The weekly Sabbath is not merely – or even primarily – a type or shadow. Rather, the weekly Sabbath is embedded in the middle of the Ten Commandments, which earlier generations viewed as the indispensable “lynchpin” between the two tables of the Law.

Keeping the Sabbath Today? By Jay Adams

Readers may ask why a book published in 2008 should be reviewed today. Several years ago my pastor gave me his copy and asked me to write a review. His request was the only reason for this ruling elder – lacking Hebrew and Greek – being willing to undertake the task; albeit having completed a doctoral dissertation on the Christian Sabbath in the nineteenth century.[1] (Finally overcoming my procrastination, this review’s completion happily coincides with the run-up to this year’s Super Bowl.)

I recall years ago when Dr. Adams visited my church. His credentials, experience, and widely-known counseling and writing ministry were hugely impressive; today they still give me trepidation to write in opposition to one of his roughly 100 books – the writing of which caused Adams himself “some trepidation” as he acknowledges. Alas, the book should be opposed; but respectfully and thoughtfully.[2]

Before diving in, I’ll borrow from nineteenth-century Southern Presbyterian theologian, Dr. Robert Lewis Dabney, whose lecture on the fourth commandment in his Systematic Theology is as good as any relatively short piece I’ve found on the subject. Dabney’s opening words are as relevant today as when he penned them:

There is, perhaps, no subject of Christian practice on which there is, among sincere Christians, more practical diversity and laxity of conscience than the duty of Sabbath observance. We find that, in theory, almost all Protestants now profess the views once peculiar to Presbyterians and other Puritans; but, in actual life, there is, among good people, a variety of usages. . . .[3]

Then – and now – the usages of the first day of the week range from laxity to strictness. Dabney relates how “the communions founded at the Reformation, were widely and avowedly divided in opinion as to the perpetuity of the Sabbath obligation.” Some of the “purest” churches “professed that they saw no obligation in the Scriptures to any peculiar Sabbath observance. . . .” While many of their descendants – at least in Dabney’s day – had ceased to “defend the looser theory of their forefathers,” they retained their forefathers’ traditional practices which were “far beneath” their profession.[4]

Adams largely shares the view historically called the “Continental Sabbath,” which was essentially Calvin’s view. It is fundamentally different from the Presbyterian and Puritan churches, lacking the moral authority of the fourth commandment and viewing the first day’s observance of corporate worship as a means of order and convenience for the Church. Not surprisingly, such convictions attach less weight to the day’s observance. Adams writes that Calvin’s position “is essentially that which I espouse.”[5]

Furthermore, Adams was convinced many Christians suffered from a burdensome Sabbath, writing, “Possibly this book will be used by God to free them from this weekly misery and help others from ever experiencing it.” His overarching concern, though, transcends Dabney’s laxity or strictness. Adams does not see either position as a legitimate concern because, in his view, the weekly Sabbath has ceased. A number of the arguments in this book, however, fall short of achieving Adams’s objective of proving the weekly Sabbath’s abolition.[6]

The hundred page book contains 21 chapters; only a few will be addressed here, although at least one common thread runs throughout. It is Adams’s conviction that because the (original, physical) “rest” required by the fourth commandment has been fulfilled for the believer in Jesus Christ in a far greater (spiritual) manner – in one’s resting by faith upon Him alone for salvation (Matthew 11:28-29) – one must conclude that the original Sabbath commandment has been made obsolete.

In the introduction, Adams highlights Romans 14:5-6 with its reference to observing “one day above another” (as well as the eating or not eating of meat). Here, without acknowledging the context of the passage (he does so shortly thereafter) – which concerns Jewish ceremonial practices (including ceremonial sabbaths which also are in view in Galatians 4:9-10 and Colossians 2:16-17) – Adams leads the reader to assume the apostle Paul was including the weekly Sabbath day in the passage. As this essay argues, that is a stretch.[7]

These passages (Rom. 14, Gal. 4, Col. 2) deal with questions of Jewish ceremonial practices which were no longer appropriate after Christ’s resurrection – questions of meat-eating, “days and months and seasons and years,” and food/drink/festivals/new moons/sabbath days. How does Adams get from ceremonial law and non-weekly sabbath references to abolishing the weekly Sabbath? He does this by assuming that all references to any form of the word “sabbath” must include the weekly holy day.[8]

