THE SABBATISM OF HEB. IV.
Does Heb. iv, 1–11, teach the change of the weekly Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week? This question, which is the real point of controversy in the chapter, only calls for an exposition of verses 8, 9, and 10; as it is upon these verses alone that those who argue a change of the Sabbath from this chapter base their reasoning. But in order to come to a correct understanding of these verses, we must get before the mind a clear idea of the subject upon which Paul is speaking; and this requires an examination of the context. In verse 1, Paul speaks as follows: “Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.” The word, therefore, denotes a conclusion drawn from some preceding statements or reasoning. The four verses which stand immediately before it, plainly speak of the journeyings of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan, and the failure of some to enter into that land of rest, through unbelief. They had a promise of rest; that rest was Canaan; through unbelief and disobedience they failed to attain it, leaving their carcasses in the wilderness. And as their experience is recorded for our admonition, Paul adds, “Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.” Here the assurance is given us that a promise is left us, believers in the gospel, of entering into his rest. That rest is future; for we have not yet attained it. We are to fear lest we come short of it. If we fail to reach it, we fall in the same manner that the Israelites failed to reach Canaan, through unbelief and disobedience. The rest of which believers now have a promise, of course is not Canaan; but it must be some rest to which Canaan bears some resemblance. And what rest is that? Answer. The heavenly Canaan, the kingdom under the whole heaven, which the saints are to take and possess forever and ever when all things shall be made new. Rom. iv, 13; Dan. vii, 27; Rev. xxi, 1, 5. Of this and nothing less could the earthly Canaan be a type. If this is the rest into which believers are to enter, why does God speak of it as his rest? Why is it called God’s rest? The answer is, Because it is a rest like that which God enjoys. On this point Prof. Stuart remarks, “There is no more difficulty in calling that rest, which is promised to believers, the rest of God, than there is in saying that man ‘was formed in his image,’ that Christians ‘are made partakers of the divine nature,’ or that ‘we shall be like him, when we shall see him as he is.’ The rest of God, is the rest like that which God enjoys.” The expressions, “his rest,” and “my rest,” that is God’s rest, explain the reference to the seventh day in verse 4. That day is mentioned simply to show what God’s rest is, and from what point it dates. The works, God’s works, were finished from the foundation of the world; and from that point, a state of being called God’s rest, a state of heavenly repose and felicity, has been set before the human race, as a matter of hope and promise. A type of that rest was given in the temporal rest of typical Israel in the land of Canaan; the antitype, the true rest itself, will be given in the future kingdom of God, when a new heavens and earth appear, wherein the righteous shall dwell; and as some of the typical house of Israel failed through unbelief of reaching the typical rest, so Paul exhorts the antitypical house of Israel to fear, lest, in the same manner, they come short of entering into the future, antitypical, heavenly, rest. But some may say, The rest is already present; for Paul says, verse 3, “We which have believed do enter into rest.” We answer that this language must certainly be interpreted in harmony with other portions of his testimony which place the rest in the future. The whole conclusion of his reasoning through the first ten verses of the chapter, is thus expressed in verse 11: “Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.” Now those who have any confidence in the logical powers of the apostle, and especially in his inspiration, cannot suppose that he would be so inconsistent as to affirm in verse 3 that we were already in possession of that rest, and then, in verse 11, exhort us to labor to enter into it, as though it were yet future. The intent of Paul’s reasoning evidently is to show that it is through faith that we are to gain the promised rest. The words translated, “we which have believed,” are the article and aorist participle, οἱ πιστεύσαντες. The aorist tense denotes finished past action. We, the ones who have believed, enter into rest. Does not this look over to the time when our believing is all accomplished, and faith is lost in sight? It is not yet determined whether we shall keep the faith, and fight the good fight, or be overcome in the conflict; whether we shall believe to the saving of the soul, or draw back unto perdition. But the rest certainly cannot be given till the faith through which we are to obtain it, is perfected and finished. Bloomfield, in his Greek Testament with critical notes, gives a future signification to the verb “we do enter,” εἰσερχόμεθα. This he says “may be rendered, We are to enter.” This at once frees the passage from all difficulty. For thus it might be rendered: We which have believed, or we, having believed, having kept the faith, are to enter