Why Don't Christians Honor The Sabbath?

QUESTION: I’m a Christian, but one of my big unanswered questions is this: why don’t we honor the Sabbath?  It’s a commandment and it’s NOT SUNDAY – Sunday is a Pagan holiday!

ANSWER: I actually agree that we should honor the Sabbath as an ongoing part of the moral law.  However, I think that the controversy about how we honor it and when, stems from the fact that Jesus said things that altered the believer’s relationship with the Sabbath.

For example, by the time of Jesus ministry, the Sabbath had turned into rules upon rules that forbade anything one might deem “work”.  So one Rabbi said (this is not a joke) that he wouldn’t eat an egg on the Sabbath because that meant a chicken had been working!  

Into this legalistic world Jesus disciples were walking along one day and ate some wheat they found at the edge of a field.  The Pharisees were stunned.  This violated the Sabbath because to them it constituted ‘threshing’.  Jesus responded in defense of his followers by pointing to two times in Scripture when ceremonial laws were violated with God’s specific permission, both times violations of Temple procedure. Then He says this shocking thing: 

Matt 12:6-8: “But I tell you that something greater than the temple is here! 7 If you had known what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent. 8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

This is amazing on a couple levels.  One, it seems Jesus is preparing the ground for the Church to abandon the ceremonial laws of the Torah.  He does this on several other occasions, like when Mark says that Jesus “declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19) or when Jesus mentioned there were “weightier matters in the law” which related to its MORAL duties as opposed to its ceremonial duties (Matt 23:23).

Two, Jesus in this teaching is putting himself higher than the Temple!  And in so doing, declares that He is over the Law!  And he was clearly reserving the right to reinterpret the law and tell us what parts of Moses are being prepared to be laid aside.

As a result of Jesus, every Christian now believes that much of the Mosaic code is no longer in force for believers.  We do however, carry forward the moral demands of the Law as a guide for discipleship (even as we realize no one is saved by obeying the law, for no one is able to, Rom 3:20-21).

This leaves us with the critical question: is the Sabbath part of the ongoing moral demands of the Law, like do not murder, etc, or is it part of the ceremonial laws which Jesus clearly lifted?  This question is the heart of the controversy about the Sabbath.

Some believe that all obligation to Sabbath keeping is nullified in Jesus words.  John MacArthur just made a pretty strong case about that, if you want to check out his sermon online.  But I don’t agree totally with him.  I think that all 10 of the 10 commandments are the objective definition of loving behavior toward God and toward our fellow man.  If so, there must be an ethical/moral imperative that remains for Christians who are not saved by that Law, but who nevertheless are called to walk in love, which the Law defines.  I believe therefore, that the Sabbath command is part of the obligation we have to love God and love ourselves.

Jesus in fact would say love is the moral force behind the Sabbath when he said in Mark 2:27-28:

“The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. 28 Therefore the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

The Sabbath is for us!  We are not made to be slaves to Sabbath rules, rather the idea of rest is built into creation and moral law so that Sabbath serves us!

So if this is an ethical demand that carries forward and it is for us rather than us made to come under a bunch of Sabbath rules, this poses a new question:  does this mean we are free to change the means by which we obey the Sabbath?  Can we find and obey the ethical demand inside the commandment, even if the rigid rules around the Sabbath, which Jesus clearly rejected, are discarded?  I think the answer to that is yes!

I say this because already in the early church, you see them meeting on “the First day of the Week”.  That’s Sunday.  They were mostly all Jews, so that didn’t mean that they were not also observing the Sabbath on Saturday.  But it does mean that already within the first generation of Christians, the worship of God and the observance of rest and reflection was transferring Sabbath qualities onto a different day.

