Do Reformed Christians Confess The Sabbath?

by on April 16, 2025 | 2 Comments

Justin Taylor has posted material from Tom Schreiner’s 40 Questions About Christians and Biblical Law, which argues, “I do not believe the Sabbath is required for believers now that the new covenant has arrived in the person of Jesus Christ.”1 Schreiner considers the Sabbath purely as a Mosaic institution. This is evident when he says, “We would expect the Sabbath to no longer be in force since it was the covenant sign of the Mosaic covenant, and, as I have argued elsewhere in this book, it is clear that believers are no longer under the Sinai covenant.”2 If we granted the premise, that the Sabbath is a Mosaic institution, Schreiner might be correct. He wants to do to the Sabbath what Baptists do to circumcision and infant initiation into the visible covenant community: make it purely Mosaic and thus expired with the Mosaic (old) covenant. Unfortunately for the Baptists, circumcision/infant initiation into the visible covenant community is not purely Mosaic. God instituted infant initiation under Abraham, the father of all new covenant believers (Rom 4; Gal 3).

A similar issue exists with the attempt to make the Sabbath purely or even primarily Mosaic. It is not.

It is interesting that the same lot of people who are going to the mat for 6-24 creation (I am thinking of Al Mohler here) seem to miss the primary message of Genesis 1: God sanctified (i.e., made holy) one day out of seven as a matter of creational order. The creation narrative culminates in the Sabbath, which was a testimony to Adam of his eschatological heritage should he fulfill the probation. The Mosaic law itself, in Exodus 20:8, testifies to the creational origin of the Sabbath principle. God worked six days and “rested” the Sabbath. On that basis and example, we too are to work and rest.

Schreiner anticipates this problem briefly by writing, “Some argue against what is defended here by appealing to the creation order. As noted above, the Sabbath for Israel is patterned after God’s creation of the world in seven days. What is instructive, however, is that the New Testament never appeals to Creation to defend the Sabbath.”3

Well, one has to be careful as to which sorts of hermeneutical swords one wields since they do cut both ways. On this approach Schreiner should give up believer’s baptism since there is no explicit command to baptize only professing believers. Of course, his conviction that only believers should be baptized is an inference. So it is with the Sabbath in the new covenant.

Here are some points to consider:

1. Jesus does not abrogate the creational Sabbath principle. He does renew the creational order in marriage. We (confessional Reformed folk) infer that the entire creational order is renewed. It is true that Jesus did not specifically say, “I’m renewing the creational Sabbath.” It is also true that he did not say, “Look, that was then, this is now,” as our nine-commandment predestinarian Baptist friends would like us to assume. Indeed, most of the rest of Schreiner’s argument is question begging—that is, it assumes what it must prove. If one does not accept Schreiner’s premises, then we do not have to accept his conclusions.

2. Is there any evidence for a pattern of creational renewal in the New Testament? Yes, of course there is! As Schreiner notes, Jesus re-instituted the creational pattern for marriage (Mark 10). Paul appealed to creation regarding sexual ethics and for other purposes (Rom 1–2), and he appealed to the creational pattern regarding females and ecclesiastical leadership (1 Tim 2). The question is whether these appeals are isolated or whether they create a pattern. The Reformed say that they create a pattern, and our nine-commandment Baptist friends want us to take them in isolation. So, if a creational element is not specifically invoked, then it does not exist? Is that the hermeneutical principle we are to follow? Can we live with this? The Reformed have always said, “No, we can’t live with this.”

Schreiner begins to acknowledge that there is a “new creation” pattern in Scripture. Does not the new creation renew the old creation? Or does it, as the Anabaptists said, obliterate the old creation? The Reformed understanding of nature (creation) and grace is that grace restores creation. This is a semi-eschatological age, not the eschaton. The renewal is begun but not consummated. Jesus’ resurrection inaugurated the new creation (Col 1; 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15). Does the new creation have no work/rest (Sabbath)? Is there no place for anticipating the consummation? Perhaps our nine-commandment Baptist friends do not see the point of anticipation?

3. What is the nature of the moral law? Is it such that the principle of the law, the essence of the law can be treated the way Schreiner treats the Sabbath? He wants us to make the Sabbath purely internal, purely symbolic, with no external, necessary, behavioral modifications. Let us try that with the other commandments. Can we do it with the first or the second. May we set up a Hindu god and use it to facilitate our approach to Jesus in prayer? I guess we would all agree that we cannot do that. May we keep the seventh commandment in the way that Schreiner wants us to keep the fourth commandment? I doubt that he would be satisfied with such an approach. No, ordinarily we expect that adherence to the seventh commandment will be reflected in our outward behavior. It is not enough to think of one’s wife while one is committing adultery. One must actually refrain from committing adultery in heart, mind, and body. Why not also a bodily obedience to the Sabbath principle by setting aside one day in seven for rest, worship, and acts of mercy?

4. Underlying Schreiner’s approach to both the baptism and Sabbath questions is a very large but often unstated a priori conviction about the nature of the new covenant. More on this later. If this conviction about the new covenant fails, then not only does Schreiner’s view of the Sabbath fail, but so does much of the Baptist argument.

5. The history of the Sabbath is more complicated than Schreiner lets on. See the chapter on this in Recovering the Reformed Confession.4

6. It is interesting to see where the Young, Restless, and Reformed fellows depart from the Reformed confession. What exactly in the Reformed confession animates them? So far as I can tell, the only aspect of the Reformed confession that they really like is the doctrine of divine sovereignty (predestination and providence). Everything else seems to be negotiable. They do not accept our hermeneutic (covenant theology). They do not seem much animated by our Trinitarian doctrine of God, our anthropology (do they even think about the covenant of works?), our Christology (two natures, federalism). They seem divided over the Reformed doctrine of justification (even though the confessions are unanimous), and certainly they reject our ecclesiology (including our confession of the sacraments). So it should not be surprising to see them rejecting the Reformed confession of the law of God.

The Young Restless and Reformed are (less) young (than they were a few years ago), and certainly restless (perhaps it is their amnesia?), but what exactly qualifies them as “Reformed?”5 The Reformed churches all confessed and practiced the Christian Sabbath. The Germans, the French, the Dutch, the English, the Scots all set aside one day a week on the basis of the creational pattern and on the basis of the resurrection of our Lord on the first day of the week. This is a significant difference. Is the adjective “Reformed” endlessly elastic? Can it be made to say any and everything that the Young Restless and Reformed fellows want to say? What happens if they decide that the Bible teaches that Jesus had only one nature or that God is one person or some other heresy against the holy catholic faith? Will that then become the new “Reformed” orthodoxy?

Of course, the way many ostensibly “Reformed” churches practice the Sabbath today one cannot be entirely surprised that our erstwhile “Reformed” revisionist friends are confused. Perhaps if we were more faithful to what we confess, our evangelical friends might have a better example to follow? After all, the Westminster Standards are unambiguous about this, as was the Synod of Dort, but hey, what did they know about being Reformed?

Perhaps no one needs a Sabbath rest more than our Young, Restless, and “Reformed” friends?

Notes

  1. Tom Schreiner, quoted in Justin Taylor, “Is the Sabbath Still Required for Christians?” The Gospel Coalition, October 14, 2010.
  2. Shreiner, quoted in Taylor, “Is the Sabbath Still Required for Christians?”
  3. Shreiner, “Is the Sabbath Still Required for Christians?”
  4. R. Scott Clark, Recovering the Reformed Confession (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2008).
  5. See R. Scott Clark, “Collin Hansen on Evangelical “Self-Inflicted Amnesia.”

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on the Heidelblog in 2010.

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  • R. Scott Clark
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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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