Objection:
The word “Sabbath” occurs some sixty times in the New Testament. In every case except one, you admit that the weekly Sabbath is meant. In the one case, however, where the word in Greek is the same (Colossians 2:16), you insist that it means something different. Why is this so? Is it not because you know this verse completely shatters all your arguments for Christians keeping the Sabbath?
Answer:
The eminent Bible commentators quoted at the close of the preceding objection “admit that the weekly Sabbath is meant” in some fifty-nine instances, as reference to their comments on those texts reveals, but they likewise declare that this sixtieth instance deals with the annual sabbaths! Yet they have no interest in proving anything in behalf of the seventh-day Sabbath. That’s from Sunday keeping commentators!
It is no secret that the Greek word translated in the New Testament simply means “rest” and gives no indication of what kind of rest or what day of rest. The Greek-speaking Christians gave the correct meaning to the word by the context in which they found it, even as we do with many words. The term “day” requires a context to determine the time period. We may mean the light part of the twenty-four hours, the whole twenty-four hours, or an indefinite period, as “this is a great day and age we are living in.” Now, simply because a writer uses the word “day” fifty-nine times to mean twenty-four hours provides no proof that his sixtieth use of the word must mean the same time! The context must decide. If a writer, for example, said that “the day ended as the western horizon glowed red with the reflected light of a setting Sun.” The context of the red sky and setting sun would be sufficient to determine that he was not using the word “day” to mean twenty-four hours, but only the daylight part of it. The writer’s fifty-nine or five hundred and fifty-nine previous uses of the word to mean twenty-four hours would not affect our conclusion that here was an instance where only the daylight part of the day was meant.
The facts in the case before us call for the opposite conclusion from that which the Sabbath opposer seeks to establish. He admits that some fifty-nine other references to “sabbath” in the New Testament speak of the seventh-day Sabbath. None of these references even suggest that the Sabbath had lost, was in the process of losing, or was going to lose any sanctity that had thus far distinguished it. Hence, if the New Testament teaches Sabbath abolition, that teaching must be found in this solitary sixtieth reference.
We do not recall at the moment anyone who has seriously attempted to find a reason for Sabbath abolition in any of the other fifty-nine references. Sabbath opposers primarily confine themselves to this sixtieth reference to “Sabbath” in Colossians 2:16 and frankly rely on this one verse “completely” to shatter all our “arguments for Christians keeping the Sabbath.”
That is a great weight to place on one text, but it is enlightening to know that the discussion of the word “sabbath” in the New Testament can be narrowed down to this. If this text does thus teach Sabbath abolition, what a shock must have come to the Christian believers scattered over the Roman Empire as the Colossian letter slowly made its way, in the form of handwritten duplicates, to the different churches. We might imagine their saying something in this order: “We have read the Scriptures from Moses to Malachi, and we find there a command to keep holy the seventh-day Sabbath of the Ten Commandments. We have read numerous references to the Sabbath in the apostles’ writings, but they have given no hint that the Sabbath was abolished at the cross. Why have they failed to do this in all their fifty-nine references to it?”
But would those early Christians have found it necessary to raise such a question? No. They had read in the writings of the apostles that Christ abolished the ceremonial rites and services of the Jews, and they knew, as almost anyone in the Roman Empire knew, that those services included regulations of meats and drinks and various feasts, new moons, and annual sabbaths.
Therefore, when they read in the Colossian letter that the ritual of meats and drinks, new moons, sabbaths, et cetera, were abolished, what would they naturally conclude, given the context, were the sabbaths Paul meant? What would be their conclusion? The same conclusion we would reach after we had read in a book fifty-nine references to “day” as meaning twenty-four hours, and then read the sixtieth reference to “day” in the context of a red sky and setting sun. They would conclude that a different period was meant, that Paul was speaking of annual sabbaths.
