Objection:
The fourth commandment in the Ten Commandments is not inherently a moral precept, but the other nine are self-evidently moral commands. All moral principles are discoverable by the light of nature or reason, but the necessity of keeping the seventh day is not thus discoverable. For example, all men naturally know that it is wrong to steal, kill, commit adultery, et cetera, but no one would therefore understand that a particular day had been set apart as holy. That required a direct revelation from God. Hence the Sabbath command is not moral. Furthermore, there is nothing inherently sacred in the seventh day of the week. Hence it would never have been wrong to work on the seventh day unless God had given a command to rest on it.
Answer:
The most direct reply to this objection may be presented in terms of answers to three key questions.
First Question: Do all men naturally know it is wrong to steal, commit adultery, worship idols, or violate any other of the nine commands that the objector certainly agrees are moral?
This question challenges the very foundation on which the whole objection before us rests. Fortunately, a clear and sure answer can be given. Let us start with the first commandment. This command not only forbids polytheism but also requires that we worship one particular God, the true God. Do all men naturally know that it is wrong to worship more than one god? Or do they naturally know who the true God is? The answer to both questions is no. Though most men of all races and ages have felt that they should worship some god or gods, there has never been agreement on which god or gods should be worshiped.
Says Paul, “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” 1 Corinthians 1:21. His sermon on Mars’ Hill is an exhibit of such preaching. And how did Paul know the true God? By the revelations given to him and by his study of that revelation called the Scriptures.
The one true God is pure and holy, and while just is also merciful. The nations’ gods have been anything but holy, and their mercy at best has been erratic. Now, the first commandment calls on us to worship the one true God. Hence we must know His nature and holy requirements if we are genuinely to obey that command. But only revelation can provide that knowledge.
Take the second commandment. Do men know by reason or nature that it is wrong to make a likeness of God or any creature and use it as an object of religious worship? No. The history of almost all humanity contains a record of idol worship. Indeed, Roman Catholics declare that there is nothing sinful in making images and bowing down before them. And how do we as Protestants seek to show the evil of idols, either Catholic or heathen? Do we rest our case on reason and nature? No. We rest it on revelation.
Take the third commandment. The reason why we see force and meaning in the prohibition against taking God’s name in vain is that revelation presents to us a picture of a most pure and holy God to whom we owe all and to whom we must someday give an account. But the heathen, even the most enlightened Greeks, who possessed no revelation, thought of their gods as altogether like themselves, lustful, depraved, vindictive, even murderous. Would it have seemed reasonable to a Greek to believe that there was anything wrong in taking the name of any of his gods lightly?
Let us turn to a commandment that deals with man’s relation to his fellow man and see whether reason and nature prove sufficient here. We, Christians, are shocked at the thought of adultery in any of its evil manifestations. And when we send missionaries to far lands, we seek to turn men from this evil, along with all other sins. But these missionaries do not make their appeal based on reason and nature. They would be ridiculed if they did. That is the testimony of many who have preached to non-Christian peoples. Instead, they preach morality and purity in terms of a revelation from God and a command of God.
But why lengthen the survey of the nine commands that the objector admits are moral? We believe that reason and nature play some part in giving us a knowledge of right and wrong, of God and the judgment, so that men are without excuse. But how limited a role they play is sadly revealed in the long, sinful history of man. We believe that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah had enough knowledge of God and right and wrong to be morally accountable and justly entitled to the fiery destruction that descended upon them. But our Lord declared that it would be more tolerable in the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah than for those cities that refused to receive the message that His disciples would bring to them. And why? Because the disciples would bring them a revelation from God, received through Jesus Christ. Said Christ, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke [margin, “excuse”] for their sin.” John 15:22.
It is clear that a divine revelation is needed, not simply regarding the fourth commandment, but regarding the others as well! Thus the very foundation on which this impressive objection has been reared disappears. Strictly speaking, it should not be necessary for us to deal further with this objection. But let us look briefly at the other questions involved.
Second Question: What are the proofs that we can offer to support our claim that the fourth commandment is moral rather than ceremonial and thus eternally binding like the other nine?
