The Sabbath: Which Day, and Is It Still Required?
Let no one therefore judge you in eating or drinking, or with respect to a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day, which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s.Colossians 2:16-17 · World English Bible
Original Language & Text
The Hebrew word “shabbat” means “sabbath” or “rest,” and it comes from a verb meaning “to stop” or “to rest.” The Bible actually uses that verb first not for a weekly day at all, but for God himself stopping his work of creation on the seventh day. Interestingly, the Ten Commandments give two different reasons for keeping the Sabbath depending on where you read them: Exodus says to rest because God rested after creating the world, while Deuteronomy says to rest because God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt. Those are genuinely two different reasons given within the Bible's own two versions of the same commandment. In the New Testament, the word translated “Sabbath rest” in Hebrews 4:9 is a rare Greek word that doesn't show up anywhere else in Greek writing before that verse — which matters, because most other times the New Testament just uses the regular word for the day itself, not this special, rarer word for an ongoing kind of rest.
Key Terms in the Original Language
“sabbath, rest”
The noun form used for the weekly day itself; derived from the verb shavat, “to cease, to rest.”
“to cease, to rest”
The underlying verb, first used in Genesis 2:2-3 for God's own ceasing from creative work on the seventh day — before any weekly commandment is given.
“sabbath rest” / “sabbath-keeping” (Heb. 4:9)
A rare word not attested elsewhere in Greek literature before this verse; the New Testament's only use of this specific term, applied to an ongoing rest for God's people rather than the ordinary word for the weekly day.
“the Lord's day” (Rev. 1:10)
The earliest attested New Testament designation for the first-day gathering, already used as a recognizable term by the time Revelation was written.
History & Authorship
For at least a hundred years after Jesus's resurrection, different Christian communities in different places handled the question of the Sabbath somewhat differently rather than the whole church switching all at once by some official announcement. Even within the New Testament itself, there are signs that Christians were already starting to gather on the first day of the week, and by the end of the first century, the book of Revelation refers to “the Lord's day” as something readers would already recognize. A Christian writer named Justin Martyr, writing around 155 CE, clearly describes Christians gathering together every Sunday, connecting it to both God creating the world and Jesus rising from the dead. Another early writer, Ignatius, is often quoted as contrasting the Sabbath with “the Lord's Day,” but this is actually genuinely disputed by scholars who study these old manuscripts: the earliest, most trustworthy version of his letter may have actually said something more like “living according to the Lord's life,” with the clearer “Lord's Day” wording only showing up in a later, expanded copy of the letter. By the time of a church council held in the mid-to-late 300s CE, church leaders were explicitly telling Christians not to rest on Saturday like Jewish practice, which shows that by then, Sunday worship was already the normal, expected practice being enforced against people who still kept Saturday, not something brand new. When the Roman Emperor Constantine made Sunday an official day of rest across the empire in 321 CE, he was following a Christian practice that already existed widely, not creating it from scratch — though his decree definitely made Sunday's importance more official and public going forward.
How This Debate Developed
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Mosaic setting (traditionally 2nd millennium BCE)
Two rationales given in the Torah
Exodus 20:8-11 grounds the Sabbath in God's rest after creation; Deuteronomy 5:12-15 grounds the same command in Israel's deliverance from Egypt.
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Mid-to-late 1st century CE
Early Christian first-day gathering
Acts 20:7, 1 Corinthians 16:2, and Revelation 1:10 show Christian gathering on “the first day” / “the Lord's day” already underway.
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c. 155 CE
Justin Martyr's First Apology
Explicitly describes weekly Sunday Christian assembly, tied to both creation and the resurrection.
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4th century CE
Council of Laodicea, Canon 29
Forbids Christians from “Judaizing” by resting on the Saturday Sabbath, evidence Sunday observance was already the enforced norm.
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321 CE
Constantine's civil decree
Recognizes Sunday as the Roman Empire's legal day of rest, following rather than originating existing Christian practice.
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1844-1863
Sabbatarian Adventism organizes
The Millerite movement's “Great Disappointment” (1844) gives rise to Sabbatarian Adventism, formally organized as the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1863.
The Popular / Mainstream View
Most Christian churches today teach that the specific requirement to rest on a particular day was either fulfilled or set aside through Christ, while the underlying idea of setting aside one day for rest and worship continues, just moved to Sunday in honor of the resurrection. This is the most common practice across Catholic, Orthodox, and most Protestant churches, although how strictly required Sunday observance actually is — a firm command versus a valuable but optional tradition — varies quite a bit even among churches that agree on which day to use.
