Sabbath Pride Drained

DENNIS PALMER

I will make a personal confession. I came to Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with a little bit of pride—actually, a whole lot of pride wrapped up in the law. That pride was the thought that I was theologically correct with regard to the major doctrines of the Christian faith. Since I was well-grounded in the Sabbath from teachers at Union College, Lincoln, Nebraska, and from a course in Sabbath philosophy taught by instructors at the Seventh Day Baptist headquarters, I felt that nothing could shake my Sabbath convictions. Then Dr. Verne Poythress, in a course in hermeneutics, started talking about theonomy. I realized I might be in serious trouble with the law of God, for I was bending the Sabbath to fit my worldview. I was cooking on the Sabbath, an act which violated the principle laid down in Exodus 35:3, “You shall kindle no fire throughout your dwellings on the Sabbath day.”1 Besides this inconsistency, I was overlooking the discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments. In hopes of holding onto my Sabbath theology, I wrote a thesis on the Sabbath (“The Seventh Day in Genesis 2:1-3: A Study of Sabbath Theology”), and my typist wrote that the International Date Line is a crooked line arbitrarily determined by man and therefore we do not really know which day is actually the Sabbath in certain parts of the world.

In writing my thesis, I found that Sabbath theology was bankrupt, and resorting to sophistry to boost up my viewpoint was not my style. I avoided the anti-Sabbatarian passages in my thesis, and this avoidance was my failing, for had I pursued them further, I would have emphasized how Christ is our Sabbath rest and that Christians are under a new covenant that does not obligate the keeping of the seventh day. Had I been more careful in my research, I would have seen how Sabbath and circumcision are signs of the old covenant (Gen. 17:10-27; Acts 7:8; Rom. 4:11; Ex. 4:26; 31:16; Lev. 24:8; Is. 56:4-7), but I wanted to keep a little bit of self-esteem, so these thoughts which did cross my mind were erased by pride.2

Although externally everything seemed to be fine, I was getting tired of eating cold sandwiches on the Sabbath in obedience to the law in Exodus. I began to suspect that something was wrong, and in time I would fall asleep pondering over the difficult Sabbath passages, viz., Col. 2:16-17 and Romans 14. Eventually, I was losing sleep. The ideas I learned in my class in hermeneutics were beginning to bite me like an adder. My Sabbath theology was off target! I started reading a book authored by my professor, V. Poythress, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth and Hyatt, 1991), and gradually I came to the realization that the radical nature of the old covenant and the newness of the new covenant were inconsistent with my conviction that the Sabbath was a mandate for all of humanity.

The pride drained out of me, and I mourned over the loss of my Sabbath conviction like I had lost my best friend at sea or my entire family in a fatal car accident. I think today that the mourning would likely have been less if the tragedies had happened. Today, however, my joy has been restored by an understanding and new appreciation of the new covenant. I recognize the validity of God’s law, and I can say with the Psalmist, “I will delight myself in Your commandments” (Ps. 119:47). However, I acknowledge that God’s law is mediated by the new covenant and supremely by Christ. Christ’s prescription for a satisfied life is not to keep the Sabbath, but to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” †

Endnotes

1. All Scriptural references are from the New King James Version.
2. The notion that the account of the Sabbath in Gen. 2:1-3 was written in anticipation of the giving of the law needs to be further explored. Much of the material in Genesis was written with the law in mind. For example, the unclean animals went into the ark two by two; whereas, the clean animals went into the ark by sevens (Gen. 6:19-20; 7:2,9, 15). Yet following the flood, God instructed Noah that “every moving thing that lives shall be food” (Gen. 9:3). The distinction between clean and unclean animals was given in anticipation of a ceremonial law that would prohibit the eating of unclean animals. Similarly, the seventh day at creation was blessed and set apart in anticipation of the giving of the Sabbath law. God is recorded as having rested on the seventh day (Gen. 2:3), but there is no proof that Adam and Eve kept the Sabbath nor is there any pre-mosaic command that Israel was required to observe the seventh day. Apparently, the Sabbath commandment (Ex. 20:11) was instituted because of what God had done, not because of any antediluvian law. It is, nevertheless, reasonable to think that Adam and Eve did enter into the Sabbath rest, but not by way of a command, but by way of enjoying God’s presence. However, this bliss was soon interrupted, possibly on the Sabbath, and so their rest became a ceaseless restlessness, a restlessness that will remain for all until they find their Sabbath in Christ.

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Dennis Palmer grew up in the Christian Church but converted to Adventism in his teens. He attended Union College, a Seventh-day Adventist school in Lincoln Nebraska, where he majored in theology. In 1978, just before he graduated from Union College, he became a Seventh Day Baptist. He is currently the pastor of the Seventh Day Baptist Church in Lake Elsinore, California. Dennis has notified his denominational leaders that he has plans to leave the denomination because of his conviction that the New Testament teaches that Sabbath rest is found and fulfilled in Jesus.