CHRIST AND THE SABBATH by G. E. Fifield

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 27, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 39.

CHRIST AND THE SABBATH.

By G. E. Fifield

WE have seen that Christ was the Creator of the Sabbath, and its Law-giver, and that the Sabbath is the sign of the soul's submission to Him, and of His indwelling, sanctifying power.

This paper relates to Christ incarnate, Jesus of Nazareth, who walked the earth, and lived, and loved, and taught, eighteen centuries ago. What relation did He sustain, when thus on earth, to the Sabbath He had made, and to the Sabbath law He had given?

We are told that He ignored and abolished that law, and gave another in its place. Surely this would be strange—the Christ incarnate in conflict with, in antagonism to, the Christ eternal.

This position of the popular church on the question of the Sabbath involves a complete misunderstanding of the mission of Jesus. If the Sabbath, and the law in the heart of which it was enshrined, could be so easily set aside, He need not have come at all.

Satan for four thousand years had been seeking to set this law aside. All wicked men were, and ever had been, arrayed with Satan in this work. Christ did not become incarnate to complete the work of Satan, and of wicked men, but, as He says, "to do the will of My Father, and to finish His work." He did not come to give us the privilege to break that law, which, from the very nature of the law, as we have seen in former articles, would be no privilege at all, since it would inevitably bring misery and death. He came to reveal and impart the power to keep that law. "What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Rom. 8:3, 4. What this sin is that is thus condemned in the flesh, the Bible tells. "Sin is the transgression of the law." 1 John 3:4. Jesus condemned sin in His own flesh, by allowing the Spirit's power to triumph over it utterly, so that the temptation was never harbored in the thought, far less translated into action. He condemned sin in our flesh, by thus revealing the Spirit's power, which is for us all, and which if received will enable us to triumph as He did. We are to blame for sin, because it is unnecessary, since He came to save His people from their sins. This, then, is Christ's mission. He came, not to permit sin (the transgression of the law), but to save from it. All this He had been doing from the beginning, and is doing now.

There can be no conflict between the Christ eternal and the Christ incarnate. The Christ incarnate was a local and temporal revelation, and manifestation of an eternal fact. Christ had, from the beginning, when received into human hearts by faith, been living the spiritual life of His spiritual law there, lifting that soul above the strife, and turmoil, and conflict of sin, into the rest of true Sabbath-keeping in Him. He had been saving that soul from spiritual death unto eternal life; in short, doing all for that soul who received Him that He did openly and visibly when on earth. All this He is doing to-day for all who receive Him fully by faith. The eternal Christ, the infinite Word, gave the Sabbath and the law. So far from there being any conflict between the Christ eternal and the Christ incarnate, the eternal Christ became incarnate for the one purpose of revealing, truly, and visibly, and openly, His eternal purposes of love,—purposes which He even now promises to accomplish in every human life that will fully resign itself to His keeping.

This purpose is to establish His divine law of love in human hearts, by so writing its every precept, Sabbath and all, in the inner fiber of the soul that it will be the inner actuating principle of the life, and so cease to be an outer commanding and restraining force.

Just in proportion as the law is written by the Spirit in the desires of the heart, that soul will be free, and legalism will give place to that love which is the fulfilling of the law. Thus Christ becomes the end of the law for righteousness to every one who believes.

Before Christ came, it was prophesied of Him that He should "magnify the law, and make it honorable." Isa. 42:21.

Both of these predictions were grandly fulfilled. In His first recorded sermon He said: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." Matt. 5:17, 18. "And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." Luke 16:17.

Those who think that Jesus abolished the Sabbath He had previously made and enshrined in His law, should remember that the Sabbath commandment is so much more than a jot or a tittle that it is the longest commandment of the law. Jesus taught that murder and adultery extended to the first faint thought of hatred or lust consciously entertained in the heart. How grandly this fulfilled the prophecy that He would "magnify the law"!

He found that the Jewish rabbis, while professing to honor the Sabbath, had really made it dishonorable by hedging its observance around by traditions, until what God had intended to be a "delight," had become a burden hard to be borne. From the prophets these rabbis had learned that Israel had been driven into captivity, and Jerusalem left desolate, because the Sabbath had been desecrated. They rightly determined to avoid a repetition of this catastrophe.

