The Covenants and the Sabbath: The New Testament Evidence

Let us now look at the New Testament witness to these matters. By Jesus’ day the covenantal literature of Israel included not only the Law of Moses but also the Prophets and Writings. These were the Holy Scriptures of the Jews, or the Christian Old Testament. This body of writing is sometimes called the "Law, Prophets and Psalms" (Luke 24:44). At other times it is referred to by the term "Law and Prophets" (Matthew 5:17), or simply "the Law" (John 15:25). Of course, the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy (along with the circumcision law in Genesis) constituted the basis of the covenantal law between God and Israel. This part of Scripture was called the Law of Moses, or referred to as the law that "Moses gave" (John 7:19, 22-23). In any case, all the laws and commentary in the books of the Mosaic Law are a singularity.

We come now to the dawning of new covenant times with the arrival and work of Jesus. The first thing we notice is that the Jews were surprised by Jesus. He was not a conquering Messiah, as most had expected him to be. (Perhaps the Maccabees of two centuries earlier had fixed the idea of a warrior Messiah in Jewish expectation.) Jesus seemed to speak of a somewhat different sort of redemptive work than was expected. Jesus said he would die for the sins of the people. He would not redeem people simply because they had the Law of Moses and appeared to obey it, nor would he save people because they were born Israelites.

Not only that, Jesus seemed to imply that the most pious of the people—the religious leaders—were not the best candidates for the kingdom of God (Matthew 23). To all appearances, the Pharisees and others loved God and would be among the vanguard of a people called to follow the Messiah to victory over the enemies of Israel. Surely, they would have the best positions in the kingdom of God by reason of their zealousness for Torah. But Jesus was contradicting this idea. The kingdom would be taken away from them and given to others (Matthew 21:43-46).

What we know is that God had sent Jesus to create a new people from all nations through the indwelling Holy Spirit. Further, he was not at that time interested in creating a powerful political unit that would, in effect, rule the world. Jesus would save eternally those who put their faith and trust in him as Savior (John 3:16). This became the new covenant in Jesus’ blood. He was bringing and offering a radically different covenant from the old covenant.

However, Jesus made it clear that he was not out to abolish what the Hebrew Scriptures stood for. Jesus said: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17).

The Jewish Scriptures as such pointed to Jesus and his redeeming work, and were fulfilled in his work (Luke 24:25-27, 44; John 5:39-47). That is, Jesus was the object of the Law and Prophets, as even Moses had said: "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him" (Deuteronomy 18:15). In that context Jesus pointed out that a greater law—we can call it the "law of Christ"—should govern human thought and actions. He made his point by contrasting what the Law of Moses said ("You have heard that it was said...") with what he now said ("But I tell you..."). See Matthew 5:21-48 for six examples.

During his earthly ministry, Jesus told his hearers to obey the Law of Moses. He said to a man he healed of leprosy: "Go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing" (Luke 5:14). Jesus worshipped at and upheld the sanctity of the temple (Matthew 12-13). He told his disciples and the Jewish people to obey the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, who he said sat "in Moses’ seat" (Matthew 23:1). Naturally, these individuals would have taught obedience to the Law of Moses.

Jesus told his disciples to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, upholding the notion of Israel as the special people of God. Jesus, then, came as a Jew to Israel as the covenant people of God. "He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him," said John of Jesus’ ministry (John 1:11).

There is an important point to be made here. We cannot say that Jesus’ remarks about a particular Mosaic Law means that one of its isolated commandments—like the Sabbath, or Festivals or food laws—must be kept by Christians. Jesus commanded sacrifices, obedience to the religious leaders who would be teaching all of the Law of Moses, and temple worship with all that this entailed. And, he upheld for his lifetime the notion of a national covenant people. Besides, if we say Jesus’ remarks anywhere in the Gospels tell Christians to keep the Sabbath rest commandment, then we must accept all of the commandments of the Law of Moses as being binding, including physical circumcision. Clearly, something else is in view in Jesus’ remarks about the Law, the Sabbath or some other Mosaic regulation or promise.

What is to be noted is that Jesus did not change anything in terms of old covenant worship until his redemptive work was complete. Of course, he did imply during his ministry that things would change in the future. The kingdom of God was to be taken away from those who represented the Law of Moses and "given to a people who will produce its fruit" (Matthew 21:43). The people of God would no longer worship at the temple in Jerusalem, but they would worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:21-24).

