by Prof. B. B. Warfield, D.D., LL.D.
I am to speak to you to-day, not of the usefulness or of the blessedness of the Sabbath, but of its obligation. And I am to speak to you of its obligation, not as that obligation naturally arises out of its usefulness or blessedness, but as it is immediately imposed by God in His Word. You naturally dwell on the joy of the Sabbath. This is the day of gladness and triumph, on which the Lord broke the bonds of the grave, abolishing death and bringing life and immortality to light. As naturally you dwell on the value of the Sabbath. This is the day on which the tired body rests from its appointed labour; on which the worn spirit finds opportunity for recuperation; an oasis in the desert of earthly cares, when we can escape for a moment from the treadmill toil of daily life and, at leisure from ourselves, refresh our souls in God. I am to recall your minds — it may seem somewhat brusquely — to the contemplation of the duty of the Sabbath; and to ask you to let them rest for a moment on the bald notion of authority. I do not admit that, in so doing, I am asking you to lower your eyes. Rather, I conceive myself to be inviting you to raise them; to raise them to the very pinnacle of the pinnacle. After all is said, there is no greater word than “ought.” And there is no higher reason for keeping the Sabbath than that I ought to keep it; that I owe it to God the Lord to keep it in accordance with His command.
It may nevertheless require some little effort to withdraw our thoughts even for a moment from the utility of the Sabbath and fix them on its bare obligation. Since Prudhon taught the world the natural value of the Sabbath, its supernatural origin and sanction have, in wide circles, passed perhaps somewhat out of sight. In its abounding usefulness to man, it may seem so obviously man’s day that we may easily forget that it was for two thousand years before it was discovered to be man’s day already the Lord’s day; and, stretching back from that, from the creation of the world God’s day. The Sabbath is undoubtedly rooted in nature; in our human nature and in the nature of the created universe. Unbroken toil is not good for us: the recurrence of a day of rest is of advantage to us, physically, mentally, spiritually. But had we been left to find this out for ourselves, we should probably have waited very long for it. Certainly Prudhon tardily learned it from observation, not of pure nature, but of the Sabbath-rest ordained by God. We are told on the highest authority that “The Sabbath was made for man.” Man needs it. It blesses his life. But man apparently would
never have had it, had it not been “made” for him; made for him by Him who from the beginning of the world has known all His works, and, knowing man, has made for him from the beginning of the world the day of rest which he needs. He who needed no rest, in the greatness of His condescension, rested from the work which He had creatively made, that by His example He might woo man to his needed rest.
The Sabbath, then, is not an invention of man’s, but a creation of God’s. “This is the day that Jehovah hath made” — a verse than which none in the Psalter has had a more glorious history — does not refer to the Sabbath; but it is not strange that it has been so frequently applied to it that it has ended by becoming on the lips of God’s people one of its fixed designations. It is Jehovah who made the Sabbath; though for man, the Sabbath is not of man, but has come to man as a gift from God Himself. And, as God has made it, so He has kept it, as He has kept all else that He has made, under His own hand. It is in the power of no man to unmake the Sabbath, or to remake it — diverting it from, or, as we might fondly hope, adjusting it better to, its divinely appointed function. What God has made it, that will He Himself see that it shall remain. This in effect our Saviour tells us in that very saying to which we have already alluded. For, immediately upon declaring that “the Sabbath was made for man” — with the open implication, of course, that it was by God that it was made for man — He proceeds to vindicate to Himself the sole empire over it. “So that,” he adds, “the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
The little word “even” should not pass unobserved in this declaration. “The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath,” or perhaps we might translate it “also” or “too” — “the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath.” “of the Sabbath too.” In the former case it is the loftiness of the lordship which is Lord even of the Sabbath which is suggested; in the latter, it is the wideness of the lordship which our Lord asserts for Himself which is intimated. Both elements of significance are present, however, in either case. The emphasis in any event falls on the greatness of the authority claimed by our Lord when He declared His lordship over the Sabbath, and the term “Lord” is in the original thrust forward in the sentence, that it may receive the whole stress. This great dominion our Lord vindicates to Himself as the Son of Man, that heavenly being, whom Daniel saw coming with the clouds of heaven to set up on earth the eternal Kingdom of God. Because the Sabbath was made for man, He, the Son of Man, to whom has been given dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him — who reigns by right over man and all things which concern man — is Lord also of the Sabbath. There are obviously two sides to the declaration. The Sabbath, on the one hand, is the Lord’s Day. It belongs to Him. He is the Lord of it; master of it — for that is what “Lord” means. He may do with it what He pleases. He may abolish it if He chooses — though abolishing it is as far as possible young the suggestion of the passage: regulate it, adapt it to the changing
circumstances of human life for the benefit of which it was made. On the other hand, just because it is the Lord’s day, it is nobody else’s day. It is not man’s day; it is not in the power of man. To say that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath is to withdraw it from the control of men. It is to reserve to the Son of Man all authority over it. It is not man but the Son of Man who is Lord of the Sabbath.