But they did not discern that the law was spiritual, and that the Sabbath could only be observed in truth when the soul was so submitted to Christ that He dwelt there, introducing His own rest by His blessed, "Peace, be still." Being ignorant of this spiritual righteousness of God, and going about to establish their own righteousness by the works of the law, they did not attain unto true Sabbath-keeping. Yet so ardent were they in their efforts that they added several hundred laws to the Sabbath commandment. By their traditions it was unlawful for a man to walk on the grass on the Sabbath; for he might shell out some of the seed, and this would be threshing

on the Sabbath. He must not even carry a handkerchief, for this would be bearing a burden on the Sabbath; however, if he pinned it to his coat, it would pass as a part of that garment, and the law would thus be evaded. Before eating an egg, one must learn that the hen had not produced it on the Sabbath day, else he would not be guiltless. Especially, one must avoid doing any work to relieve or heal the sick on the Sabbath day, since it was considered more pious that they should suffer than that work be done to relieve them.

Thus the divine impulse of unselfish love in the heart, was denied and repudiated for outward forms. In this way the Sabbath was made dishonorable, and the day that God intended to be a blessing, and the most joyous day of all the week, was transformed into a burden and a curse.

God made the Sabbath to be a sign of the indwelling sanctifying power of divine love, which should consecrate the life to the service of loving ministration. But this meaning was entirely lost, and denied and contradicted by these traditions. Creation's rest, the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord and honorable, had been transformed into an instrument of inhuman neglect, priestly self-righteousness, and cruel criticism.

How did Jesus relate Himself to all this? If He came to abolish this Sabbath and institute another, here, at least, was excuse for such a change. If this had been His object, He would surely have left the hypocritical Pharisees and their Sabbath undisturbed, while He gave another sabbath, unincumbered by their traditions, to His followers.

Did He do this?—So far from this, He threw His life boldly into the breach, to stop this tide of formality and traditionalism, and fulfil the prophecy concerning Him, that He should magnify the law and make it honorable. He always kept the Sabbath, and so did His disciples, but He ignored these rabbinical traditions concerning it. When the captious criticism came, "Why do Thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?" the cutting but truthful response was ready, "Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your traditions?" The Pharisees accused His disciples of breaking the Sabbath, because they transgressed their tradition against shelling the seed, by rubbing the heads of wheat and eating the grains as they hungered while passing through the fields. Christ pointed them higher than any human ceremony or tradition, to that law of love, which seeks to feed the hungry and alleviate human suffering, and said, "If ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless." He thus pronounced them guiltless of Sabbath-breaking, according to God's law, and, to emphasize His own right to interpret the true meaning of that law, He immediately added, "For the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day."

"They asked Him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day? that they might accuse Him." His reply is sublime in its simplicity and force: "What man shall be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days." Thus He outlawed their traditions by showing that they set mercenary motives above love, and the paltry money value of a sheep above human life; and then He declared that the sacrificing service of loving necessity is not Sabbath-breaking, but lawful on any day.

Then, altho He knew they were watching Him to take counsel how they might destroy Him, altho He knew that in the end they would accomplish their purpose, and murder Him, because He ignored their God-dishonoring traditions, and by His life taught them truly how the Sabbath should be kept, yet He calmly said to the palsied man, "Stretch forth thy hand," and He restored it whole as the other. "And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against Him, how they might destroy Him." Mark 3:6. See, also, Matt. 12:14.

Again and again Christ taught the true meaning of the Sabbath day, by calmly offering the service and sacrifice of love on that day, tho He well knew the Pharisees were maddened to murder by the deed. Thus Jesus gave His life for the Sabbath day. Not in His teaching merely, but even more fully in His life, He magnified the law and made it honorable.

"In His life the law appears Drawn out in living characters." "The law of the Lord is perfect."

His life was perfect, simply and only because it perfectly lived that perfect law. Any other conception of Sabbath-keeping or commandment-keeping than that revealed in the life of Jesus, is faulty and incomplete, and only a revival in another form of Jewish ceremonialism.