After his resurrection, Jesus told the disciples that rather than limiting their evangelizing work to Israel as he had counseled during his lifetime, they must go to all the world (Acts 1:8). Shortly thereafter, Peter learned through a vision that the feared and hated Gentiles were also being called to be among the people of God (Acts 10:9-15). A new age of the Spirit had begun. A new covenant had come into force.

The church began in all essentials on the day of Pentecost in the year that Jesus was crucified and resurrected. At first it was composed almost entirely of Jews. Even Pharisees and priests were converted to the faith (Acts 6:7; 15:5). But many of these people were still zealous for the Law of Moses (Acts 21:20). This caused a problem for the church.

Many Jewish Christians did not see clearly that the new covenant had supplanted the old, and that this had profoundly impacted the authority of the Law of Moses and Israel’s religious system. For example, these former Jewish religious leaders still viewed physical circumcision as a sign between God and his people. They saw the Law of Moses as a binding legal document for those who would become part of this people.

That is why in Acts 15 the believers of the party of the Pharisees claimed: "The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses" (emphasis ours, verse 5). They didn’t say, Gentiles must keep the Sabbath or the food laws or some other singular law of the Mosaic system. Rather, the Pharisees said "obey the law of Moses." The Jews understood that the entire Law of Moses was a unit—and that the authority of this law as a complete and unified legal compact in the Gentile Christian life was the issue.

Of course, they knew that the old covenant did not apply to Gentiles. This covenant was only for Israel. Gentiles were to follow a more generalized law called the "Noachian Laws." But if any Gentile wanted to become part of the people of Israel—that is, to become a "full Jew"—he or she would be obligated to keep the Law of Moses. The Jewish Christians probably reasoned from this principle that in order to become a part of God’s spiritual people, Gentiles must first become God's physical people by keeping the Law of Moses. It was easy to reason that way because most Jews apparently thought of the Christians—at least in the early years—as simply members of another Jewish sect. The only difference was that Christians had accepted Jesus as Messiah.

Thus, religious Jews who had been converted to Christianity were implying that for Gentiles to be part of God’s people they would have to be circumcised and keep all 613 laws of the Law of Moses. This underscores the main point that the issue of contention was not a specific law such as Sabbath-keeping but the Law of Moses in its entirety. (To summarize, the argument in Acts 15 wasn’t over Sabbath or festival observance but over the full Mosaic Law.)

The issue of the role of the Law of Moses in the lives of Gentile Christians became more troublesome as more Gentiles became converted. This led to the convening of the historic council of Acts 15 around AD 50 to consider this most important matter.

It became clear to the assembled elders and apostles that Gentiles had been called and converted apart from any obedience to the regulations of the Law of Moses. The assembly concluded that Gentiles did not need to keep the commandments of the Law of Moses or be circumcised. They did not need to keep the Sabbath, nor the food laws, nor tithing, nor the annual festivals. This explains why no separate law, such as Sabbath-keeping, was discussed. The entire Law of Moses, and its accompanying religious institutions, were seen to be passe, or obsolete.

This truth was conveyed to the Gentile churches in an apostolic letter mentioned in Acts 15. Gentiles were asked to hold to only four regulations that could be said to be Mosaic: abstention from the meat of strangled animals, from food polluted by idols, from blood and from sexual immorality (Acts 15:19-20, 29). Naturally, all Christians would have been commanded to avoid sexual immorality.

The three other regulations had to do with foods, and may have been enjoined on Gentiles so that they would not offend the sensibilities of Jewish Christians, or unconverted Jews in the synagogues. Both Jewish Christians and, in many cases, Gentile Christians would be attending the Jewish synagogue, and it was important not to bring offense. The church wanted to keep in the good graces of the Jewish religious community and to keep peace between the church and the synagogue.

