If you’ve seen the 1981 movie “Chariots of Fire” you know about a great athlete in the early 1900s named Eric Liddell of Scotland, also known as the “Flying Scotsman.” He was favored to win the hundred meter sprint in the 1924 Olympics, which was his best event. However, on the ship over to Paris where the games were to be held, when he learned that the qualifying trials for the hundred meters were to be held on a Sunday, Liddell decided not to run, because he believed so strongly that Sunday was the Christian Sabbath, that it was not a day for secular work or recreation. It was a day in his mind to be set apart entirely for rest and communion with God. The English Olympic Committee, the Prince of Wales and a host of others tried to convince him to run, saying, “Come on, Liddell, for the sake of your King and your country, set aside these little convictions just this once and run the race. It will only be for a few minutes.” But Liddell held fast to his convictions. Many Scottish people were angry at him. He was criticized in newspapers. Some even called him a traitor. But he stood firm. He had never run on Sunday and never would, not even for an Olympic gold medal and the favor of his country.

Another famous man with similar convictions was General Stonewall Jackson of the American Civil War. His widow Mary Anna Jackson writes this in his biography:

 “Certainly he was not less scrupulous in obeying the divine command to ‘remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy’ than he was in any other rule of his life. Since the Creator had set apart this day for his own, and commanded it to be kept holy, he believed that it was as wrong for him to desecrate it by worldly pleasure, idleness, or secular employment, as to break any other commandment of the Decalogue. Sunday was his busiest day of the week, as he always attended church twice a day and taught in two Sabbath schools! He refrained as much as possible from all worldly conversation, and in his family, if secular topics were introduced, he would say, with a kindly smile, ‘We will talk about that to-morrow.’ He never traveled on Sunday, never took his mail from the post-office, nor permitted a letter of his own to travel on that day, always before posting it calculating the time it required to reach its destination; and even business letters of the utmost importance were never sent off the very last of the week, but were kept over until Monday morning, unless it was a case where distance required a longer time than a week. One so strict in his own Sabbath observance naturally believed that it was wrong for the government to carry the mails on Sunday. Any organization which exacted secular labor of its employees on the Lord’s day was, in his opinion, a violator of God’s law.”

Certainly Eric Liddell and Stonewall Jackson are to be commended for their uncompromising commitment to their convictions. But do they model the proper Christian application of the fourth of the ten commandments? Is Sunday the Christian Sabbath?

Exodus 20:8-11, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

It’s generally agreed upon by Christians that the other nine commandments are still the will of Christ for His people today. But this Sabbath commandment is not so agreed upon as to its application to us as Christians.

Many, like Eric Liddell and Stonewall Jackson, believe we are to take the OT Sabbath regulations that were for Israelites’ Saturdays and apply them in this Christian age to our Sundays, that Sunday is to be to us what Saturday was to be to the ancient Israelites.

This is the opinion in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is a document that expresses the beliefs of the Presbyterian denomination and a few others.

Westminster Confession 21.7, “As it is the law of nature, that, in general, a due proportion of time be set apart for the worship of God; so, in his Word, by a positive, perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day in seven, for a sabbath, to be kept holy unto him: which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week; and, from the resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week, which, in Scripture, is called the Lord’s day, and is to be continued to the end of the world, as the Christian sabbath.”

So that’s been the view of a great many Christians. But others, like Seventh-Day Adventists and Seventh-Day Baptists, believe that the command is still the same for the same day, that we are still to treat the seventh day of the week as a Sabbath just as the Jews did.

Then there are many who don’t believe a particular Sabbath day is required of us at all, that it was just a part of the Law for the Israelite people, which even Jews are free from in a relationship with Christ, and that Christ has not commanded that we set apart a particular day of the week as a Sabbath to Him. Yet they may perceive some wise principles from the OT Sabbath instructions regarding the need to regularly set aside a proportionate amount of time for rest and to draw near to God and one another, and to give our families and those who work for us the same opportunity.

This was an element of…

A big debate in the early church.

Christianity began among the Jews. And so in its first years the Christians were still keeping their Jewish customs like the seventh day Sabbath, because that’s what they’d done their whole lives as Jews, and Jesus never told them to stop doing that. But as the gospel of Christ was taken to Gentiles, and Gentiles were becoming disciples of Jesus, debate arose over whether or not Jesus required Jewish observances. All were in agreement that Jesus calls His people to love God and your neighbor, to treat people like you want to be treated, to be honest and humble and so forth, to observe those timeless universal ethics written into everyone’s conscience. But what about the Jewish particulars like circumcision and eating kosher and the seventh day Sabbath and the special feast days. Some were arguing that “It is necessary to circumcise the Gentile believers and to order them to keep the Law of Moses”.

So Acts 15:6ff, “The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. 7 And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe [Referring to the events of Acts 10]. 8 And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, 9 and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.”
In other words “By pouring out the Holy Spirit on the Gentiles and working so mightily in them, God showed us that Gentiles who believe in Christ are no less favored and loved, though they are uncircumcised, pork eating, Saturday workers.” Apparently those observances are not what matters to God. What matters is a heart that trusts and obeys the Lord Jesus (cf. Gal. 5:6).
“Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? 11 But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”
12 And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. 13 After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brothers, listen to me. 14 Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. 15 And with this the words of the prophets agree… ” Then he quotes an OT prophecy about how God would take Gentiles as His people.
So at the conclusion of the meeting they decide to write a letter to be circulated among the Gentile believers about how the apostles and elders of the church in Jerusalem do not believe they must follow the Law of Moses or the Jewish customs. But in the letter they clarify three universally wise and ethical principles that Gentiles frequently disregarded – abstaining from things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from blood. A casual reading of the writings of Moses would reveal those are principles not just for Israel but all mankind (cf. Gen 9:3-4; Lev. 18:20-30).
What a relief I’m sure, especially for the many Gentile Christians who were slaves whose masters always had them working on Saturday and eating pork and other things Jews didn’t eat. Imagine if Gentile Christians who were slaves told their masters, “Sorry master, I can’t work anymore on Saturday?” Or “I can’t eat the food you give me. I’m on a special diet now”. How would that have gone over?…

But that council meeting and letter did not settle the issue everywhere permanently. So you find Paul dealing with the matter frequently in his letters to churches (Rom. 7:1-6; II Cor. 3; Gal. 1-6; Eph 2:14-16; Col 2:8-23; Heb 7:12; 8:13, etc.)

