: “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Romans 13:10 reconfirms that love is the fulfilment of the law: “Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.”
Again, New Testament believers are freed from the bondage of sin, which allows them to freely live out the Ten Commandments, summarized by Christ this way: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 22:36-40).”
Clearly, Christ became the end of the law by virtue of what He did on earth through His sinless life and His sacrifice on the cross. So, the law no longer has any bearing over us because its demands have been fully met in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith in Christ who satisfied the righteous demands of the law restores us into a pleasing relationship with God and keeps us there. No longer under the penalty of the law, we now live under the law of grace in the love of God.
IF THE LAW DOES NOT HELP TO SAVE US, WHY THEN DID GOD GIVE THE LAW?
The answer to this question is found in Romans 3:19 where it says, “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those (Jewish people) who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.” Paul tells us here that the law was given to Israel to stop the mouth of every person who would teach salvation by works. The law of God is the best mouth stopper on earth. When a person reads the law, it will immediately shut his mouth and make him realize that he is not nearly as good as he thinks he is.
WHEN DID THE LAW COME TO AN END?
The law served until the death of Christ. When Christ came and was made a curse for us, He redeemed us from the law. We read in Galatians 3:19: “… till the Seed (Jesus) should come to whom the promise was made…..” This is reconfirmed in Romans 10:4: “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” Jesus Christ is the only Person who ever kept God’s law, and He kept it for us and died for us because we couldn’t keep it. This is confirmed in Romans 8:2-3, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death………” Thank God we have such wonderful Savior. In this, the Church Age, we are now living under the New Covenant that came into effect at Christ’s death and we live in a way that honors Him.
SINCE WE ARE NOT UNDER THE LAW, HOW DOES GOD EXPECT US TO LIVE TODAY?
According to the New Testament, born-again believers are to be led by the Holy Spirit. We are not to be led by the law or by the preacher in the pulpit or by a denominational machine. In this Age of Grace, we as born-again believers have the gift of the Spirit dwelling in us, and God asks us to walk in the Spirit. Galatians 5:16 tells us to “walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.”
The Holy Spirit (not the law) is our teacher today. Our Lord Jesus, speaking of the promise of the Spirit, said that the Holy Spirit would teach us all things, and bring all things to our remembrance, and guide us into all truth. This is confirmed in John 14:26: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” This is reconfirmed in John 16:13: “when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth….. and He will tell you things to come.” As believers we now have the Spirit of God indwelling us to convict us of things that are wrong and to comfort us when we are walking in the steps of our Lord and Master.
When we believe on Christ, we receive a new teacher – one who not only can teach us what to do, but one who can give us the strength to do it as well. We read this in Titus 2:11-12:26: “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age.” Please note that it says, “For the grace of God that brings salvation teaches us,” it doesn’t say, “The law of Moses that brings salvation teaches us.” No, no, it says, “The Grace Of God… Teaches Us.”
The law is not the rule of life for the believer in Christ. The law served until the coming of Christ. When Christ came and was made a curse for us, He redeemed us from the law; so today we have a new teacher – the grace of God.
WHICH DAY IS THE SABBATH?
Saturday is the Sabbath. In Exodus 20:10 we are told: “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.” Many churchgoing people unknowingly call Sunday, the first day of the week, the Sabbath. They are in error. Nowhere in the Bible is the first day of the week ever called the Sabbath nor is there proof that God ever changed the Sabbath. The notion that the Sabbath was changed from Saturday to Sunday by our Lord is utterly without foundation.
MUST THE SABBATH BE OBSERVED TODAY?
No, God never commanded a single Gentile or born-again believer to keep the Sabbath day. The Sabbath was strictly a sign between God and Israel – The Mosaic Covenant. This is confirmed in Exodus 31:12-13: “And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, ‘speak also to the children of Israel: Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you…….….” The Sabbath was for the Jewish people and the Jewish people only. As a Jewish ordinance it was never abrogated, changed, or transferred to any other day of the week, or to any other people. No place in God’s Word will you find any command for the Church, the Body of Christ, to observe a Sabbath day.
This being the case, the Sabbath does not belong to the “Church,” for the Sabbath day is a part of the law and born-again believers are not under the law, but under grace (Romans 6:14). In his letter to the Galatians, Paul reproved them for going back to the Law, and declared that those who did so were under the curse of the law (Gal. 3:10). Paul stated: “Therefore let no one judge you in food or drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths (Col. 2:16).”
The Sabbath spoken of in the Old Testament was a shadow of something better that was coming and that’s the eternal rest that we have in Christ Jesus. Let me explain: Just as in the relationship Adam and Eve had with God in the very beginning going back to creation, you discover that the rest that God intended after creation was something completely different from the Mosaic Law. The rest God intended was based on the perfect relationship between God and humanity as He had with Adam and Eve before their disobedience or fall from God’s grace. But, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, sin entered the world, and they lost that rest. They lost that relationship they had with their Creator and later God gave Israel the Sabbath as a way of reminding them that He was going to restore that rest.
As time passed Jesus, God in the flesh, came down to earth as a sinless Lamb of God who by His own sacrifice on Calvary’s cross took away all the sins of the entire world – past, present, and future sins never to be remembered again and He was the only one worthy of fulfilling the entire Mosaic Law.
After His resurrection, Jesus Christ did not leave us alone on this earth when He ascended to heaven but promised to send the Holy Spirit to indwell believers and to guide believers through their lives (Acts 1:6-8). Since His ascension to heaven, Jesus Christ, our high priest now sits at the right hand of God, the Father, interceding on our behalf (Romans 8:34). Because sin no longer separates us from God, we as believers have eternal life through the indwelling Holy Spirit and now, we can get to experience God’s Sabbath (eternal rest) again because the relationship with God has been restored. We can rest in Him to do in us whatever He has planned.
As born-again believers in the New Covenant we don’t have to set aside Saturday or Sunday because we should set aside every day for the Lord. Every day belongs to God as we are His children, therefore, we rest every day in Him. We are called to rest 24/7 because of who Jesus is and what He accomplished for us so we can say that the fourth commandment of the Mosaic Law was a shadow of the rest we could experience in faith in Christ Jesus.
We are resting in all the things that He accomplished for us through His death, burial, and resurrection. And that rest is eternal in nature. So, it’s not confined to a single day of the week, it’s an experience that we have eternally through our relationship with Jesus Christ.
JESUS IS OUR SABBATH REST
Jesus is our Sabbath rest because He is “Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 12:8).” As God incarnate, He decides the true meaning of the Sabbath because He created it, and He is our Sabbath rest in the flesh. As Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus had the right, power, and authority to dispense it in any way He pleased. The Lord of the Sabbath had come, and with His death and resurrection He became the fulfilment of our “Sabbath rest.” The salvation we have in Christ has made the old law of the Sabbath no longer needed or binding. When Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27), Jesus was attesting to the fact that, just as the Sabbath day was originally instituted to give man rest from his labors, so did He come to provide us rest from laboring to achieve our own salvation by our own works. Because of His sacrifice on the cross, we can now forever cease laboring to attain God’s favor and rest in His mercy and grace.
In closing, it’s not about a certain day of the week – it’s all about faith in Christ Jesus and responding to His love in us. Since Christ’s death we live in a New Covenant – a new relationship between God and mankind mediated by Jesus Christ. The Sabbath in the Old Testament was a shadow of better things to come – today Jesus is the reality in the New Covenant. Responding to the love of God, seven days a week, is the new Sabbath rest.
Oscar