But, even here, Paul later seemed to rescind, under special circumstances, the regulation against eating meat that had been offered to idols (1 Corinthians 8:4-13). The reason the Acts 15 council asked for a ban on eating meat offered to idols in pagan ceremonies, and later sold in the meat markets, had to do with conscience only. Eating such meat would greatly offend Christian Jews who still believed that idolatry made the meat sinful. The reasoning was, why make trouble over something inconsequential in terms of the gospel message? The ban on such foods had nothing to do with any lingering authority of the Law of Moses upon Gentile Christians, as the council had decided it had no such authority.

The Galatians controversy

Nonetheless the question of whether Gentile Christians should keep the Law of Moses continued to be a source of controversy within the church. The pressure to have Gentiles be circumcised and follow the Mosaic Law came from converted Jews or Judaizers. We can see this controversy in full bloom in the book of Galatians.

In this very strong letter, Paul brands this idea as a "different gospel," which was really a perversion of the true gospel (Galatians 1:1-7). Paul makes several points about this issue. He says Christians cannot be justified by observing the Law of Moses and righteousness cannot be gained through its observance (Galatians 2:16, 21). Those who look to the Law of Moses as their spiritual authority, even though they may "believe" in Christ, are still in bondage (Galatians 4:21-31).

In fact, those who preach that observing the Mosaic Law is necessary are under a curse, said Paul. Why was this so? In his answer, Paul referred to the Scripture that says, "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law" (Galatians 3:10, emphasis ours). This point is obvious from our having taken a panoramic view of the law material in the books from Exodus through Deuteronomy. The principle is that we cannot pick and choose which specific law (such as Sabbath-keeping) we think should be obeyed. It’s an all-or-nothing situation. Paul says: "I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law" (Galatians 5:3). We can write in any Mosaic law in the place of the word "circumcised"—such as Sabbath-keeping—with the same conclusion.

Curiously, what had occurred at least since the period of the Maccabees is that the Jews had emphasized several laws from the Mosaic Law as "boundary marker" practices. These distinguished Jews from Gentiles and kept the Jews separate and "pure." Among these boundary marker beliefs were circumcision, the food laws of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, the keeping of the Sabbath and the observance of the holy days.

Except for circumcision, we can see the interesting parallel between the Judaizing Christians of the apostolic church and people who still teach that Christians should observe the seventh-day Sabbath and annual holy days. For a thorough discussion of how the Jews had adopted "boundary marker" practices from the Law of Moses as a litmus test of being a part of the "in" group—that is, a part of the people of God—see the book Jesus, Paul, and the Law, by James D.G. Dunn, published by Westminster/John Knox Press.

The biblical book that most thoroughly deals with the abrogation of the Law of Moses and the old covenant religious system is Hebrews. The book begins with a defense of Jesus as the high priest of God’s people (3:1). This clearly implies that the authority of the Aaronic high priest of the Mosaic covenant, who stood as the representative between God and Israel, had been superceded by Jesus. As the church’s Paraclete through the Holy Spirit, Jesus also has a greater authority than Moses. No matter that Moses had achieved perhaps the greatest acclaim among the Jews because he was the author of the Law of Moses—the defining legal document of the old covenant (John 5:39-46 with Hebrews 3:4-6). Jesus is greater than Moses, is greater than even the angels.

The Sabbath as metaphor

In Christ, the physical Sabbath rest becomes a metaphor for the spiritual rest of salvation that God’s people now have (4:1-11). However, it’s not that the Sabbath rest commandment was "changed" and that we keep the Sabbath as "holy time" in terms of "a spiritual rest." The Sabbath is but a symbol for Christians, just as are other elements of the Mosaic institution. We can look at other old covenant practices and institutions such as the high priest’s office, burnt offerings, dwelling in tents during the Festival of Tabernacles, and see metaphorical meanings that symbolize aspects of Jesus’ redemptive work. That’s the point the Mosaic Law points to, is fulfilled in and is superceded by that work.

We can see the same principle at work in physical circumcision. For new covenant Christians, it serves only as a metaphor of the fact that we are cleansed of our sins and have a new birth in Christ. "Circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code," Paul wrote (Romans 2:29).

In the same way, Hebrews 4 tells us that Sabbath-keeping is of the spirit. It points to the salvation rest we have in Christ. The physical Sabbath rest command is not performed by Christians as specified in the old covenant Israel’s written code, the Law of Moses. Essentially, Hebrews explains that the entire system of the old covenant law as carried out by the high priest and the Levitical priesthood has come to an end. Another High Priest, Jesus, has come in the order of Melchizedek (7:1-11). This necessitates a change in the law (verse 12). Thus, "The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God" (verses 18-19). This better hope is the new covenant that provides the indwelling Holy Spirit, and with it comes salvation.