To add to this elasticity about the Sabbath, Paul asked Gentiles to be patient with Jews who considered some specific Days sacred, but Paul clearly was not critical of those who didn’t observe those special Sabbaths which Moses commanded (Rom 14:5).  So, already in the early church, Jesus' teaching on the Sabbath had lifted some of the specific requirements of Sabbath observance found in Moses.  I think therefore, that Christians have freedom to do Sabbath things (Rest, Reflect, Recreate) on different days and certainly not in subservience to the traditions of the Jews – Jesus made that abundantly clear.

What that means is that the ongoing moral content of the 4th commandment is that we must regularly, about once a week, and for a whole day, just rest.  Jesus modeled this rhythm of rest even as he pushed back hard against Sabbath regulations (Mark 6:31)  By the way, Sabbath doesn’t mean "Saturday" - it means, “pause”.  What’s important is not Saturday, what’s important is rest.

Looking at the creation narrative, rest is actually our default posture before God. When we were created, on the first day of Adam and Eve’s life, they entered into rest!  How awesome is that!  God made us in rest.  We work, yes, and we love productive labor, but rest is what we start in, spiritually and physically.  We launch out of rest into work, rather than see rest as the reward for work.  What a beautiful statement about grace!  Work does not save us.  Grace comes always comes before work.  Adam and Eve started in the grace of rest.

I think Christians who take Jesus teaching, “I am Lord of the Sabbath” to mean that we don’t need to feel a moral obligation to rest anymore are sadly mistaken.  Thankfully we are not saved by our perfect adherence to the moral law, but rather by grace.  Yet, on any of the moral commands that we fail to obey, we are failing to love, for Love summarizes all the law, including the 4th commandment.

However, to think that worshiping and resting on Sunday is to somehow honor a pagan holiday is mistaken as well.  Yes, the first day of the week is named after the Sun by pagans, but Thursday is named after Thor.  I don’t think I’m honoring Thor every time I write that day of the week on letters or emails!  If Paul said we are to have freedom regarding special days, then the day is what you make it.  

And the early Christians didn’t seem to care what the day was named, it happened to be the day that the Lord Jesus rose bodily from the dead!  If it was a "pagan day" before that, God had clearly robbed the gods of their right to that day and declared it His own, by honoring it with the Resurrection of His Son! 

Or do you think that it was for no reason that the “first day of the week” is mentioned so often in Scripture in this regard?  (Matt 28:1, Mark 16:9, Luke 24:1, John 20:1, Act 20:7, 1 Cor 16:2)  Scripture shows the early Christians were doing communion, taking offerings, and worshiping on that day, which means they were having sacred Christian gatherings - church services - on that day, already in 58 AD!

So I think you can be at peace about the specific day Christians honor the Sabbath, but do continue to honor the regular, weekly rhythm of rest as part of your duty to love God and love your neighbor as yourself – for Jesus said, God made the rule of rest, for us!

Is The Prohibition Against Cross Dressing in Deut. 22:5 Still Valid?

QUESTION: Is Deut 22:5 prohibition on cross dressing no longer a law for Christians since Jesus came and fulfilled the law?  

Deuteronomy 22:5:  A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this. NIV

RESPONSE:  You correctly understand that the ceremonial Law of Moses is no longer binding on God’s people.  In fact, the cross lifts all the duties of the Law as a means to be made right with God.  The moral duties, however, remain as a guide for Christian discipleship.  The question for this passage then is, does it fall completely within the ceremonial law which has been abrogated by Jesus work, or is there some moral content which remains that aids Christian maturing?

To find out let’s remember that all the Law is about “being holy as I the Lord am Holy” – and “holy” has a sense of separation as well as moral purity.  So very often, the ceremonial restrictions of the law are about maintaining separateness while there seems to be no moral content to the command itself.  But because a LACK of separation would LEAD to impurity, the two are tied together.

For example, the Israelites were not to shave their heads above the ears (Lev 19:27).  There is no moral content in this command – it’s about hair!  This is ceremonial law with no ongoing responsibility for the Christian believer.  Ah, but if we know the context of ancient Canaanite pagan worship, we see God doesn’t give the command without any moral concern whatsoever. 