Close examination of the English rendering of the scriptural references to this word reveals that in most cases where the fourth commandment is in view, the article “the” is employed in addition to the singular form as in “the sabbath” or “the sabbath day.” In contrast, in most cases in which the context indicates Jewish ceremonials to be in view, either the article “a” is used as in “a sabbath” or “a sabbath day”; or, the rendering is plural, as in “her sabbaths” or “sabbath days.”[9]

The lack of reference in these passages to the fourth commandment has not stopped anti-Sabbath advocates from arguing against the weekly rest/worship day’s obligation. At this point, Calvin’s comments regarding another portion of Scripture prove helpful. In Calvin’s Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 1, he writes concerning the genealogy of Jesus Christ: “. . . we must observe, that the Evangelists do not speak of events known in their own age” [emphasis added]. Regarding the ancestry of Joseph and Mary, “The Evangelists, trusting to what was generally understood in their own day, were, no doubt, less solicitous” on the question of Mary’s tribe,

. . . for, if any one entertained doubts, the research was neither difficult nor tedious. Besides, they took for granted, that Joseph, as a man of good character and behaviour, had obeyed the . . . law in marrying a wife from his own tribe.[10]  

The relevance of Calvin’s point is this: because it was generally understood that the apostolic church had begun worshiping corporately on the first day of the week (the research “neither difficult nor tedious”) in commemoration of the resurrection of Christ, observing the Christian Sabbath with the moral authority of the fourth commandment’s one-day-out-of-seven, there was no need for Paul to state that the days he refers to do not include the weekly rest/worship day. To borrow Calvin’s phrasing, there was no need for Paul to be “solicitous” on that point.      

In chapter 11, Adams asks, “Why must the Sabbath change its meaning and purpose again and again?” His main argument here stems from the fact that the rationale for the fourth commandment in Deuteronomy 5 is different from that in Exodus 20. As the Westminster Larger Catechism (LC) 121 suggests, creation is the rationale for the Sabbath commandment given in Exodus while redemption (or, deliverance) is the rationale provided in Deuteronomy. Adams argues from this development that the Sabbath “is not unchangeable. Indeed, it is the one commandment of the Ten that is changeable.” True, and in fact the fourth commandment itself does not specify a particular day of the week’s seven days to be observed in perpetuity. Rather, the wording “the seventh day” suggests a one-in-seven principle, not necessarily the 7th of the week’s seven days. In any case, why should believers be troubled with an addition – or enhancement – to our understanding of one of God’s ordinances? An addition does not necessarily require a full replacement of the commandment, as Adams suggests.[11]

Another pastor friend points out examples in Scripture of what he calls “both-and rather than either-or.” That view fits LC 121: “The word Remember is set in the beginning of the fourth commandment, partly . . . to continue a thankful remembrance of the two great benefits of creation and redemption, which contain a short abridgment of religion. . . .” Creation and redemption. Because God is Creator, He alone is the rightful Redeemer of those He chooses. It is not necessarily an either-or proposition. In fact, holding both realities together is faith enhancing.

But the most consequential case in which Adams argues for replacement in lieu of addition comes from his view of Hebrews 4. Adams rightly states, “The Sabbath now pictures the heavenly rest – the final Sabbath.” He assumes that the eternal, spiritual Sabbath rest (4:11) must of necessity require the passing away of the weekly Sabbath, one of the Old Testament “types and shadows” in his view.[12]

But the weekly Sabbath is not merely – or even primarily – a type or shadow. Rather, the weekly Sabbath is embedded in the middle of the Ten Commandments, which earlier generations viewed as the indispensable “lynchpin” between the two tables of the Law. Nehemiah 9:13-14 strongly supports that position, where “Your holy Sabbath” clearly stands for the “just ordinances and true laws, Good statutes and commandments” (i.e., the Ten Commandments) given at Mount Sinai. The weekly Sabbath, possessing both a type-shadow and a moral nature, is a case of both-and, not either-or.[13]

Moreover, in this section Adams overstates his case:

As there are no more sacrifices and no more temple service because Jesus is the reality that these things symbolized, so too Paul says, there is no more Sabbath, because the ‘rest-reality’ is found in Christ – now in part and forever in the end. . . . The eternal Sabbath is the sign of our everlasting rest in Christ [emphasis added].[14]