Minority & Alternative Views
Saturday Sabbath-keeping
Seventh-day Adventists, Seventh Day Baptists (whose English churches actually go back to the 1650s, two centuries before Adventism existed), and some other smaller groups believe the Sabbath command specifically requires Saturday, the actual seventh day, as a permanent moral requirement the New Testament never cancels — and that Sunday worship came later from church tradition and, eventually, from Constantine's decree, rather than from what the apostles themselves practiced. The Seventh-day Adventist Church was officially formed in 1863, growing out of an earlier movement that had wrongly predicted Jesus's return in 1844; some who were disappointed by that failed prediction kept their general framework but switched to observing a Saturday Sabbath instead.
No specific day is required at all
Some Christians, pointing especially to passages like Colossians 2:16-17 (which tells believers not to let anyone judge them about a Sabbath day, calling such things a “shadow” of what was coming) and Romans 14:5-6 (which says some people consider one day special while others treat every day the same), believe no specific day is required of Christians at all. In this view, Sabbath-keeping belonged to the Old Testament system that's now fulfilled in Christ, and picking any day for church gathering is simply a matter of freedom and practical convenience, not a binding rule.
Protestant confessions genuinely disagree
Even major Protestant statements of faith don't agree with each other here. The Lutheran Augsburg Confession (1530) says plainly that the Bible itself did away with the Sabbath requirement, and that the church only picked Sunday for practical reasons, not because it had to — and it specifically warns that anyone who thinks the switch to Sunday was strictly necessary is mistaken. The Presbyterian Westminster Confession (1646), on the other hand, calls Sunday observance a permanent moral command that binds everyone, in every era — treating the fourth of the Ten Commandments as still fully in force, just moved to a different day. This is a real, long-running disagreement between major Protestant traditions, not just a small difference in wording.
What Scholars Say
The assumed straight line from the Old Testament's weekly Sabbath to the New Testament's “Lord's Day” is less certain in the earliest sources than it's sometimes made to sound. Ignatius's letter, often cited as the earliest evidence outside the Bible for a shift from Sabbath to Sunday, sits right in the middle of a real scholarly dispute over whether his original letter even mentioned “the Lord's day” at all, or whether it originally said something more like “the Lord's life” — a single word's difference that matters a lot for how early this specific contrast was actually being made. It's also worth noting that Hebrews 4:9 talks about an ongoing “rest” for God's people without directly saying that rest means a weekly day of worship — so using that verse as clear evidence for or against any particular weekly practice takes an extra interpretive step the text itself doesn't spell out. See the Textual and Historical Criticism topics for more on how early Christian practice and later official teaching about that practice can sometimes pull apart.
What the Confessions Say
Lutheran — Augsburg Confession (1530), Article XXVIII
“Scripture has abrogated the Sabbath-day... those who judge that by the authority of the Church the observance of the Lord's Day instead of the Sabbath-day was ordained as a thing necessary, do greatly err.”
Augsburg Confession, Article XXVIII (“Of Ecclesiastical Power”)
Reformed — Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Q&A 103
“That, especially on the day of rest, I diligently attend church, to learn the Word of God... and that all the days of my life I rest from my evil works, allow the Lord to work in me by his Spirit, and thus begin in this life the everlasting Sabbath.”
Heidelberg Catechism, Question & Answer 103
Presbyterian — Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), Chapter XXI
“He hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath... which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week; and, from the resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week, which in Scripture is called the Lord's Day, and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath.”
Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter XXI, Section 7
Sources & Further Reading
- Justin Martyr, First Apology, chapter 67 (c. 155 CE)
- Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Magnesians (early 2nd century CE)
- Council of Laodicea, Canon 29 (4th century CE)
- Augsburg Confession (1530), Article XXVIII
- Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), Chapter XXI
- Fritz Guy, “‘The Lord’s Day’ in the Letter of Ignatius to the Magnesians,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 2/1 (1964)
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Study & Discussion Questions
- Exodus 20:11 grounds the Sabbath commandment in God's rest after creation, while Deuteronomy 5:15 grounds the same commandment in Israel's deliverance from slavery in Egypt. What difference might it make whether the Sabbath is primarily about imitating God's rest or remembering liberation?
- Colossians 2:16-17 tells believers not to let anyone judge them regarding a Sabbath day, calling such observances a “shadow of the things to come.” How do sabbatarian and non-sabbatarian Christians typically read this passage differently?
- The historical shift from Saturday to Sunday worship appears to have been gradual and theologically motivated, tied to the resurrection, well before Constantine's 321 CE decree. Does knowing this history change how you weigh arguments that the change was a later corruption versus an early, organic development?
- The Augsburg Confession and the Westminster Confession disagree about whether Sunday observance is a binding “moral and perpetual commandment” or a matter of church convenience and Christian liberty. Which view better fits how you understand the relationship between Old Testament law and New Testament freedom?
- Hebrews 4:9 promises a “sabbath rest” for the people of God, but scholars disagree about whether this refers to a future spiritual rest, an ongoing present reality, or an implicit endorsement of a literal weekly practice. How would each reading change the way you'd apply this verse today?
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