In Canaan, many of local priests would shave their heads in devotion to Baal.  So the hair command is about maintaining strict separateness so that Israel will not be like those who worship false gods.  And when we think about all the moral issues that went along with that worship (adultery, family breakdown, disease, prostitution, infanticide), suddenly the weirdly restrictive rules are given a moral imperative.

It’s the same with Deuteronomy 22:5.  A little bit of research reveals that almost every pagan culture has practiced some form of cross-dressing in worship rituals.  Theodore Burgh, in his book “Listening to the Artifacts” said that in ancient Mesopotamia, transvestites, men dressed like women, played and danced in the cult of Ishtar, performing erotic dances and pantomime.

In Canaan religion, their god Baal had a consort, the goddess wife Asherah and worshipers would engage in ritual prostitution with male and female cult prostitutes at hillside shines.  This was to encourage these gods to mate and make the earth fertile.  The Bible indicates that these cult prostitutes has specific dress (2 Kings 10:22; 23:7) for such ceremonies, as they played out the orgies of the gods.

So, the command against cross dressing likely had this in mind.  It was meant to keep Israel away from all practices that had anything to do with pagan worship – which, as mentioned above, led to every kind of evil that destroys people, children and society.

Since we don’t live in Canaan where such pagan rituals thrive, what is there to take from such a command?  First, this command confirms that there is male and female dress codes in all cultures and all times.  Second, this gender dress-coding is independent of the actual styles or modes of dress.  Which is to say that what exactly constitutes male and female dress is a culturally bound thing, but having differences in male/female dress is universal. 

For example, we can’t just think of pants as male, and dresses as female (as my grandma used to think).  Ancient peoples wore robes, both men and women, which to us all look like dresses or skirts, but somehow they knew the difference between male and female robes.  Dress codes change constantly, but everyone in all cultures knows when someone is trying to dress like the opposite gender.

Now, if we don’t follow the dietary restrictions of the Law, should Christians ignore this concern for gender distinction in clothing?  

When it comes to sex and gender Jesus taught us that the lasting moral designs of God are embedded in the creation account… which supersede Mosaic restrictions and permissions (Deut 24:1).  There we see God’s sexual design infused into the duality of human gender, male and female.  He makes us distinctly bifurcated into two and yet both are made in his Image.  So the difference is as sacred as the Image itself.  When Eve is made from Adam, we see God in their diversity – but then this very diversity is blended into a communal oneness of marriage when the “two become one flesh”.

All of this is holy. 

• The Image,
• The separating of the Image into Two,
• The blending of the diverse image bearers into marital oneness again.

This all is holy because it is like God.  God is a unity of diversity.  So any world where one or all of these three things are diminished or denied is a world of weakened human flourishing.  Because it’s a world where the beauty of God’s unity-in-diversity design is marred.

Ironically, the modern doctrine of gender fluidity destroys the beautiful complementarity between the genders, while at the same time invoking the sacredness of gender to do so!!  How?  Well, the message today is that you can pick your gender.  But when you express a different gender than the one assigned to you at birth, everyone knows exactly the mold you must fit into in order to be that gender!

If a man wishes to be a woman, he mustn’t simply declare it.  He knows instinctively what he needs to do to express that gender: soften his skin, surgically shave his brow and chin, acquire breasts, wear softer, more colorful clothing, soften his voice, grow his hair long and paint his nails and face.   In other words he must conform himself to instinctual patterns of femininity.  “Gender is a social construct,” we hear, therefore the line between male and female must be very blurry indeed.  But if we wish to cross that line embrace this ancient gender archetype!

Well, Christians believe that these gender archetypes are so enduring and inescapable precisely because they relate to our spiritual makeup.  Thus masculinity and femininity are sacred because they both, in complementary ways, express the Image of God.  That’s why Christians treat them as inviolable and resist transgenderism (even if we readily acknowledge and have compassion for that real and troubling psychological condition).  God speaks through Nature and human nature is clearly built on male and female, therefore we Christians don’t presume to challenge that or erase what is inerasable.