We answer:
- Moral duties and precepts are such as grow out of the attributes of God. Creative power is the distinguishing attribute of the living God, and the Sabbath grew directly out of the exercise of this attribute in the creation of the world.
- The second reason follows closely on the first: Man’s moral duty to love and obey God rests chiefly upon the fact that the Lord created all things, which fact the Sabbath was given to commemorate.
- Man’s nature, physically and mentally, requires just such a day of rest as the Sabbath precept provides, and hence, like all moral precepts, it provides for a natural and universal want of the race.
- Man’s moral and spiritual well-being requires just what the Sabbath precept provides, and hence it is moral.
Proofs three and four are identical to those used by ardent Sunday law advocates, except that when they say “sabbath,” they mean “Sunday.” They present medical and scientific evidence to show that those who take a day of rest at regular intervals of about one week can better carry on their work during the following week. They also point to religious history, which shows that spiritual life wanes in so-called Christian lands where a weekly day of worship has not been faithfully observed.
Thus, it is well-established that Sunday leaders in Protestantism see a moral quality in the fourth commandment as certainly as we do. They contend that the command is partly moral and partly ceremonial. The moral part, say they, is the command to keep holy one day in seven; the ceremonial aspect is the particular day set apart. They must claim that part of it is moral to enforce Sunday; they must declare that part of it is ceremonial to justify their changing the day of worship.
In taking this position, they overlook the following facts:
First, as has already been shown, the moral quality of the Sabbath command resides not simply in the physical, mental, and spiritual needs of man. Most primarily, the moral quality springs from the relation of the command to the creative act of God.
Second, the creative act displayed itself in a certain time sequence, six days in which God labored and the seventh day on which He rested.
Third, the Scriptures say, “And 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.
The very reason offered in the fourth commandment as to why men should keep the Sabbath is this historical fact of creation and God’s resting on the last day of creation week. “But the seventh day is the sabbath. . . For 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 20:10-11.
How could language make more clear that a particular day is involved in the Sabbath command? And that that day memorializes a specific historical event? Or how could language make more apparent that the sanctifying of this particular weekly rest day springs from the fact that this specific historical event occurred on that day, the seventh day?
The “wherefore” in the Sabbath command refers to this incident and the particular day God blessed. Remove the “wherefore,” and the reason for the Sabbath command disappears. But that is precisely what Sunday advocates do when they invoke the Sabbath command in favor of one day’s rest in seven but discard the reason for a weekly holy day. When they contend that the weekly rest-day feature of the command is moral, but the seventh-day part is ceremonial, and hence of relatively minor importance, they are in the curious position of asserting that a great moral principle enunciated in the Ten Commandments rests upon a ceremonial, and thus relatively minor, act of God.
Fifth, the Sabbath precept, like all moral precepts, applies equally well to all nations, in all countries, and at all times. This follows from the fact that recurring periods of physical rest and similar periods of religious exercise are as much needed by one people as another, in all climes and ages.
Sixth, the Sabbath precept guards the right of property the same as the eighth commandment does; and hence, like that, is moral. The Lord divided the seven-day week into two parts; six days man might use as he desired in honest labor, the seventh God reserved. “But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God.” Exodus 20:10.
The Lord speaks of the Sabbath as “my holy day” (Isaiah 58:13). It is as morally wrong to steal from God the holy time that belongs to Him as it is to steal from our neighbor some possession that is his. Hence the command that prohibits such stealing from God is a moral command.
Seventh, marriage is a moral institution. The Sabbath institution, being made at the same time, by the same authority, for the same persons, and in a similar manner, is also moral for the same reason.
Only those ready to contend that marriage rests, not on a moral but a ceremonial law, should logically contend that the Sabbath rests simply on a ceremonial law. In this setting, we better see how unreasonable the argument is that although the Sabbath institution is moral because all men naturally know that rest is needed, the particular day mentioned simultaneously is ceremonial because men do not naturally know the day we should rest. No Christian would be impressed with the argument that though the marriage institution is moral because men naturally know that marriage is needful, the monogamous feature is simply ceremonial because men do not naturally understand that a man should have only one wife. We would respond that even if men do not know this inherently, they do know it by revelation, and then we would cite God’s act in Eden in uniting one man and one woman, and His declaring that “they twain shall be one flesh.” We would not consider it necessary to do more than this to prove the moral quality of monogamy, that one joined to one is right, but one joined to two or more is not. Christians believe that God’s act and declaration can give a moral quality even to arithmetic.
