9-4-4 The Sabbath Fulfilled
- Was the Sabbath a type of, and therefore fulfilled in, Jesus Christ? You have reasoned that the ceremonial law was taken away because it was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And I have given Biblical reasons for believing that the Sabbath was also fulfilled in Him, and is therefore likewise done
away with.
As far as the Sabbath being fulfilled in Christ, the ceremonial part of it was yes. This includes especially the feast Sabbaths in Leviticus 23 and other places. But the moral part of the Sabbath, where God morally commands that men be given a time to rest and worship Him as God, has always been effect for all men everywhere. When God states in the scripture that He “made known to them My Sabbath” this does not prove that God first instituted the Sabbath then, but rather is a statement that He caused them to remember His Sabbath after the knowledge of it had been lost in human history. God didn’t sanctify the Sabbath day when He gave it to the Jews, He sanctified it all the way back in Genesis as a holy and special day. Genesis 2:4 “And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that He had done”. The day was holy to the Gentiles long before it was holy to the Jews.
- What is " the ministration of death, written and engraven on stones" (2 Cor. 3:7) which " killeth" , " was to be done away" , " which is done away" ? It was the 10 commandments (including the Sabbath) which were engraven on stones.
The ministration of death written and engraven on stones was not the commandments themselves, but the power of those written commandments to kill you because you were not saved by Jesus Christ. That ministration has been done away now that Christ has come, but Paul asks in Romans 3: 30 Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith. 31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law. And again in Romans 7: 7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. 8 But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. 9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. 10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. 11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. 12 Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.
