We have in another article seen that the Lord’s Day, according to the Bible, which is our only guide, is the seventh day of the week. And yet very many people do not so regard it, because they think that in some way the crucifixion of Christ made a change in the day. It ought to be sufficient to say that while the Lord with His voice from Sinai called the seventh day His day, afterwards claiming the Sabbath as His day, through Isaiah, and while the Lord Jesus Christ declared Himself to be Lord of the day which the Jews professed to regard sacred, He never gave even so much as a hint that any other day was His special day. No other day was ever called His day; but all the other days of the week are classed under the general head of “the six working days.” The least that should be expected of one who claims Sunday for the Lord’s day, is that He should show from the Scriptures as plain a declaration to that effect as there is for the seventh day.
But leaving this negative argument, let us see exactly what relation there is between the cross of Christ and the Sabbath.
In the first place we find that the Sabbath was given to man at the close of the creation of the earth, before the fall. It is an institution of Eden. See the second chapter of Genesis. Therefore the keeping of it as it was given, must bring something of Eden into this wicked world.
It was given to commemorate creation completed. “God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all His work which God created and made.” Genesis 2.3. “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Exodus 20.11. And so when the psalmist says that the work of the Lord is honorable and glorious, he adds, “He hath made His wonderful works to be remembered.” Psalm 111.3, 4. How has He made His wonderful works to be remembered? By giving the Sabbath. That which causes a thing to be remembered is a memorial; and so we have the plainer and more literal rendering of the last text, “He hath made a memorial for His wonderful works.”
There is another thing that dates back at least as far as the Sabbath, and that is the crucifixion of Christ. We read of Christ that He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Revelation 13.8. Therefore the Sabbath and the cross run parallel through the history of the world, and it is certain that the hanging of Christ upon the cross of wood, in the sight of men, could make no difference with the Sabbath. Any effect that the cross was to have upon the Sabbath must have been seen in the very beginning; but it is certain that since the crucifixion of Christ was only the continuation of a thing that had taken place at least four thousand years before, it could make no change in the Sabbath which had existed all that time in connection with it.
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