SABBATH IS NOT A CREATION ORDINANCE

By Colleen Tinker

We received a response to Lisa Winn’s article in last week’s email, “Doctrines of Demons: A Response to Seibold”.  Lisa wrote a response to an article appearing in Adventist Today and argued that progressive Adventists who claim to abandon the Great Controversy worldview create an illogical situation in which their tight hold on the Sabbath has no true meaning. 

The writer of the letter was in almost complete agreement with Lisa but disagreed with this sentence in her piece: “The interesting thing about ditching the The Great Controversy worldview is that it renders the Sabbath an empty, meaningless husk of a doctrine, and Adventism itself irrelevant.”

Because many of our readers may resonate with the writer’s response to Lisa’s declaration, we are sharing some excerpts from the letter and also from our reply to the writer. 

I read the article written by Lisa Winn and enjoyed [her] approach towards 19th century religion surrounding the Great Controversy—a controversy that doesn’t actually exist. However, this statement bothers me: “The interesting thing about ditching the the Great Controversy worldview is that it renders the Sabbath an empty, meaningless husk of a doctrine, and Adventism itself irrelevant.” 

I find the comment about the seventh day in which Jesus rested at the end of creation, irreverent and disrespectful. Mocking the Sabbath and calling it a meaningless husk of a doctrine contradicts Paul’s opinion of the law which he says was glorious… 

There is no benefit in attacking the Lord’s day. As Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus made it part of his lifestyle and displayed a reverence for our bodies, invoking physical rest which becomes complete as we take our spiritual Sabbath rest in Jesus.…

Lisa’s article does feed the EGW haters well. In fact, I couldn’t disagree with all her other ideas, but to continually attack the Day over which Jesus claimed Lordship is a bit much. At this point I have very little appreciation for the SDA denomination.… I love Jesus and all that He represents. I cling to His righteousness and accept His obedience as my own.

Nevertheless, on Sabbath I’ll get up and go and worship God. I’ll abstain from secular activities and seek to commune with God… There is something unique and special about the Holy hours we know Jesus sanctified at creation.

Illogical comparison

First I want to say clearly: I understand the deep attachment to the Sabbath and to the argument that God’s rest at the end of creation week established seventh-day sacredness. Moreover, I am completely sympathetic to the struggle of revamping one’s worldview after leaving Adventism. It takes years. 

As an Adventist I wanted to cling to any evidence at all that Sabbath was an eternal reality in Scripture. I loved the Sabbath. In fact, I often used to say, “I don’t know how people live without the Sabbath!”

When I finally understood the gospel, however, and when I “saw” that the Lord Jesus as my Substitute fulfilled all the requirements of the law and keeps the terms of the new covenant on my behalf if I am in Him, I realized I had to understand what the Bible really said about the Sabbath. I knew that the Seventh-day Adventist organization did not teach the true gospel, but I had to know how to answer all the Sabbath arguments I had been taught.

One of the biggest arguments I had to study was that which claimed that the Sabbath had existed from the seventh day of creation week when God rested. I was to rest on the seventh day just as God had, I believed. 

I finally realized I had to face the embarrassing fact that my understanding had been wrong; the Bible did not teach that Sabbath is a creation ordinance. (For a comprehensive biblical study on the answers to Adventist Sabbath arguments, see Dale Ratzlaff’s Sabbath In Christ.) I was ashamed and angry when I realized how warped but powerful the Adventist arguments had been that had imprisoned my heart and mind. Moreover, I was devastated when I realized I had believed that God would bless me more on the Sabbath than on any other day if I kept it holy. 

I had attributed to a day the holiness and blessing that only belongs to God. Jesus is the reality which the Sabbath foreshadowed, but I had believed that a created day was eternally holy. I had to repent.

I understand the writer’s reaction; nevertheless, it is easy to confuse our entrenched worldview with reality, and God’s word continues to reveal our blind spots. Thus I will share part of my response to this letter:

My Response to the letter

Dear Writer,

Your arguments are not logical; they are tradition-driven rather than scriptural.