Those who are saved under the new covenant are not obligated to the Law of Moses, but to the "law of Christ." This answers the false, straw-man objection that people sometimes put forth when they are told that the Mosaic Law (which includes the Ten Commandments) is "done away." They retort, "Well, then, does that mean we can kill, steal or commit adultery?" Of course not. No Christian would teach or believe such an absurdity.

Let’s pose the same straw man riddle another way to show it has no validity: "If the Law of Moses is done away, does this mean we don’t have to love our neighbor as ourselves and God above all?" Now, we can see how preposterous the question is. Obviously, Christians continue to love man and God—and they do not break any of the spiritual principles found throughout the Mosaic Law—because that is the Christian thing to do—and it is what the New Testament clearly tells us to do. But this obedience is based on the law of Christ, not the Law of Moses.

Sin and virtue lists

The idea that any Christian church would teach that we can sin because the Law of Moses has been "done away" is preposterous. What has happened for Christians is that the Law of Moses has been replaced by the law of Christ. (That is one aspect of the Christian becoming a "slave" to Christ.)

For anyone willing to look at the facts, and to think in terms of the New Testament witness as a whole, it’s clear that it spells out clearly how Christians are to live their lives. Just a quick look at one or more of the so-called "sin lists" or "virtue lists" in the New Testament should dispel the notion that Christians can sin because the old covenant Law of Moses has been "done away."

(See the following lists as examples—Matthew 5:3-11; Galatians 5:22-23; Ephesians 4:32; 6:14-20; Philippians 4:8; 1 Timothy 3:2-13; Titus 1:6-9; Mark 7:21-22; Romans 1:29-32; 13:8-14; Galatians 5:19-21; 1 Corinthians 5:9-11; 6:9-10; Ephesians 4:25-31; 5:3-5; Colossians 3:5-9; 2 Timothy 3:1-5.)

Let us briefly refer to one of them. Galatians 5:13-25 clearly shows the new covenant "law of Christ," though it doesn’t label it as such. Paul begins by saying that Christians should keep the second great law of God: "Love your neighbor as yourself" (5:14). He points out that if we live by the indwelling Holy Spirit, we will "not gratify the desires of the sinful nature" (5:16). Paul points out the kinds of sins Christians under the "law of Christ" will avoid. This includes everything from sexual immorality to idolatry to drunkenness to selfish ambition. Paul next points out some fruits of the Holy Spirit. These include love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. In fact, Christians will have crucified the sinful nature itself, not only sinful acts, through the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Mosaic Law unnecessary

Christians do not need the Law of Moses, including the Ten Commandments, as a direction for their lives. They know what they must do to obey God from the New Testament witness. Christians also do not need the Mosaic Law as a "tutor" because they have the indwelling Holy Spirit as their Paraclete or Counselor—whom Jesus sent. He is with them forever (John 14:15-21 with Galatians 3:23-25).

In Romans 7:1 Paul points out that the Law of Moses has authority over a person "only as long as he lives." (Of course, it had authority only over the Jewish person, anyway.) He uses the example of a married woman who was bound to her husband only while the husband was alive. When he died, she was free. Even though she remarried she was not called an adulteress.

Paul uses this analogy to point out that Christians have died to the Law of Moses (which includes the Ten Commandments) "through the body of Christ" (Romans 7:4). They now belong to another—to the risen Christ. "We have been released from the law," says Paul, "so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code" (verse 6). If Paul could say this to Jews, how much more would it apply to Gentiles who were never under the written code of the Law of Moses to begin with!

Many more things could be said about these matters from New Testament Scripture. The above discussion, however, should make it quite evident that Christians are not required to keep the Law of Moses (including the Ten Commandments). Sabbatarians cannot "pick and choose" a few boundary marker observances such as Sabbath-keeping and insist Christians must keep them. But Christians are not in some lawless limbo as a result of not being obligated to the Law of Moses. They have the New Testament "law of Christ" and the Holy Spirit to guide them.