into rest. Thus Paul in verse 3, is in harmony with the remainder of his testimony in the same chapter. The principal argument for Sunday-keeping in this chapter, as already noticed, is based on verses 9 and 10, especially the word translated rest, in verse 9. This word, σαββατισμός, which is not the same word that is rendered rest in other places in the chapter, is translated in the margin, keeping of a Sabbath. On this we remark, that there is nothing in the word to denote that it must be a weekly Sabbath, and even if there was, there is nothing to show that it must be Sunday; for there is nothing in the word of God to distinguish that day above any other day of the week. But in this verse we find again the word, therefore, denoting a conclusion from something gone before. “There remaineth, therefore, a rest to the people of God.” The argument from which this conclusion is drawn, is found in the preceding verse: “For if Jesus [Joshua, margin], had given them rest [in Canaan], then would he not afterward have spoken of another day?” The rest of verse 9, is thus put in contrast with the rest of verse 8 which Joshua gave; and if the rest of verse 9 is a weekly Sabbath, then must that also have been, which was given by Joshua. And thus it is claimed that the first rest was the seventh-day, but another day was spoken of which is the first-day which now remains as the Sabbath to the people of God. But Joshua did not give them the seventh-day Sabbath. They had that at least 40 years before they reached Canaan. And who failed through unbelief to enter into the seventh-day Sabbath? And where is the danger of falling in the same manner to enter into the first-day Sabbath? How are we to labor to enter into this Sabbath? We see at once that the effort to force Paul’s argument into any such channel makes utter nonsense of it. How much better it is not to pervert his words, but to let his argument stand as he has given it, thus: Joshua gave the people rest in Canaan, as we read in Joshua xxi, 44: “And the Lord gave them rest round about, according to all that he sware unto their fathers; and there stood not a man of all their enemies before them; the Lord delivered all their enemies into their hands.” But this was not the full rest contemplated in the promise made to the fathers, Rom. iv, 13, if it had been, if Joshua had given them all the rest that was to be given, then would not God afterward have spoken of another day. And where did he speak of another day? In David, saying after so long a time, “To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” But David wrote long after they had entered upon the possession of Canaan; and the fact that “after so long a time” he spoke of another day, proves that there yet must be another and future rest remaining to the people of God. The day he speaks of is a day in which we are not to harden our hearts as we hear the voice of God in mercy calling us to his heavenly rest. In other words, it is another day, period or dispensation of grace, given us in which to seek for eternal life. We have it in what is called the gospel age; and during this time, Paul exhorts believers to beware lest they fail to reach the heavenly Canaan, as some of Israel failed through unbelief to reach the earthly. Respecting the word rendered rest in verse 9, Dr. Clarke remarks: “There are two words in this chapter which we indifferently translate rest, κατάπαυσις and σαββατισμός; the first signifying a cessation from labor, so that the weary body is rested and refreshed; the second meaning not only a rest from labor, but a religious rest; sabbatismus, a rest of a sacred kind, of which both soul and body partake. This is true whether we understand the rest as referring to gospel blessings, or to eternal felicity, or to both.” He had just before said that this rest was not the Sabbath. Greenfield in his definition of the word says, that it “is spoken of an eternal rest with God,” and refers to Heb. iv, 9, to sustain his definition. Robinson defining the word says, “In N. T. only of an eternal rest with God.” Dr. Bloomfield says: The term σαββατισμός (which is very rare) is substituted for κατάπαυσις [katapausis] partly to exclude any notion that the rest of God spoken of might be the Sabbatical rest, and partly by thus comparing it with the Sabbath, to hint that that was a symbol of the true and spiritual Sabbath of which their doctors spoke, the rest and felicity of the world to come.”¹ And so we might continue to quote authorities who apply the rest that remains to the future eternal rest; but it is unnecessary to occupy further space, as the apostle’s own language is sufficiently plain on that point. Between the declaration that a rest remaineth for the people of God, and the conclusion of the argument, “Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest,” verse 11, is thrown in as follows: “For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.” A failure here to fix upon the right antecedent for the pronoun he, has led some into the grossest misapprehension on this verse. A recent writer has endeavored to prove the first-day Sabbath from it thus. We give his argument merely as an exegetical curiosity. He says: “But let us compare this with Hebrews iv, 10: ‘He [Christ] also hath ceased from his own work, as God did from his.’”
