The universal Sabbath law received a modified significance under the Covenant of Grace. The work which issues into the rest can now no longer be man’s own work. It becomes the work of Christ. This the Old Testament and the New Testament have in common. But they differ as to the perspective in which they each see the emergence of work and rest. Inasmuch as the Old Covenant was still looking forward to the performance of the Messianic work, naturally the days of labour to it come first, the day of rest falls at the end of the week. We, under the New Covenant, look back upon the accomplished work of Christ. We, therefore, first celebrate the rest in principle procured by Christ, although the Sabbath also still remains a sign looking forward to the final eschatological rest. The Old Testament people of God had to typify in their life the future developments of redemption. Consequently the precedence of labour and the consequence of rest had to find expression in their calendar. The New Testament Church has no such typical function to perform, for the types have been fulfilled. But it has a great historic event to commemorate, the performance of the work by Christ and the entrance of Him and of His people through Him upon the state of never-ending rest. We do not sufficiently realize the profound sense the early Church had of the epoch-making significance of the appearance, and especially of the resurrection of the Messiah. The latter was to them nothing less than the bringing in of a new, the second, creation. And they felt that this ought to find expression in the placing of the Sabbath with reference to the other days of the week. Believers knew themselves in a measure partakers of the Sabbath-fulfilment. If the one creation required one sequence, then the other required another. It has been strikingly observed, that our Lord died on the eve of that Jewish Sabbath, at the end of one of these typical weeks of labour by which His work and its consummation were prefigured. And Christ entered upon His rest, the rest of His new, eternal life on the first day of the week, so that the Jewish Sabbath comes to lie between, was, as it were, disposed of, buried in His grave. (Delitzsch.) If there is in the New Testament no formal enactment regarding this change, the cause lies in the superfluousness of it. Doubtless Jewish Christians began with observing both days, and only gradually the instinctive perception of the sacredness of the day of the Lord’s resurrection began to make itself felt.
The question can be raised, whether in the fourth commandment there is an element that applies to the Old Testament Church only. The answer depends on the precise construction and exegesis of the words. Is the distinction between six days of labour and one day of rest merely a matter of proportion, or is it likewise a matter of sequence? The latter view seems more probable. In so far, we shall have to say that in this element of prescribed sequence there is a specifically Old Testament feature in the commandment which no longer applies to us. But the general principle on which the sequence, both under the old and the new dispensations, rests has not been changed. Precisely because it remains in force, the sequence required a change when the New Testament had arrived. Besides this, there are other prohibitions in the law, which by the very fact of their having not been incorporated in the Decalogue, are shown not to be universally applicable [Ex. 16:23; 34:21; 35:3; Num. 15:32; cp. also Amos 8:5; Jer. 17:21]. Nor must it be forgotten that the Sabbath was under the Old Testament an integral part of a cycle of feasts which is no longer in force now. The type embodied in it was deepened by the Sabbatical Year and the Year of Jubilee. On the Sabbath man and beast rest, in the Sabbatical Year the very soil rests; in the Year of Jubilee the idea of rest is exhibited in its full positive import through the restoration of all that was disturbed and lost through sin. From all this we have been released by the work of Christ, but not from the Sabbath as instituted at Creation. In this light we must interpret certain New Testament statements such as Rom. 14:5, 6; Gal. 4:10, 11; Col. 2:16, 17.
Geerhardus Vos | Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2003), 141–43 (HT: @ReclaimingRest on X).
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