First, this paragraph in your letter compares two different events as if they are related: “I find the comment about the seventh day in which Jesus rested at the end of creation irreverent and disrespectful. By mocking the Sabbath and calling it a meaningless husk of a doctrine, she contradicts Paul’s opinion of the law which he says was glorious.”

You also imply that the word “rested” means “resting” as Adventists rest on the Sabbath. Additionally, you assume that the “seventh day” equals “Sabbath”—an assumption NOT supported by the text. Furthermore, you are making Lisa say something she did not say.

Lisa made no mention whatsoever of the seventh day after Creation (a day which has no evening and morning—a day without borders but with a continuing existence) when she said the Sabbath is a meaningless husk of a doctrine apart from the Great Controversy worldview. She spoke specifically of the seventh-day Sabbath of the fourth commandment, a day which is a completely different THING from the seventh day after Creation.

You first asserted that the seventh day on which “Jesus rested” after creation was what Lisa mocked, and then you claimed that mocking that first “seventh day” contradicts Paul’s opinion of the law. This statement is patently untrue.

The law was NOWHERE in view at the end of creation; Paul’s upholding the value of the law (whose value he carefully explained as revealing and increasing sin in its subjects and which served as the accusing death sentence for all under its dominion) had no relationship whatsoever to the Lord’s resting after His work of Creating. Its only relationship was as a type…the seventh day of the fourth commandment was a shadow reminding Israel of God’s finished work and His own CEASING…His discontinuing His own work…and also a shadow pointing forward to the Lord Jesus’ finished work on the cross. The fourth commandment Sabbath was a SHADOW. It was not eternal, and it was not the day on which God ceased His work. God did not do a weekly “ceasing”. He ceased eternally. His “seventh day” was an eternal day.

Moreover, Lisa did not disrespect the seventh day of the Genesis account. She referred specifically to the Sabbath of the fourth commandment—a day completely different from that day when God ceased His work. You cannot take Lisa’s comments about the fourth commandment Sabbath and even try to say she was speaking of the same day on which God ceased. The law was not established at Creation, and there was no command to keep that seventh day. Furthermore, the borderless seventh day following Creation was not the same kind of “day” as were those first six, nor did God pick up His work again the next day.

You cannot make God’s ceasing even remotely synonymous with the Israelite’s required Sabbath. The seventh-day Sabbath lasted one day every week, and Israelites went to work again the next day. That work, too, was part of the commandment. There was NO continuing work connected with God’s ceasing. His “seventh day” was a different event with a different significance. You cannot legitimately try to make it and the seventh-day Sabbath the same.

Furthermore, the Sabbath is not “the Lord’s Day”. That assumption is pure Adventism, and it is not anywhere in the Bible. When Jesus said He was Lord of the Sabbath, he was not owning an eternal Day. He was, rather, saying that as the eternal Creator, He had the right and the authority to say what could happen on that day. Furthermore, He has the right to interpret that day. The Lord’s Day is the first day of the week, and John uses this term in Revelation as did the first and second century church fathers. Sabbath was Sabbath; no Jew (which John was) would ever call the Sabbath the Lord’s Day. They are different days. Only the deceptive Adventist teachers like Doug Batchelor and others would try to use that “sleight of hand” to confuse people. The Bible is CLEAR. Sabbath is Sabbath. There is no other name for it, nor is the Lord’ Day ever called Sabbath. They are different days.

And speaking of the Lord’s right to interpret that day, He explained to his apostle Paul how to state the facts explicitly in Colossians 2:16-17 and further expanded His explanations in Galatians and in Ephesians 2:14-16: the Sabbath DAY is a shadow whose reality is found in Christ. The Sabbath of the fourth commandment is fulfilled in Jesus, and it has no further significance for Christians. In fact, Paul is strong in Galatians when he says that to return to the shadows of the law is to fall from grace, and in the first chapter he states that he wishes that those who teach circumcision and the keeping of any part of the law ought to go ahead and emasculate themselves. In the new covenant, the seventh day has no intrinsic spiritual significance. It is not “holy time”.

