The Fourth Commandment (Part 2)
This is the second part of the 3-part series on the Fourth Commandment. You can see Part 1 here and Part 3 here.
Q. 57. Which is the fourth commandment?
A. The fourth commandment is, Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
Q. 58. What is required in the fourth commandment?
A. The fourth commandment requireth the keeping holy to God such set times as he hath appointed in his Word; expressly one whole day in seven, to be a holy sabbath to himself.
Q. 59. Which day of the seven hath God appointed to be the weekly sabbath?
A. From the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, God appointed the seventh day of the week to be the weekly sabbath; and the first day of the week ever since, to continue to the end of the world, which is the Christian sabbath.
Q. 60. How is the sabbath to be sanctified?
A. The sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days; and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God’s worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.
Q. 61. What is forbidden in the fourth commandment?
A. The fourth commandment forbiddeth the omission, or careless performance, of the duties required, and the profaning the day by idleness, or doing what which is in itself sinful, or by unnecessary thoughts, words, or works, about worldly employments or recreations.
Q. 62. What are the reasons annexed to the fourth commandment?
A. The reasons annexed to the fourth commandment are, God’s allowing us six days of the week for our own employments, his challenging a special propriety in the seventh, his own example, and his blessing the sabbath day.
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“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 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. 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.” (Exod 20:8-11)
“For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” (Heb 4:8-13)
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The Shorter Catechism makes a seamless transition from the Old Testament Sabbath to the New Testament Lord's Day. See the answer to Q. 59 above. This is both surprising and not surprising. It is not surprising in the sense that the Shorter Catechism is not inventing anything new here at all. Throughout most of the New Testament church history Christians have consistently regarded the Lord's Day (the first day of the week, our Sunday) as the natural NT equivalent and a necessary improvement to the OT Sabbath (the last day of the week, our Saturday). Sure, there have been, and continue to be some fringe communities that disagree, but they are just that, fringe communities. By and large the connection between the OT Sabbath and the NT Lord's Day was without controversy. That is, the Shorter Catechism (and the Westminster Confession of Faith as whole) is not stating anything new here.
Given what is stated above, it _is_ surprising that the WCF and its Catechisms spend so much time and space discussing it. For example, the Shorter Catechism devotes more space and effort to unpack the fourth commandment than it does to unpack any other commandments. So why is that? We can briefly consider two reasons: 1. It magnifies God’s glory and mercy, and 2. It dignifies man.
First, the Lord’s Day magnifies God's glory and mercy. The Sabbath is not rooted in Moses and it does not pass away with Moses. Rather, as Gen 2:3 shows, Sabbath is rooted in God's creation of the world, and it reflects both God's satisfaction at his handiwork ("So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy") as well as being a statement of God's omnipotent power in which what he set out to do, he finished ("because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation."). In other words, the Sabbath attests to the goodness of God's creation, and the goal for which he created the world, that is, to bless, to make holy, to cherish, and to delight in it.
But, alas, Genesis 3 comes after Genesis 2, and, through Adam’s disobedience, sin came into the world that God made. How, then, can the Lord still call holy and cherish a world that has rebelled against him? How can he still approve a world that has now become a grave? But we see the glory of God's mercy in that he restores the fallen world through Jesus Christ. Through Jesus' death and resurrection, communion rises out of the ashes of alienation, and we are once again brought near to God. And through Jesus Christ who died and rose again, God's goal for the creation is achieved as he embraces redeemed sinners to bless, to make holy, to cherish, and to delight in them. In other words, what the OT Sabbath both symbolized and longed for is made real and ours in Jesus Christ. For this reason Christians throughout the ages have always understood the connection between the OT Sabbath and the NT Lord's Day, and why the OT Sabbath, as a symbol of longing, needs to be made perfect in the Lord's Day, the symbol of fulfillment. So we see that the NT Christians gathered to celebrate Jesus on the Lord's Day (Rev 1:10), which is the first day of the week, in remembrance of Jesus' resurrection (Luke 24:1; Acts 20:7). The apostles indeed set apart the first day of the week for worship and ministry (1 Cor 16:2). In doing so the Lord's Day became the focal point of the celebration of God's glory and mercy in Jesus Christ.
Second, the Lord's Day dignifies man. Just as the Lord's Day testifies to God's goodness through Jesus Christ, it sets us apart as God's redeemed children, whom he holds close to his heart. The Lord's Day is Christians delighting in God's mercy, rejoicing once again of their honored status before God. But, some will say, we can do this throughout the week and do not need a special day for this. That is true. We should always boast of God. But we also should not be wiser than God or the apostles.
Besides, Christians who cannot give their Lord and Redeemer one day out of seven are not likely to give their lives to God in any meaningful sense during the week. The Lord's Day, indeed, is where our faith becomes more than words into something real and tangible, and our commitment to God something more than an abstract concept. For on this day we proclaim "God is my all, and he has my all."