Objection:
The Sabbath day is abolished because Paul says it is all right to consider every day alike in the Christian Era. (See Rom. 14:5.)
Answer:
Let us give, first, the passage mentioned in its context: “Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand. One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks.” (Rom. 14:1-6).
Further in the chapter, Paul refers to drink and food. (See verses 17, 21).
Here is a discussion of meats and drinks and various holy days, and Paul’s counsel is that no believer should “judge” any other believer in such matters. How strikingly similar is all this to Paul’s counsel to the Colossians: “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:” (Col. 2:16). But we found (see PAUL EXPRESSLY DECLARES THAT THE SABBATH IS ABOLISHED) that Paul was speaking to the Colossians about the ceremonial law, which dealt with meats and drinks and a variety of holy days, and not at all with the moral law and its seventh-day Sabbath.
But let us look a little more closely at the passage in Romans: “Him that is weak in the faith.” What faith? The faith of the gospel of Christ, which teaches that we receive pardon for all our sins and acceptance by our Lord without the works of the law. Some coming in from Jewry, who had long been immersed in the ritual of the ceremonial law, seemed not to have a faith quite strong enough at the outset to grasp fully the truth that we are saved wholly by the grace of God, without any good deed on our part. Others who had stronger faith or were Gentiles, and thus never devotees of the ceremonial law, were tempted to judge critically those whose faith was weak and who, therefore, continued to make particular ceremonial distinctions in meats and drinks and holy days. Paul counseled against this critical attitude.
The crux of the passage is this statement: “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” And the key phrase is, “every day alike.” The reasoning of the Sabbath objector might be summarized thus: Does not “‘every day’ mean all seven days in the week? And if a believer considers all days “alike,” does not that mean he attaches no special sacredness to any day? And does not Paul rebuke those who would pass critical judgment on the believers who thus viewed every day alike?”
The reader has doubtless noted that some words in the Bible are italicized. The word “alike” is one such word. Now, the italicizing of a word indicates that it is not a translation of a word written by the Bible writer but a word supplied by the translator in his endeavor to express what he thinks is the meaning of the original writing. That is done in all translations and is inevitable. The scrupulously conscientious Bible translators indicated the instances when they thus supplied a word to round out what they considered was the thought in a text. We have no way of knowing whether Paul would use the word “alike” to round out his sentence if he were alive and could speak to us in English. Hence, the fact that no argument can rightly be built on the single word “alike” reduces a significant part of the plausibility of the objector’s series of questions.
But he will probably still inquire confidently: Does not “every day” mean all seven days in the week? And he may add for good measure: Do not the Scriptures mean just what they say? He forgets that though the Bible writers were inspired, they used human language to convey their heavenly instruction. And human language is a very inexact and constantly changing medium for expressing thoughts. We must also remember that all languages have idioms, those singular combinations of words that often defy translation. For example, we may say in colloquial English that specific facts “center around this point.” But how can they both “center” and yet be “around”? We understand perfectly what that phrase means, but we also admit that, strictly speaking, we cannot make sense of the phrase if we look at each word separately.
Christ told His disciples that He would “be killed, and after three days rise again.” Mark 8:31. The Sabbath objector might plausibly ask: Does not “after three days” mean just that? In other words, does it not mean at least the fourth day or later? But wait, the Bible also informs us that Christ told His disciples that He must “be killed, and be raised again the third day.” Matt. 16:21. Why should the Sabbath objector not now ask: Does not “the third day” mean just that? Only as we concede that the phrase “after three days” was an ancient Jewish idiom that meant to them the equivalent of “the third day” can we harmonize the two passages.
Now, to borrow our English idiom, the question before us centers around this point of the proper understanding of a Bible phrase. If we carefully compare scripture with scripture, both constructions of phrases and doctrines taught, we shall have no more trouble over the Bible’s literary forms than those in any other book.
