THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL AND THE UNCHANGEABLE SABBATH.
By W. W. Prescott
CHRISTIANITY is a life, and that life is the life of Christ. "We shall be saved by his life." Rom. 5:10. Christ, who is "the power of God" (1 Cor. 1:24), is the personality of the Gospel, which is therefore "the power of God unto salvation." The Gospel is not a system of abstract truth, in harmony with which we are to try to regulate our behavior, but it is "Christ in you the hope of glory." Everything in the Gospel centers in a living person, and not in dead dogmas. We are to be "found in him," and "as ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him; rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him." Col. 2:6-10. The Gospel is therefore "the revelation of Jesus Christ;" but we know that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself," and that Christ is "the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person," and hence we can see that the Gospel is the revealing, the going forth, of God in and through his Son, Jesus Christ. We have already found that the Son was the agent through whom the Father created all things, but we need to study this truth more fully. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . All things were made by ["through," R. V., margin] him; and without him was not anything made that was made." John 1:1-3. The manner in which this creative power was put forth is thus stated: "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth." "For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast." Ps. 33:6, 9. But since it is the Son "through whom are all things," it is clear that when God said, "Let there be," it was the voice of Jesus which was heard, and when "there was light," the same Gospel was preached to the eye which was afterward preached to the ear in the statement, "I am the light of the world." John 8:12. And so on each of the six days there was a revealing of God in Christ in action, but on the seventh day there was a revealing of God in Christ in rest. The record says: "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." As it was God in Christ who created, so it was God in Christ who "rested on the seventh day," and it was God in Christ who "blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it." "On the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed" (Ex. 31:17), or was "satisfied," just as when the work of redemption, which is the new creation, is completed, "he shall see of the travail [or labor] of his soul, and shall be satisfied" (Isa. 53:11); and then he blessed and sanctified the day, that it might be a blessing to man. The blessing of God upon Abram made him a blessing. "I will bless thee; . . . and thou shalt be a blessing." Gen. 12:2. So the blessing of God upon the seventh day made it a blessing. Blessing, Righteousness, Life.
But let us see what is involved in the fact that "God blessed the seventh day." The blessing of God and righteousness and life are inseparable. In the twenty-fourth psalm, in giving the description of the one who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, it says, "He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and [or even] righteousness from the God of his salvation." Verse 5. And, further, the "mountains of Zion" are spoken of as the place where "the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore." Ps. 133:3. But righteousness and life, which are thus shown to be in the blessing of the Lord, are found only in Christ, who is "the Lord our Righteousness" (Jer. 23:6), and "who of God is made unto us . . . righteousness" (1 Cor. 1:30), and who "is our life," so that "he that hath the Son hath life." This makes it evident that when the Lord blessed the seventh day, he put his own presence in Christ in it, and thus separated it and lifted it above all other days, as a special time and a special channel for revealing himself. This follows also from the fact that he not only "blessed the seventh day," but that he also "sanctified it." It is the revealing of the divine presence which sanctifies. Thus it was with the tabernacle. "And there I will meet with the children of Israel, and the tabernacle shall be sanctified by my glory." Ex. 29:43. But as we remember that there is "one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things," we know that it was the revealing of the glory of God in Christ by which the tabernacle was sanctified. In the same way it was the presence of God in Christ by which the ground at the burning bush was made holy, or sanctified. Ex. 3:5. And so it was the presence of the "Captain [or Prince, margin] of the host of the Lord," who is Christ, which made the ground holy when Joshua was by Jericho. Josh. 5:14, 15. But this shows that the seventh day became a holy day because the Holy One of Israel sanctified it by the holiness of his own presence in Christ. The seventh day thus became the Sabbath, or day of rest, not by an arbitrary designation, but because God in Christ rested on that day, because God in Christ blessed and sanctified that day by imparting the holiness of his own presence to that day, a pledge of, and a channel for, the revealing of the same holiness to and in man. The Sabbath a Sign of God's Power to Save.
Thus the Sabbath became the sign of the creative power of God in Christ, and the channel through which the holiness of his own presence in Christ was revealed. And when sin entered and man was by it cut off from the immediate presence of God, then the observance of the Sabbath became the means by which God might be known as one who could restore the fallen by the revealing of his own holy presence in Christ. And so the Lord said, "Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep; for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you." Ex. 31:13. "Moreover I also gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them." Eze. 20:12. He "who of God is made unto us . . . sanctification," and whose presence sanctifies, is himself the blessing and the sanctification of the Sabbath, and by remembering "the Sabbath day to keep it holy," or to treat it as the holy day which it is, we open up the way for the Sanctifier to reveal himself to us and in us. The experience of Sabbath-keeping is not found in physical rest. The ceasing from any work serves a double purpose. It is a token that we have ceased from our own works, which are sin, and that God is now working in us "both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13), and it gives an uninterrupted opportunity to cherish the divine presence in the soul. But true Sabbath-keeping is found only in the realization of God's rest in being delivered from the power and the bondage of evil. This is the Gospel which God in Christ preached in the Sabbath, the same Gospel which was expressed in the words of the Saviour, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." It is the same Gospel of deliverance, and by the same means, as was preached to the children of Israel when the Lord said to Moses, "My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest." Ex. 33:14. Thus Sabbath-keeping brings to us the presence of him in whose presence "is fulness of joy," whose presence makes holy, and whose presence gives the rest which comes through deliverance from sin.5 It is thus evident that an unconverted person, one who has not been brought "out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage," can not truly keep the Sabbath. Not knowing the deliverance from sin which comes through the presence and the power of Christ, he can not experience the rest which alone is true Sabbath-keeping. Thus one does not keep the Sabbath in order to make himself a Christian, but because he is a Christian, and it is not to him a yoke of bondage, but rather the outward sign and the inward experience of freedom. Thus he is able to "call the Sabbath a delight; the holy of the Lord, honorable" (Isa. 58:13), because in it he finds the presence of him concerning whom the Lord has said, "Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth" (Isa. 42:1). So the promise is fulfilled to him, "Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord." Isa. 58:14. This is not to say that one can not enjoy the presence and the blessing of the Lord on any day except the Sabbath, but it is true that there is a fulness of blessing, a double blessing, upon the Sabbath, which distinguishes it from every other day. When God created man, he blessed him, and afterwards he blessed the seventh day; and when man regards the Sabbath for what it is, the day blessed and made holy by the presence of God in Christ, the blessing upon man and the blessing upon the day constitute a double blessing which is to be enjoyed by man. But no other day besides the seventh has been thus blessed, and consequently on no other day can man enjoy the double blessing. The ability to make any other day a Sabbath for man would be the ability to bless and to save; but this is wholly of God, and therefore only God can make a Sabbath for man, and he has made but one Sabbath, the seventh day. All this is involved in the truth that there can be no other Gospel, altho there are some who "would pervert the Gospel of Christ," and that "neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yea and forever" (Heb. 13:8, R. V.), and salvation has always been through faith in him, "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." It was through this faith that "Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous." Heb. 11:4. It was this faith which "was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness." It was by faith in this same Saviour that Moses, "when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt." Heb. 11:24-26. It was this same Saviour who supplied the water of life to the children of Israel, "for they drank of that spiritual Rock that went with them; and that Rock was Christ." 1 Cor. 10:4, margin. The grace by which we are now saved is the grace "which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began." And so the love of God, which was revealed in creation, is the same love which is revealed in redemption; and the Sabbath, which was instituted as the sign of God's creative power, is the sign of that same power revealed in redemption, or the new creation. And as God is the same, his love the same, and his power the same, so we have in the one everlasting Gospel the one unchangeable Sabbath.