We absolutely cannot equate the day on which God CEASED (and please do not try to make that work mean “rest” in the way Adventists use it. It means He was done and He CEASED)—you cannot equate that borderless day on which God CEASED and make it equivalent to the Sabbath day of the fourth commandment. The REAL day of God’s finished work is what is eternal. The repeating seventh day was only a SHADOW of God’s eternally finished work. They are not the same, and the argument that God established the seventh day of the fourth commandment as an ongoing sacred day is fallacious. It is not supportable by the Bible. It is a deceptive and tradition-driven argument, not an argument derived from Scripture. (See Heb. 4:1–9.)

I deeply understand the attachment to Sabbath, and Paul is clear that when we are in Christ, keeping days is a decision based on personal conviction (Romans 14). Nevertheless, when we as former Adventists face the Sabbath, we have to realize that we are attached to an idol which was the core of our Adventist soteriology. Even though “keeping” the seventh day is not a sin in itself, for us whose attachment to it grows out of believing the day was part of correct worship and necessary for pleasing God, it is a hindrance. It usually prevents us from throwing ourselves utterly on God’s mercy with NONE of the props we thought were essential. Giving up the Sabbath is our ultimate demonstration to ourselves that we are trusting in Jesus and His shed blood alone.

When we let that shadow go, we often discover our rest in Christ in a profound way we had not yet known. As long as we make excuses for the idol of Sabbath, we are not free from the shadow. We still allow that shadow to support our concept of Jesus.

Jesus, however, asks us to let go of EVERYTHING we love and trust Him only. He has fulfilled that day and has made the ENTIRE law obsolete in Christ. Hebrews, Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians….these could not be more clear. To hold onto any part of the law along with Jesus is to commit spiritual adultery. Romans 7 is explicit about this fact.

As Paul says in Galatians, we fall from grace when we go back to the law. We cannot make excuses that any part of the law applies to us when the rest of Scripture explicitly explains that the law is fulfilled and obsolete.

Sabbath is not a creation ordinance. It is the fourth commandment of the Mosaic covenant, and it was first given at Sinai. God’s finished work is eternal and occurred at the end of creation; the fourth commandment’s purpose was to remind those Israelites that God was sovereign, and they had to trust Him by refusing to work or to protect their interests every seventh day.

We in the New Covenant have to trust Him by giving up all our legal observances and arguments which are illogical and do not find support in Scripture.

Of course we are free to worship on the seventh day. But please, if you do, do so honestly, without twisting Scripture to justify your preference. If you wish to worship on the seventh day, admit that you do so because you like the tradition, and you don’t want to give up all the memories and spiritual feelings associated with that day in Adventism. And if you go to an Adventist church on the seventh day, please admit to yourself that you are not immersing yourself in truthful Bible teaching. Please realize that seventh-day church-going is a PREFERENCE, not a biblical teaching.

And if you admit the truth about your preference, you might discover that the Lord Jesus really IS so much bigger and closer and more amazing that your worship is deeper and richer than you ever thought possible. He knows how to replace the seventh day with Himself in surprising, life-changing ways when we take the plunge and let go of Sabbath. 

Jesus Himself IS our Sabbath rest! †

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Colleen Tinker

Colleen Tinker, the editor of Proclamation! magazine, and her husband Richard left Adventism in 1998 with their two sons, Roy and Nathanael, who were in grades six and ten. They have co-led the Former Adventist Fellowship since 1999. Colleen, a graduate of Walla Walla University, is a former high school English teacher and also the former managing editor of Adventist Today magazine. Colleen became the stepmother of Roy and Nathanael in 1989, and in 2008 she adopted them. Romans 8:15-17 has assumed new depth and significance for her and Richard since she and her sons chose to claim each other legally and permanently. She and Richard share an office and a commitment to sharing the gospel of the true Jesus with all of those seeking a way out of the bondage of the false gospel of Adventism.

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