To the Sabbath objector who insists that “every day” in Romans means all the days of the week, we would direct this question: Does “every day” in Exodus mean all the days of the week? Exodus 16 is the record of the giving of the manna. The Lord, through Moses, instructed the Israelites to “go out and gather a certain rate every day.” Verse 4. But when the sixth day came, they were told to gather a double portion because they would find none in the field on the seventh day. (Verses 22-26) But some forgot or were unmindful and went out to gather on the seventh day. God rebuked them, “How long refuse you to keep my commandments and my laws?” Verses 27, 28. There is no record that any Israelite replied, “Every day” means every day in the week, and therefore, I thought it proper to consider the seventh day just like every other day. Evidently, they had not heard of the modern “every day” argument against the Sabbath!
Exodus 16:14 reveals that the word “every” may be understood to have a qualified meaning at times in the Bible. We must read the context and compare scripture with scripture to discover whether there are possible qualifications. The same is true of the word “all.” Paul said, “All things are lawful unto me.” 1 Cor. 6:12. A libertine who isolated that statement from all other scripture might seek to prove that his wastrel life and scandalous deeds were altogether “lawful.” But we protest that Paul’s statement shall be kept in the context of all scripture. When we do so, we will have no trouble with the passage. We understand it to mean that Paul considered all things within the scope of God’s holy law and the Christian practices of life growing out of it lawful to him. He needed to make that all-embracing statement to give the most significant force to the qualifying words that followed: “But all things are not expedient.”
If we view Paul’s words in Romans in terms of these simple rules of Bible study, we shall see their true meaning. “Every day” meant every day regarded as holy under the ceremonial law, which is the law obviously under discussion here. Why should Paul need to interject that he did not mean to include the seventh day when the seventh-day Sabbath was not part of the controversy before him? Nowhere in all Paul’s writings is the seventh-day Sabbath the subject of controversy!
We close with a comment on Romans 14:5 by two commentators. First from the Methodist commentator Adam Clarke:
“Perhaps the word ἡμεραν, day, is here taken for time, festival, and such like, in which sense it is frequently used. Reference is made here to the Jewish institutions, and especially their festivals; such as the passover, pentecost, feast of tabernacles, new moons, jubilee, etc. The converted Jew still thought these of moral obligation; the Gentile Christian not having been bred up in this way had no such prejudices. And as those who were the instruments of bringing him to the knowledge of God gave him no such injunctions, consequently he paid to these no religious regard.
“The converted Gentile esteemeth every day—considers that all time is the Lord’s, and that each day should be devoted to the glory of God; and that those festivals are not binding on him.
“We [the translators] add here alike, and make the text say what I am sure was never intended, viz. that there is no distinction of days, not even of the Sabbath: and that every Christian is at liberty to consider even this day to be holy or not holy, as he happens to be persuaded in his own mind.”
Second, from the commentary by Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, so highly regarded in
Fundamentalist circles:
“From this passage about the observance of days, Alford unhappily infers that such language could not have been used if the sabbath law had been in force under the Gospel in any form. Certainly it could not, if the sabbath were merely one of the Jewish festival days; but it will not do to take this for granted merely because it was observed under the Mosaic economy. And certainly, if the sabbath was more ancient than Judaism; if, even under Judaism, it was enshrined among the eternal sanctities of the Decalogue, uttered, as no other parts of Judaism were, amidst the terrors of Sinai; and if the Lawgiver Himself said of it when on earth, “The Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day” (see Mark 2:28)—it will be hard to show that the apostle must have meant it to be ranked by his readers among those vanished Jewish festival days, which only “weakness” could imagine to be still in force—a weakness which those who had more light ought, out of love, merely to bear with.”
If the Sabbath objector still hesitates to let words and phrases be understood in specific contexts and according to current usage, we would ask him this question in closing. Do you understand the phrase “every day clothes” to mean clothes worn every day of the week, that is, all seven days? If not, why seek to build an anti-Sabbath argument out of “every day” in Romans 14:5?