By precisely the same reasoning, we may dispose of the argument about the ceremonial quality of that part of the Sabbath law that speaks of a particular day.
Eighth, one of the most distinguishing marks of the various ceremonial laws in the Bible is that they were all given after man sinned, were made necessary in some way or other by man’s sinful state, and expire by limitation while man is still on this present world. (The ceremonial statutes given to the ancient Jews expired at the cross; the ceremonial rites of Christians, for example, the Lord’s supper, expire at the Second Advent.) That is not true of the Sabbath, which was given to sinless Adam and Eve in Eden, and will be kept by the redeemed in Eden restored (See Isaiah 66:23).
Ninth, the very fact that God placed the Sabbath command in the heart of the Ten Commandments, known to all Christians as the moral law, is in itself the most convincing proof that that command is moral. God confined His audible law giving to ten commands; He confined His writing to ten commands. How unreasonable to believe that with brevity so distinguishing a mark of this code, with weighty and eternally moral precepts on both sides of it, God should insert in the midst a ceremonial statute that was to expire at Christ’s first advent! But we are not required to entertain so absurd an idea. The series of proofs here given reveal beyond all reasonable doubt that the fourth commandment is moral.
Third Question: What of the claim that “it would never have been wrong to work on the seventh day unless God had given a command to rest on it”? The objector here most evidently seeks to prove that the Sabbath is a ceremonial statute, which owes its authority, not to any inherent moral quality but an arbitrary command of God. The point is covered in what has already been presented. But two more observations may help to reveal the fallacy of the objection fully.
Through the ages, there have been those who preached and practiced free love. Even in nineteenth-century America, some societies formed of people who claimed kinship with Christians advocated free love and thus abandoned marriage. Now, how would the Sabbath objector answer such a free-love advocate who contended that it would never have been wrong to practice free love if God had not commanded that there should be marriage, with twain as one? We think we hear him responding immediately and with vigor: “What more do we need than God’s command to determine what is right or wrong?” Nor would he countenance for a moment the argument that some men do not know naturally that monogamy is right; therefore, the Christian rule of monogamy is arbitrary and may be abandoned by those who desire greater freedom, even so with the Sabbath command.
We earlier noted that one of the reasons for the Sabbath command was to guard property rights. The seventh day belongs to God. It was because God set apart the day as His own, with blessing and sanctification, that He commanded men to regard it as different from other days, to rest from their toil on that day, and to keep it holy. Hence the objector is forgetful of the historical facts and sequence when he declares that “it would never have been wrong to work on the seventh day unless God had given a command to rest on it.”
The wrongness of using the day for secular interests resides in the Sabbath being God’s holy day. The command springs from that fact. Therefore, it is not an arbitrary command but a moral one growing out of the nature of the seventh day, the sanctified possession of God.
There is something extraordinary about the claim that the Sabbath command is ceremonial. Those who set it forth generally are devout Sunday keepers who deplore the widespread profanation of Sunday and often seek to secure civil legislation to protect it, even as their spiritual fathers in past generations did. They quite uniformly hold that the keeping of Sunday is a moral matter, certainly not ceremonial, though they can cite no command of Scripture in support of this belief, no action of God in blessing or sanctifying the day. They must fall back on the fourth commandment, albeit with alterations and a sixteenth-century new interpretation, to make out the appearance of a case for the moral quality of Sunday keeping. Yet we who keep the Sabbath are declared to be resting our case on a ceremonial law, though we appeal to the same fourth commandment and in the exact form that God gave it.
All this indeed adds up to the conclusion that the real controversy is not over whether a weekly rest day is a moral requirement of God—the Sabbath institution soon begins to disintegrate unless it is so viewed—but which day of the week the fourth commandment calls on us to keep, the seventh or the first?
