Gerhard Ebersoehn said:
With apology to Bound:
From the heights of Mt. Sinai, God commanded that the seventh day be kept as a holy day of rest, commemorating His creation of the world. From the depths of the Red Sea, God commanded that the seventh day be kept as a holy day of rest, commemorating His redemption of His Chosen People. From the depths of hell, God commanded that the seventh day be kept as a holy day of rest, commemorating His resurrection of His Chosen One.
So the question is raised, 'why don't all Christians worship on it?'
And my answer, must be, They have been fooled.
Despite sabbatarian claims, it is an unavoidable historical fact that Sunday was established as the highest and holiest of days long before the councils and proclamations of the fourth century. It was observed by the very first Christians and by all succeeding generations.
Now, obviously, it's difficult to accuse the first followers of any religion of apostasy. But I also contend it is spiritually irresponsible to label as apostates men like St. Ignatius and St. Justin, who stood against the powers of darkness and shed their life's blood for their beloved Christ. "Ambition" and "thirst for power" did not motivate these men. As leaders of an outlawed religion, they received no reward through their positions but martyrdom. So when they affirmed the Church's tradition of worshiping on Sunday, they were simply doing their job - preserving the Faith of the Apostles.
When these facts are recognized, Constantine's edict of 321 can be understood in its true historical light. Constantine embraced Christianity during his campaign against Maxentius in 312. He spent the rest of his life trying to make the laws of the Roman Empire consistant with Christian ideals and practices not the other way round. Proclaiming the traditional day of Christian worship (Sunday) as an official day of rest was just part of that ongoing process.
From this same perspective, the pronouncement by the bishops at the Council of Laodicea - that Christians must not rest on the Sabbath, but rather honor the Lord's day - is seen as just another skirmish in the battle against those who would force practices of the Jewish Old Coventant upon the New Coventant believers... to put the Light back into Shadow. This is a problem the Church has faced from its very beginning. It's the reason St. Paul had to admonish the Galations,
But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire against to be in bondage? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain (Galatians 4:9-11).
So what, ultimately, do sabbatarians need to understand here? What do they need to see, in order to avoid historical misunderstandings and scriptureal misinterpretations? Like the early Christians, sabbatarians must come to recognize that the Incarnation, life, death, and Resurrection of Christ opened
a new way to God for us. They need to accept that the ways of God's Old Coventant -
including the Sabbath worship - have been surpassed in the new Kingdom of Grace.
Of course, even on who accepts the fact that the Church has always worshiped on Sunday may still ask, "Why did the Church make that change? How could it set aside the Fourth Commandment like that?" To answer those questions, one must look to the teachings of the ancient Church - the Church that opened its doors on the Day of Pentecost and has preserved the teachings of the Apostles unaltered ever since.
In examining those teachings, the sabbatarian will discover something he may find quite surprising: According to the ancient Church, Saturday is the Sabbath! The Sabbath was never "changed" from Saturday to Sunday, as some Christians mistakenly claim. For two thousand years, the Church has recognized Saturday as a holy day that commemorate God's resting after the creation of the world. The Church also reveres Saturday as the day on which Christ descended into hell, shattering its gates and freeing mankind forever from the bonds of death.
Now, as the Council of Laodicea's pronouncement indicates, the Church has never observed the Sabbath in a Jewish manner - with things like mandatory resting from work and travel restrictions. But the Sabbath is a day on which special services and liturgical practices has historically been observed.
In fact, I've heard sabbatarians quote historical claims that Christians of later centuries continued to keep the Sabbath. But they misunderstand these texts, because they do not recognize that the honor the ancient Church gives to the Sabbath has always been secondary to it sreverence for Sunday. For while the Church believes that the Sabbath is holy, and the creation it commemorates is awesome, it understands that both have been infinitely superseded in the coming of the Son of God to earth.
The New Testament tells us that this creation in which we live, the one that God spent six days creating, will not last. St. John declares, "Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away" (Revelation 21:1).
Many aspects of the old creation have already disappeared. For instance, St. Paul assures us that "if anyone
is in Christ,
he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17). For those who believe in Jesus Christ, death - an inescapable feature of the old creation - has been "abolished" (2 Timothy 1:10).
So the new creation has already burst forth into existence. When did this begin to unfold? On the day of Christ's glorious Resurrection! One that day, God established the foundations of this new world that includes eternal life for mankind. Rising in the flesh, Christ our God made possible our eternal union with Him. By the power of His Resurrection, man is blessed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and may live in oneness with the Father under the earnest of new heavens and a new earth.
Now, the old creation was commemorated on Saturday, the day of its
ending. But the new creation will never pass away. Thus, it can only be commemorated on the day on which it
begins. As St. Athanasius (fourth century) writes,
The Sabbath was the end of the first creation, the Lord's day was the beginning of the second, in which he renewed and restored the old; in the same way as he prescribed that they should formerly observe the Sabbath as a memorial of the end of the first things, so we honor the Lord's day as being the memorial of the new creation (On Sabbath and Circumcision, 3).
This is why the ancient Church often refers to Sunday as the "eighth day." As the day of Resurrection, Sunday becomes the doorway through which we pass beyond this temporal and fading realm - this universe that operates on the seven-day cycle that the Sabbath remembers - into God's eternal day.
I sincerely hope this helps. Peace and God Bless.