But it’s not surprising that when cultures suppress this truth, sex starts to become a free for all (see Romans 1).  Ideas have consequences, and if a society carries the idea that sex is not designed and carries no implicit higher meaning, then whatever makes you feel good sexually becomes our only guiding principle.  In such a world, unlimited sexual experimentation would not only be allowed, it would be encouraged because we are now the gods who get to invent meaning.  We get to take this accidental outcome of Nature (sex) and express it however we want (even while we bow to these inbuilt gender archetypes!).

So, we may not live where priests cross-dress to incite sexual intercourse that spills the bounds of committed, monogamous, heterosexual love - but given our current doctrines on gender, perhaps we do live in Canaan after all!  To this extent, Deut 22:5 may not be binding on believers, yet it hints strongly at the beauty and inviolable duality of human gender from Creation.

Now let me be clear:  this doesn’t mean Moses should be used to dictate any particular modes of dress for male or female Christians today.  Styles are very culturally relative and similar modes can have male and female versions.  Even so we affirm gender distinction, expressed in our clothing, built on the sacred masculine and sacred feminine and the dance of Oneness between them.  This duality reflects God back to us so beautifully, Christians cannot go along with  any way of thinking or dressing that intentionally tries to blur it.

Are O.T. Food Laws Binding on Christians?

QUESTION:  Does God want us, even today, to obey his laws about which food we may and may not eat?  Deuteronomy 14:3-21 (NLT) states clearly what those are.  Please direct me to verses in the New Testament that acknowledges that law and/or what He says about that for these times.

ANSWER: Thanks for the question.  The short answer is no.  We can say so with authority because Jesus himself gave us clear direction on this very issue.   Jesus said in Mk 7:18-19 "Are you so dull?" he asked. "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him 'unclean'? For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body." [Then, Mark adds this editorial comment so we don't miss the implication of Jesus' words:]  (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods "clean.") NIV

The early church took a while to follow the implication of Jesus words, because it's first members were all Jewish.  But it became an issue when the gospel needed to go to the Gentiles.  Would the church make all new believers follow Mosaic law, including Jewish dietary codes, or would they just be required simply to believe in Christ and follow him?  The answer from God himself was the latter.  Here’s how it happened:

Jesus’ lead disciple Peter, who had a really hard time accepting Gentiles as Christian brothers (Gal. 2:11-12), got a vision from God.  In that one vision, God taught him two things:  one, that all foods were clean, that the old Jewish dietary code was now obsolete, and two, that God was freely accepting “unclean” Gentiles into the Kingdom of Christ - WITHOUT requiring them to become Jews first.  This vision was of unclean foods which God tells Peter to kill and eat!  and "do not declare unclean, what God has made clean."  This is a key moment in church history, where the first Gentiles are welcomed into the Church - Acts 10.

Now, the implications of that vision vision for ceremonial law observance in the Church was confirmed by Peter at the Council of Jerusalem a few years later.  In Acts 15:10-11 we read him standing up to say to his Jewish brothers, "Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke [the Mosaic law] that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?  No!  We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are." NIV

So they did not require Gentiles coming into the church to observe Jewish ceremonial law, specifically circumcision, but all Mosaic law including the food laws.

Now, at the end of that discussion, the Gentile churches were asked to not eat meat with blood left in it, which is a ceremonial food law (15:29).  But most scholars agree this was not about making those laws binding again on Christians.  Rather, they retained just those few (out of the hundreds!) in order to facilitate fellowship between the Jewish and Gentile believers.  They could hardly eat together if the Gentiles were violating a key food law in front of their Jewish brothers.  And eating together was necessary to express Church unity, in their many shared meals, and especially the love feast.

So Romans 14:14 states the principle again very clearly - "no food is unclean" for a believer.  But again, the principle that follows is that we should not seek to put a stumbling block in anyone's path.  If certain foods violate a person's scruples and he feels he cannot eat them, then we should abstain in front of that person to not upset them or violate their conscience.