There is much truth here. But Paul never says “there is no more Sabbath.” Adams appears to allude to Colossians 2, which he uses to argue for the weekly Sabbath’s abolition. (This has long been the favorite passage of New Testament Sabbath opponents.) In Col. 2:16-17, Paul says:

So then, you must allow nobody to judge you about eating and drinking or about feasts or new moons or sabbaths, which are shadows of what was coming (the body belongs to Christ).[15]

But Adams errs in assuming that, “If Paul wanted Christians to keep the weekly Sabbath, he surely missed a golden opportunity to stress the fact.” This is an argument purely from silence, which can never prove anything in history, or theology. Paul had no reason to stress the weekly first day’s observance that was already well established and not in dispute, believers having begun first-day worship following the resurrection of the Lord Jesus (John 20:19, 26; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2). For Paul to have done so would merely have muddied the waters. Throughout the book, Adams assumes that plural references to “a sabbath” or “sabbaths” or “sabbath days” – the usual biblical manner of referring to ceremonial days – must include the fourth commandment’s weekly holy day, which is essential to his thesis statement: “. . . the Bible teaches that the Sabbath has been abolished.”[16]

But assuming the Sabbath commandment was so soon to be abolished, how nonsensical should it be for the Lord Jesus to affirm the Sabbath – and His lordship over that institution – as in Mark 2:27-28, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Consequently, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (see also Matt. 12:8, Lk. 6:5). PCA Pastor Roland Barnes – who retired in 2023 after four-plus decades of ministry in Statesboro, Georgia – writes, “The Sabbath law prevents us from becoming slaves to our work on the one hand and slaves to our pleasures on the other.” As Jesus said, the day was “made for man,” that is, for man’s benefit and blessing to the extent he employs its hours in God-honoring ways. The physical and the spiritual elements complement one another: as one rests (body/mind) from secular labor on the day, he is thereby enabled to devote himself to corporate worship of the living and true God as well as pursuing the interests of the soul in private/family devotional time, mercy ministry, fellowship, and more during the remaining hours of the day. Occasionally when church members acknowledged they wished for more time to study their Bibles, my former pastor used to reply, “What are you doing on Sunday afternoon?” The Sabbath is a precious and holy gift; use it well.

Adams mentions today’s “more complex society” and suggests, rightly it seems, that a strict cessation of labor on any given day is impossible where medical, utilities, law enforcement, and other services are deemed a necessity (the question of legitimate works of necessity is beyond the scope here but is easily abused in practice). But what bearing does this development have on the moral obligation itself? Perhaps – as an Oak Ridge, Tennessee, engineer friend of mine suggested three decades ago – the commandment was intended, in part, to preclude the development of the type of complex society we have now, one in which technology (perhaps most significantly, medical) facilitates the arrogance of men who increasingly pretend themselves to be gods?

While nostalgia for a simpler time is often dreamy, how less complex might our society be without the massive urban centers (with associated social problems) made possible in part by the production of the steel and power (energy) required for high-rise buildings, utilities, transportation systems, and more? By the nineteenth century, beginning in Pennsylvania the nascent steel industry required blast furnaces to operate continuously – including on the weekly rest/worship day – in order to maintain the extremely high temperature necessary for production. That, along with transportation systems such as railroads which operated every day of the week, probably constituted the most far-reaching examples of societal Sabbath-breaking prior to 1900. It was our own mainly Presbyterian forefathers who did their best to warn against the long-term consequences of societal, even institutionalized, Sabbath breaking.

While the complex society problem is real, perhaps it is also important for the believer to remind himself that one’s favor in God’s sight does not stem from perfect observance of the fourth commandment – or any other law. Jesus Christ alone has fulfilled His Father’s law perfectly, on our behalf. It is Christ’s righteousness alone that believers are credited with, which is received by faith alone. Perhaps the failures of earlier generations – even those of the nineteenth century – have seriously damaged the prospects of contemporary Christians to observe the weekly holy day in the best possible manner. If that be the case, then let it be. May the intractable challenges of honoring the Lord in the fourth commandment – despite our best efforts – serve as a weekly reminder of our true and unending dependence upon “the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior” (Titus 3:5-6).

Out of genuine respect and admiration for the memory of this eminent father of the faith, the late Dr. Adams gets the last word here – which was his closing sentence in this little book: “Now, may God’s Spirit work in your heart through His Word that you may find saving, sanctifying, and glorifying rest in the Lord Jesus Christ – both now and forever.”[17]

Forrest L. Marion is a ruling elder in the First Presbyterian Church (PCA), Crossville, Tennessee.

