A previous version of this post contained an incomplete sentence. That is now corrected.

Exodus 20:8–11: [8] “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. [9] Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, [10] but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. [11] For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (ESV)

The fourth commandment is challenging to understand in light of the new covenant in Christ Jesus. It is one of only two of the Ten Commandments that are stated as positive commands rather than prohibitions, a distinction it shares with the fifth commandment (honor your father and mother). It is also the last commandment that focuses on the vertical plane- that is, the people's relationship with God- before the commandments transition to a focus on the horizontal plane- that is, the people's relationships with each other.

Understanding the Fourth Commandment

As usual, the best place to start is with the text itself in its own context. So what does this commandment command? It is a command to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. This is an interesting way of putting it. The phrasing is unique to the Ten. Nothing else is required to be remembered. Apparently, the Sabbath day was in danger of being forgotten, so the people are commanded to remember it. To remember means not to neglect, to maintain the Sabbath, and not allow it to slide into obscurity.

The Sabbath is the only commandment that revolves around time, and as it revolves around time, the people's proper relationship to the Sabbath may fade or distort over time. This is a call to consistency in how the flow of the week is maintained over the weeks, months, and years. The Sabbath is a primary marker of the flow and keeping of time in addition to the natural cosmological markers of the sun, moon, and stars. So, the Sabbath plays an important role in the setup and functioning of society in general.

But the people are not only commanded to remember the Sabbath, but also to keep it holy. Keeping it holy describes how the people are commanded to remember it. This means that the people do not decide for themselves how to remember it, but that they remember it in such a way as to preserve its integrity as a day for rest in honor of Yahweh.

Specifically, this commandment prohibits work from being done on the Sabbath. And not only are the people barred from work, but also their entire household, and even their animals. Even a foreigner living among them may not work.

Why Rest?

Why so much emphasis on the seventh day of the week? It is all grounded in the fact that Yahweh made the earth in six days before resting on the seventh. Yahweh blessed the seventh day and made it holy. Yahweh's process of creation was always intended to serve as a pattern for the men and women he was going to install as stewards over it.

There is a fascinating aspect to this. We understand that God is infinite in being and essence. He is simple. There is no composition to God. He is not made of parts. He is pure being. He is not in the process of becoming anything. He is, in that sense, pure act. God, in other words, is not like us. It is hard even to conceive of God working at all. That is its own problem for philosopher theologians. Nevertheless, the first sentence of the Bible states it plainly. God created. And that act, which of necessity involved space and time, however and in whatever sense those came into being, was a process which progressed over time, as Scripture painstakingly chronicles -and there was evening, and there was morning, the ____ day.

What does it mean for a day to be blessed and made holy? The point here seems to be that God set apart the day. Of the seven days of the week, the seventh is highlighted, set apart, and devoted to a special category of activity: rest. The seventh day is blessed in the sense that it bears the honor of being commended to serve as a unique day for people, because it is the day on which God did a unique thing that was to serve as a pattern. In being set aside and apart from the other six days, the seventh is devoted to God in a special way, for a special purpose. And this makes sense on a practical level when we consider it from a practical perspective. If we did not have the seventh day to mark the end of a week and signal the beginning of a new one, how would we distinguish one week from another? There would be no practical difference.

What about the New Covenant?

So, what does all this mean for us today? Are we required to do no work on the Sabbath? Christians disagree on this issue. For we who are in the new covenant under Christ Jesus, our covenant does not revolve around the setup of a civil society. The gospel is diffused throughout the world, transforming societies by transforming individuals.

So how do Christians relate to this command today? There are those who believe that the command should be more strictly followed, and they are called Sabbatarians. At the same time, nowhere are Gentiles called to obey this command. The Jerusalem council does not reiterate it in Acts 15, or even hint at the possibility. Other passages in the New Testament do not reinforce it. However, the fact that a command is not explicitly restated in Scripture does not mean that it is no longer applicable.

One interesting note is that God’s pattern of work in creation is used as the ground for the command. The process God used to create the world is intended to serve as a pattern for us, and it does to this day, even among those who do not follow God or obey His Word. Surely in His omnipotence God could have created the whole universe in an instant. God could have put the heavens and the earth in place without there being a sort of building process that is described in Genesis. But God did not do that. Instead, God took six days to do what He could have accomplished instantly, and then rested even though He cannot get tired and did not need to refresh His energy. This, according to the Fourth Commandment, was intentional. God did not work for a week, but made a week for work. The week is for us, not for Him.

The pattern described by God that serves as the ground for the Fourth Commandment precedes the law, and we ought to follow it. By and large, we still do. Even non-Christians do. The pattern of work and rest every week is present throughout the world. The French Revolution famously included an attempt to lengthen the week from seven days to ten while changing other aspects of the calendar as well. Needless to say, it did not catch on because it did not work. We must rest. In this sense, nearly the whole world keeps the Sabbath in terms of the pattern of work and rest. What is missing is the crucial aspect of keeping the Sabbath, not as a general day of rest, but as "a Sabbath to the LORD your God."

Unlike the Jewish Sabbath, which was Friday evening to Saturday evening, the Christian holy day has been Sunday from very near the beginning of the new covenant (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2). Sunday has long been referred to as “the Lord’s Day,” since it is the day of the week that Christ was raised from the dead (Revelation 1:10; note that all four of the Gospels record this fact: Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1).

The fourth commandment is a command that builds the pattern of creation into the rhythm of life for Israel as a society. God’s week of work set in motion a pattern or rhythm of six days of work and one of rest. We do not have Sabbaths, per se, but we do have work, rest, and worship.

The observance of the Sabbath does not appear to be a command for Christians today in the same sense as the other nine since the Lord’s Day has become the day of worth. Yet, all Christians must reckon with the fact that God's process for creation is intended to serve as a pattern, and we disregard it to our own detriment. Surely in an age of remote work, constant distraction and entertainment, year-round sports, and increasingly easy travel, it is not less urgent to protect the regular rhythm of work, rest, and worship, but more so.

We have the ability to do and participate in more things than ever before. It is inevitable that Sunday rest and worship will begin to look like an opportunity to squeeze in more of what we like to do. And yet, I worry that we have perhaps done the very thing that God tells us in the Fourth Commandment: to remember. We must remember to devote a day to rest. We must remember to devote a day to worship. We forget to do so at our own peril.