So in Christ, in the New Covenant period, all ceremonial laws of the O.T. are non-binding on Christians, including the dietary code of Deut 14:3ff.  They were shadows highlighting the holiness of God, the sinfulness (uncleanness) of men, and our need for grace and purity.  But Jesus is the reality toward which these shadows pointed.

Now, we can ask, was there ANY value in those food laws other than a spiritual principle teaching the Jews to value what is clean over what is unclean?  Actually yes there was, especially for an ancient, pre-scientific, agrarian tribe.  

If you look at the forbidden foods, the unclean animals are usually omnivores, and scavengers.  Pigs, shellfish, vultures etc.  These animals eat most anything, often the decaying flesh of animals or other material, and therefore, could often transmit illness if not cooked properly.  Pork and shellfish still carry this risk today, but modern cooking minimizes it.  God is always concerned with his people in the law - even the ceremonial parts of it.

The same could be said of the hundreds of times God calls for regular ceremonial washing, 3500 years before the discovery of bacteria!

Why the longer purification period for girls than boys in Lev 12?

Question:

In Leviticus 12 a women must be purified for 8 days then 33 more days for the birth of a boy and then double those numbers if she gives birth to a girl............why the difference?

Answer:

This one has scholars a bit stumped. The first assumption of some scholars was that because the period of time was about purification for uncleanness, the longer waiting period indicated a greater uncleanness in the thing that defiled you. Thus this longer purification period meant that girls made you twice as "dirty" as boys. They assumed this was about women’s inferior status in Hebrew society.

However, this view has mostly been rejected today because of it`s inconsistencies with everything else in Mosaic law. For example, touching a dead human defiles you for 7 days more than touching a dead pig! (Lev 11:31 vs Num 19:11). So clearly, the length of purification had nothing to do with the inherent "worth" or lack of worth of what defiles you. And the fact that both women and men get to offer sacrifices, and were subject to exactly the same penalties for uncleanness as men (chp 15) shows a remarkable equality of worth and value in ancient Israel for men and women – far more than the surrounding nations, for sure.

So what is the answer? Some possibilities:

1. It`s a refection of Eve`s role in the fall. This view ties itself to 1 Tim 2:15-17 for support, but there`s no connection made to Eve in Leviticus at all. A similar view refers to apocryphal Jewish writings that had Adam entering in the Garden of Eden on week one and Eve after two weeks - and thus girls had to be quarantined longer... But both these views suffer from being too speculative and reading later material back into an older work...

2. It`s a reflection of medical views current at the time... For example, it might have been assumed that the birth of a girl was commonly believed to be accompanied by more complications than a boy, and/or that the vaginal discharge was greater or lasted longer for girls than boys. That would fit with the fact that usually uncleanness is related to the touching of blood (Lev 15:25). It`s not birth that makes you unclean, after all, it`s the blood involved in the birthing process.

3. It`s a refection of the anticipation of the baby girl`s future role as a mother. Meaning? Well, motherhood was so critical and valuable in those days that they would look at the birth of a daughter as involving TWO mothers - the one giving birth, and the one being born. Thus because two women (who are generators of uncleanness by their menstrual cycles AND their birthing role) are involved in the birth of a girl, the period of purification had to be twice as long.

4. Another view is that male children`s purification is shorter because of circumcision. They bleed only once in their life, on day eight, and are thus more formally included in the covenant community and come under God`s grace more explicitly, therefore, their purification is half as long as that of girls who are not circumcised.

No one knows for sure why the double waiting period for girls... but I think the 3rd view is the strongest or perhaps some combination with the 2nd and 4th. Without a reason stated in the text we are left to speculate. However, behind all of these purification laws, despite their confusing details, is something amazing: Here is God commanding fastidious washing for his people 3500 years before we found out how much disease is spread through micro organisms found in blood and unclean conditions... that’s pretty cool!