“1. Did God ‘rest’ on the ‘seventh day?’ Then did Christ ‘rest’ on the first day as God did from his on the seventh?”
“2. Did God ‘bless’ the seventh day on which he ‘rested’?”
“Then must Christ have ‘blessed’ the ‘first day,’ if he rested as God rested—‘because’ that in it ‘he had rested;’ therefore he [Christ] ‘blessed’ it [the first day] as God did the seventh.”
“3. Did God ‘sanctify’ the seventh day? Then must Christ have ‘sanctified’ the ‘first day,’ or he could not have rested on a sanctified day as God did, unless he had sanctified the day.”
There is not a solitary correct conclusion in this whole argument, and it would be difficult to crowd more errors into the same space. 1. Christ is not the antecedent of the pronoun he. 2. He did not rest from the work of redemption; for it was not then finished. If it was, woe to all who have lived and hoped and suffered and died since then. 3. Christ did not rest on the first day as God did on the seventh. God ceased from labor and was refreshed in the contemplation of his own work, which he pronounced very good. Christ during the first day resumed the very labor he had been engaged in before his death. 4. The blessing and sanctification of the seventh day were placed upon it after he had rested upon it, and because he had rested upon it; and we know that they were placed upon it, because we have a record of it. And if Christ so blessed and sanctified the first day, show us the record of it. His merely resting upon it, even if he had done so, would not have given it that character. Yet, says this astute writer, “He could not have rested on a sanctified day, as God did [the emphasis is his own] unless he had sanctified the day.” 201But we inquire, did God rest on a sanctified day? No! the day was not sanctified till after he had rested upon it; and we know it was sanctified, simply because the record says so; but nothing of the kind is said respecting the first day of the week. We will not detain the reader longer on this. Nothing could be more utterly unfounded than this argument. The pronoun, he, of verse 10, refers to the believer; and Paul adds that verse as an additional argument in favor of his preceding proposition that there remaineth a rest. He that hath entered into his rest hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. But do we see any one in this condition? No; then the rest is not yet attained; it is yet future. We shall not rest from the labors, sufferings, tribulations and afflictions of this life, till we enter upon the eternal rest of the kingdom. Through much tribulation we are to enter the kingdom. We cease from these our efforts to gain eternal life, when we reach the goal and enter into the rest of God. On verse 10, Wesley remarks: “They [believers] do not yet so rest. Therefore a fuller rest remains for them.” Then Paul concludes by an exhortation to us to labor to enter therein. We cannot better close these remarks, than by giving from Holden the following clear summary of the apostle’s argument on this subject: The writer now treats the history allegorically (as in Gal. iii, 16; iv, 24.), applying it to the case of Christians. (Dind.) He begins with declaring, that a promise of entering into God’s rest is still made to Christians, as it was to the people of Israel, v, 1, 2, and into which believers are still admitted, v, 3. Now that the rest spoken of by the Holy Ghost in Ps. xcv is not a mere temporal rest in the land of Canaan, but also a future and heavenly rest, is evident, because God’s rest is such a rest as God enjoyed when he had finished the work of creation, and consequently a spiritual, heavenly rest, v, 3, 4; because the terms of the oath, “they shall not enter into my rest,” imply that the promise included another rest besides that of Canaan, a rest resembling God’s rest, v, 5; because, since it remains that some must enter into the rest spoken of in the oath, and they to whom the promise was first given did not enter in by reason of unbelief, it follows that a rest must be intended into which all true believers may enter, and consequently a future and heavenly one, v, 6; and because God in the oath warns the Israelites against losing this rest, a long time after they had been in possession of the promised land, consequently he must have intended another rest than that of Canaan, v, 7, 8. There remains, therefore, a spiritual and heavenly rest for the people of God, into which those who enter shall cease from their labors, as God did from his work of creation, v, 9, 10. Hence follows the duty of laboring to enter into it, v, 11–13.