Yeshua Explored

12th December 2022

Sabbath realities

Why did the Church change the Sabbath day?

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It is so sad that the institutional Church has done all that it can to distance itself from God’s own sentiments about the Sabbath day. Here’s what the church did:

We begin with the official proclamation of Emperor Constantine, the man who created the concept of Christendom, with Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. Here’s his first proclamation regarding the change of Sabbath, in AD 321: “On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed.”

This was made a lot more official in AD 364, with the proclamation (Canon 29) of the Council of Laodicea: “Christians shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday but shall work on that day; but the Lord’s day they shall especially honour, and, as being Christians, shall, if possible, do no work on that day. If, however, they are found Judaizing, they shall be shut out from Christ.”

What do we conclude from this? Firstly, that the instigation of the change of the “Sabbath” was political and born out of the “Christian” anti-Semitism that was endemic to “Christendom”. Secondly, that the initial intention was to emulate the mechanism of the Sabbath through enforcement. If this is no different to what the Jewish people are urged to do on a Sabbath, then we are simply moving the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. I would suggest that there is something different going on here, culminating in an artificial construct, not prompted by Scripture, but rather by man.

The Church of Constantine was one born out of political expediency. After all, if Christianity was going to be the official religion of the Roman Empire, then it would effectively be the tool of the Roman Empire, in order to be able to rule the people effectively. And what better way was there to unify the Empire than to give them a set of ideas to believe in? The trouble is that Christianity itself wasn’t unified, so his first task was to firm up a unified set of beliefs and then give firm instructions how these beliefs should be followed. All this was done at the council of Nicaea and out of this came the newly constructed churches and cathedrals, with a prescribed day, the Sunday – the existing pagan day for communal worship – to practice their “Christianity”.

If this new “religion” of Christianity was to be an effective tool for the State, then it needed to realise that it had to abide by the State’s rules. It suited Constantine and those who followed to declare to the people that their only religious obligations were to attend Church on a Sunday and try to abstain from work that day. Thus was born the Sunday “Sabbath”, a day that has retained this prescribed function right up to today.

So what of today? Having accepted that, for all intents and purposes, the “Sabbath” is now on a Sunday, it is sad to see the creeping secularisation that has been eating away at any intention of this day being special. In the 1994 Sunday Trading act the only restrictions imposed were that larger shops could open only for six continual hours and that they should close on Easter Sunday. Our local high street, frankly, is busier on a Sunday than any other days of the week. What has happened to the Sabbath then? More importantly, what has happened to the idea of the Sabbath?

Secularists and progressives would see it as some form of a triumph to wrench Sunday away from religious restrictions. But what have they actually achieved by doing this? Christian campaigning group Keep Sunday Special! have commented on the effect that current (and proposed) Sunday trading laws has had on various sectors of society. For families it would be less time that they would have together, with 77% of poll respondents from parents suggesting that work already impinges too much on family life. Unions have reported on the significant damage to work-life balance of workers, and retailers have quoted statistics showing that no real long-term financial benefits have resulted from Sunday opening hours.

It’s the function of Sabbath that we must keep returning to, even if we remove the religious trappings. It is a day of rest. We need rest. We need time to take a breath, away from the rat-race, to enjoy friends and family. It’s our society that sees us as economic units rather than human beings, as consumers rather than people. God saw all this coming, He reminds us continually through His eternal Word of the importance of rest, specifically a day of rest, preferably on the assigned day, the Saturday Sabbath but, if that isn’t possible, any day is better than no day!

Incredibly (though we shouldn’t be surprised), there is support from science, specifically from a new discipline called chronobiology, which examines biological rhythms in animals and human beings. There is a cercaseptan rhythm, that occurs every seven days, governing many biological functions, from chemical production to blood pressure to heartbeat. This is a young science, but one of its findings is that bees in Brazil observe a sabbath rest every seven days and that creatures that align with this seven day cycle live longer! Also the Seventh Day Adventists claim that, statistically, they live seven years longer than the average person. Well, they would say that, though I have yet to see the evidence. Nevertheless, none of this is inconsistent with a loving God who provides us with specific commands for good, healthy living, so we should be hugely encouraged by these scientific discoveries.

Our Sinner’s Charter would have this to say about the fourth commandment:

Work, rest and play. You have freedom to choose what works for you, but you also have a responsibility for your family and your sense of self-worth to be a good citizen and help support the economy. No day is extra special and no-one has the right to impose their ancient traditions on your daily life.

This is an extract from the book, Sinner’s Charter: Are the ten commandments for today?, available for £10 at https://www.sppublishing.com/the-sinners-charter-260-p.asp