[1] To clarify whether the weekly (fourth commandment) Sabbath or the several Jewish ceremonial sabbaths are in view, I elected to capitalize the weekly “Sabbath” and use lower case for the ceremonial “sabbaths.” Because the Westminster Confession of Faith uses the term “Christian Sabbath” or “Lord’s Day” in chapter XXI, para. VII, which terms have been used by generations since then, I will also use those terms on occasion. Note that the capitalization of the word sabbath found in many English renderings of Colossians 2:16 was an editorial decision – the Greek language of Paul’s day did not use capitalizations. That unfortunate editorial decision – thereby implying the weekly holy day (fourth commandment) was in view, rather than solely Jewish ceremonial days – has made the already difficult discussions of this issue even more difficult.  

[2] Jay E. Adams, Keeping the Sabbath Today? (Timeless Texts: Stanley, N.C., 2008), vii.

[3] Robert L. Dabney, Systematic Theology (Banner of Truth Trust: Edinburgh and Carlisle, Penn., 1985 [1871]), 366-97 (quote on 366).

[4] Dabney, Systematic Theology, 366-67.

[5] Dabney, Systematic Theology, 366-68; Adams, Keeping the Sabbath, x.

[6] Adams, Keeping the Sabbath, x.

[7] Adams, Keeping the Sabbath, xi, 1-4.

[8] Gal. 4:10. Note Col. 2:16’s reference to “a Sabbath day” (NASB and other translations), is the result of an editorial decision to capitalize “Sabbath” – which capitalization does not appear in the Greek. The editors here showed their assumption – incorrect in the view of the Westminster Standards – that the weekly day of rest/worship was in view. Either the old, obsolete, Jewish ceremonial sabbaths were in view; or the Old Testament’s seventh-day Sabbath was in view (or both). But it cannot be logically argued that the New Testament’s holy day is in view – that day’s observance was not in dispute among believers and, therefore, had no need to be addressed; and does not fit the context.

[9] In addition to Colossians 2:16-17, Adams also relies on Rom. 14:5-6 (see also his chapters 1, 14) and Gal. 4:9-10 (see also his chapters 8, 17). Note that none of these three passages refers explicitly to the Christian Sabbath or Lord’s day. Romans 14:5-6 refers to those who regard “. . . one day above another, another regards every day alike”; and, “He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord. . . .” Galatians 4:9-10 warns against believers reverting to Jewish ceremonials, in verse 10, “You observe days and months and seasons and years.” Paul’s clear reference is to Jewish ceremonial days, also considered “sabbaths” or “sabbath days” (note the plural references to these ceremonial days) in several Old Testament passages (Neh. 10:33 refers to “the sabbaths, the new moons, for the appointed times, for the holy things” [clearly, these “times” are other than the weekly Sabbath; note that, in contrast, in chapter 13:15-22, Nehemiah refers ten times to the weekly holy day (singular) as “the sabbath” or “the sabbath day”]; Is. 1:13-14 refers to “New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies . . . I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts” – because “sabbath” is linked with “assemblies” and “new moon festivals” and “appointed feasts” (all plurals), there is no question the reference to all such ceremonies is in the plural; Hos. 2:11 refers to “feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths, And all her festal assemblies,” again, both the context and plural indicating ceremonial days are in view rather than the weekly Sabbath). Unless noted otherwise, all Bible quotations are from the New American Standard Bible (NASB).

[10] John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 1 (Baker Books: Grand Rapids, Mich., 2003 [reprint]), 82.

[11] Adams, Keeping the Sabbath, 60 [emphasis in original]; Westminster Larger Catechism, Q/A 121; Exodus 20:10.

[12] Adams, Keeping the Sabbath, 61.

[13] Or, if one prefers, the weekly Sabbath illustrates “the already and the not yet.”

[14] Adams, Keeping the Sabbath, 61.

[15] Adams, Keeping the Sabbath, 3. I am not sure which Bible version Adams uses here.

[16] Adams, Keeping the Sabbath, 3-4. Evidence exists that for a time some Jewish believers observed both the Jewish seventh day and the Christian first day.

[17] Adams, Keeping the Sabbath, 103.