Was the seventh day Sabbath not just for the Jews?

Seventh Day Adventists and Seventh Day Baptists say the Sabbath law was not just part of the Jewish Law, but was God’s will for all mankind from the beginning of creation.

The main Scripture used in support of this is Genesis 2:2-3, “And on the seventh day God finished His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all His work that He had done in creation.”

So that verse says God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. To make holy means to set apart, to make special. But it’s reading much into the text to say that the way God blessed the seventh day and made it holy was by making it a sacred day for all of humanity to observe for the rest of time. The passage does not say that.

Seems to me it is simply talking about how God treated the seventh day. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, how? By treating it differently than the previous six. By not working on it, but resting and enjoying. In that sense He made it a blessed and holy day for Himself. And Israel was later commanded to do the same, to “keep it holy” (Exodus 20:9).

You don’t read in the book of Genesis that anybody was observing a Sabbath day or that God required anybody to do that. The first time you ever read of God commanding people to observe the Sabbath was when He brought the nation of Israel out of Egypt and started feeding them the manna in the wilderness (Exodus 16).

It’s important to realize that…

Among the multitude of instructions to Christians in the New Testament writings, never are Christians told to observe the Sabbath.

Christians are instructed in all sorts of life matters: how to treat their spouse and their children, how to be in the work place, how to deal with an erring brother, how to deal with their enemies, how to conduct their assemblies, how to think about and use the gifts of the Spirit, how to think about and use money, the place prayer should have in their life, divorce and remarriage, what about food sacrificed to idols, how to deal with differences of conviction in matters Christ hasn’t legislated on, how to identify false prophets, who is to qualified for leadership in the church, and so on and so forth. But not once are Christians told they must keep a particular day as a Sabbath.

Rather multiple times Paul clarifies that followers of Christ are not required to treat any particular days as holy.

In Romans 14:5-12 he told the Roman Christians who came from both Jewish and Gentile backgrounds to tolerate differences in regard to observing one day over others or esteeming all days alike.
In Colossians 2:16 Paul taught that Christians are not to be judged “in regard to food or drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.”
The letter of Galatians was written to Gentile Christians who were being convinced to start keeping the Jewish Law. The whole letter is correcting the idea that keeping the Jewish Law is important to a relationship with God. In Galatians 4:9-11 Paul says that for them to be observing days and months and seasons and years is returning to slavery and subjecting themselves to things that ruled over people in the elementary stage of history before the Messiah came, things that you are free from as a son of God through faith in Christ.

What about the idea of Sunday being the Christian Sabbath?

There is some New Testament and early Christian writing evidence that by at least the 50s A.D. Christians were meeting on Sunday. They likely chose that day because that was the day Jesus rose from dead, He appeared to His disciples on Sundays, and the Holy Spirit was poured out on Pentecost on a Sunday.
In 1 Corinthians 16:1-3 Paul exhorts the church at Corinth to set aside a sum of money “on the first day of every week” for the cause of helping the needy saints in Jerusalem, as the Galatian churches were already doing, presumably because the first day of the week was when they were meeting.
In Acts 20:7 we’re told when Paul arrived at Troas near the end of his third missionary journey the church gathered together to break bread “on the first day of the week“.
A second century Christian writing called the Epistle of Barnabas (130 A.D,) notes that Christians celebrate Jesus’ resurrection on “the eighth day” (15:9). Another 2nd century Christian, Justin Martyr, describes Christians gathering on the first day of the week (Apology 1.67.7).

But I don’t find evidence that they were treating it as a Sabbath. I find some to the contrary actually. There is no instruction in the NT saying don’t work on Sunday. Sunday was a normal workday in the Roman Empire. And as far as we can tell the typical time of day on Sunday when Christians met was either early in the morning before dawn (before the workday started) or late in the evening (after everybody got off work).
In Acts 20:7 when it says they were together on the first day of the week and Paul prolonged his message until midnight, do you think he’d been preaching since 10 o’clock in the morning? I really doubt it. I think they gathered that evening after everybody got off work and Paul taught them for a several hours, but not all day.
In another writing from antiquity that dates 112 A.D. written by Pliny, governor of Bithynia, to emperor Trajan, he told the emperor something that he found out about Christians. He wrote, “they are accustomed to meet on a certain fixed day before dawn and sing in alternate verses a hymn to Christ as to a god.” They met on a certain fixed day. Likely Sunday. And they met before dawn. Who in the world holds church services before dawn? A church with a bunch of people that have to work that day do.

But with all this said, though our Lord is not requiring that we observe a certain day of the week as a Sabbath, we must remember that He is the same character today. He still just as much longs for the welfare of His servants and for deeper relationship with us. He would still have us give a proportionate amount of time to rest from our work and to draw near to Him (Matthew 11:28-30; 6:19-33; Psalm 127:2).