A few of us have been getting together once a month to work our way through John Piper's "Brothers, We Are Not Professionals." Chapter 21 lended itself to a great discussion on legalism. In CRC circles, talk of legalism quickly turns to Sabbath observance. We all have our memories of "no bikes on Sunday" or "swimming - but no splashing!" Seriously, even sincere attempts at Sabbath observance are quickly tagged as legalism today. How do you balance the fight between legalism and the call to live holy lives in respect to the Lord's Day?
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I find my father's advice in this regard to have been the wisest. He said to me when I was much younger, "When you least want to go to church is when you need it most." This simple thought has stuck with me my entire adult life.
When I began to see the Sabbath as a gift, it changed my perspective - even as I became, as some would say, more "strict" in practice. Extrapolating back from the "eternal Sabbath," which is a release from our striving and sinning, our earthly Sabbath frees us from our striving in this world. I don't have to get caught in the rat-race of life on the Lord's Day.
I realized this the most while in seminary and decided, before I began, that Sunday was not a day for homework. What freedom the Sabbath brought into my life when something was always hanging over my head!
Although every day is for worship and service, if a day wasn't set aside for it, all of our striving in ths world would quickly crowd it out. Praise God for the Sabbath.
Chad Steenwyk
Holland, MI
I think it would help if we spoke of spiritual disciplines on the Lord's Day, rather than "Sabbath Observance." The latter phrase is highly problemmatic, because it confounds and confuses the Old Testament teaching on the Sabbath as a weekly day of rest, and part of the ceremonial law, with the New Testament perspective on the Sabbath having been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and as eschatological hope, as well as the fact that, after the resurrection of Jesus on the "eighth day," the church ceased to observe the Sabbath and began celebrating the Lord's Day. We would do well to go back and study John Calvin's perspective on the fourth commandment. In the Genevan catechism, he declares quite boldly that the Sabbath commandment is unique in that it is the only part of the decalogue that has been abrogated (abolished) by the coming of Christ. Nonetheless, it still has implications for our worship and lives of discipleship. I think that we in the Reformed tradition have done a poor job in keeping the balance that Calvin envisioned. Calvin did not, as the myth has it, play lawn bowling on Sunday. But Calvinists, following his perspective on the fourth commandment, might well do so, as long as they keep things in perspective. In the pietistic streams of the Reformed tradition, especially in Scotland, England, and the Netherlands, a strong Sabbatarian tendency existed even before the Reformation, and this persisted in new Calvinistic dress. The reason people associate legalism and Sunday in the Reformed tradition is because we were in fact terribly legalistic in our practice, and often used the "Sabbath" as a weapon. We should also remember that in the continental Reformed tradition we do not confess that Sunday has become the Sabbath, as the Westminster Confession does (21.7-8). There is no biblical basis for that contention, and I think it's dead wrong. It's the one part of that otherwise awesome confession of faith that I could not subscribe to and do not believe. Though it's mostly correct, it goes way too far in identifying the OT Sabbath and the NT Lord's Day, thus obscuring the difference and plunging the church back into the shadows of the law. Westminster's reasoning does not come from Calvin. Calvin does not refer to the Lord's Day as the Sabbath, though he did believe that we should use the Lord's Day to focus on worship and discipleship. The big difference is that Calvin's perspective (in theory if not always in practice) allowed for Christian liberty in the celebration of the Lord's Day. This Christian liberty has been conspicuous by its absence in our tradition, at least in previous generations. Zwingli went even further than Calvin, writing: "I do not find anywhere that idleness is worship. Even if one were to go to the fields on a Sunday after having set one’s house in order with God, to do some mowing, cutting, haying or whatever work of necessity may be required, I know well that this should be by far more pleasing to God than sloppy idleness. For the believer is above the Sabbath." Notably, when the Heidelberg Catechism was translated into Dutch, Q&A 103 was altered to reflect the strict Sabbatarianism of Dutch piety. The German phrase "besonders am Feiertag" was translated as "inzonderheid op den Sabbat," which is not just a translation, but a substantial change in meaning. The original means: "especially on the festive day of rest," which conveys something quite different than "especially on the Sabbath." The wonderful, refreshing, and biblically sound teaching of the Heid. Cat. was somewhat muted by this change, allowing a legalistic Sabbatarianism, never intended by the authors, to creep into the Dutch version of the catechism. Now, as a direct result of our legalism and confounding of the OT and NT views of the fourth commandemtn, our members have gone completely to the other end of the spectrum, failing to use the Lord's Day as a spiritual discipline. This has to be recovered, but not by going back to "Sabbath observance." Rather, we have to present our congregations with the "festive day of rest" as an opportunity, a spiritual discipline, without going back to the old ways, which were a mixed bag of both reverence and judgmentalism. Paul told us not to allow anyone to judge us with regard to a Sabbath Day (Col. 2), but we made it our official policy to judge people in this manner. We are reaping what we have sown, and it's our job as Reformed pastors to guide out congregations into a more biblical way.
And another confessional note, this one from the Second Helvetic Confession, art. 24: "In this connection we do not yield to the Jewish observance and to superstitions. For we do not believe that one day is any holier than another, or think that rest in itself is acceptable to God. Moreover, we celebrate the Lord’s Day and not the Sabbath, as a free observance." Emphasis added.
Dr. Randy Blacketer
I used to pose this question in my high school catechism classes by playing "Sabbath Bingo". Each high schooler was required to grab an older adult from the fellowship hall and they used red and green M&M's to see what they considered "okay" on Sunday. It was always interesting to see how different the different generations came down on different issues. The constant was that all three (or even four) generations had pretty illogical lines drawn for reasons they couldn't name. We found it helpful to seperate the idea of Sabbath from the idea of the Lord's Day. While not entirely different, its fairly obvious to note that early in the Church, Christians used their freedom in Christ to move their primary day of worship to Sundays. It stopped being the Biblically-prescribed Sabbath "day" and started being a mutually agreed-upon act of observance of the Old Testament concept of Sabbath rest on a given day (in this case, Sunday). Sabbath rest is needed by our souls. The Germans tried to introduce a 10 day workweek, but it failed horribly because people need rest. The Sabbath is a normative prescription for our souls and a gift, as Chad said. Forcing distinct rules about Lord's Day observance just makes us Pharisees. Our young people are immersed in a culture that rejects the idea of Sabbath rest. If we want them to keep the value of Sabbath rest, we must understand it in terms of a gift, and a healthy choice of Christian freedom.
Mark Hilbelink
Greenville, MI
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