When we wish to remind ourselves of the foundations of the Sabbath in the Word of God, it is naturally to the Decalogue that we go first. There we read the fundamental commandment which underlay the Sabbath of which our Lord asserted Himself to be the Lord, and the divine authority and continued validity of which He recognised and reaffirmed when he announced Himself Lord of the Sabbath established by it. The Ten Commandments were of course, given to Israel; and they are couched in language that could only be addressed to Israel. They are introduced by a preface adapted and doubtless designed to give them entrance into the hearts of precisely the Israelitish people, as the household ordinances of their own God, the God to whom they owed their liberation from slavery and their establishment as a free people: “I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” This intimacy of appeal specifically to Israel is never lost throughout the whole document. Everywhere it has just Israel in mind, and in every part of it it is closely adapted to the special circumstances of Israel’s life. We may, therefore, read off from its texts many facts about Israel. We may learn from it, for example, that Israel was a people in which the institution of slavery existed; whose chief domestic animals were oxen and asses, not, say, horses and camels; whose religious practices included sacrificial rites; and who was about to enter into a promised land, given to it of the Lord for its possession. We may learn from it also that Israel was a people to whom the Sabbath was already known, and who needed not to be informed, but only to be reminded of it: “Remember the Sabbath day . . .” Nothing can be clearer, then, than that the Ten Commandments are definitely addressed to the Israelitish people and declare the duties peculiarly incumbent upon them.
Unless it be even clearer that these duties, declared thus to be peculiarly incumbent upon the Israelitish people, are not duties peculiar to that people. Samuel R. Driver describes the Ten Commandments as “a concise but comprehensive summary of the duties of the Israelite towards God and man . . .” It does not appear but that this is a very fair description of them. They are addressed to the Israelite. They give him a concise but comprehensive summary of his duties towards God and man. But the Israelite, too, is a man. And it ought not to surprise us to discover that the duties of the Israelite towards God and man, when summarily stated, are just the fundamental duties which are owed to God and man by every man, whether Greek or Jew, circumcision or uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free. Such, at all events is, in point of fact, the case.
There is no duty imposed upon the Israelite in the Ten Commandments, which is not equally incumbent upon all men, everywhere. These commandments are but the positive publication to Israel, of the universal human duties, the common morality of mankind.
It was not merely natural but inevitable that in this positive proclamation of universal human duties to a particular people, a special form should be given their enunciation specifically adapting them to this particular people in its peculiar circumstances; and it was eminently desirable that they should be so phrased and so commended as to open a ready approach for them to this particular people’s mind and to bring them to bear with especial force upon its heart. This element of particularity embedded in the mode of their proclamation, however, has no tendency to void these commandments of their intrinsic and universal obligation. It only clothes them with an additional appeal to those to whom this particular proclamation of them is immediately addressed. It is not less the duty of all men to do no murder, not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to bear false witness, not to covet a neighbour’s possession, that the Israelite too is commanded not to do these things, and is urged to withhold himself from them by the moving plea that he owes a peculiar obedience to a God who has dealt with him with distinguishing grace. And it is not less the duty of all men to worship none but the one true God, and Him only with spiritual worship; not to profane His name nor to withhold from Him the time necessary for His service, or refuse to reverence Him in his representatives, that these duties are impressed especially on the heart of the Israelite by the great plea that this God has shown Himself in a peculiar manner his God. The presence of the Sabbath commandment in the midst of this series of fundamental human duties, singled out to form the compact core of the positive morality divinely required of God’s peculiar people, is rather its commendation to all peoples of all times as an essential element in primary human good conduct.
It is clearly this view of the matter which was taken by our Lord. How Jesus thought of the Ten Commandments we may easily learn from His dealing with the rich young ruler who came to Him demanding: “Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” “Thou knowest the commandments,” our Lord replied; “If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the commandments.” Nothing new is suggested by our Lord: nothing but the same old commandments which Jehovah had given Israel in the Ten Words. “Thou knowest the commandments,” says he: “the commandments.” They are the well-known commandments which every one in Israel knew well. “I have nothing else to say to thee except what you already know . . . so one of the most modern of modern commentators (Johannes Weiss) paraphrases our Lord’s response: “He who would be worthy of the kingdom of God must keep the primeval commandments of God.” And that no mistake might be made as to His meaning, our Lord goes on to enumerate a sufficient number of the
Ten Commandments to make it clear even to persistent misunderstanding what commandments He had in mind. “Thou shalt not kill,” He specifies. “thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, honour thy father and thy mother,” and he adds, summing up as much of them as He had repeated, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” So little does Jesus imagine that the Ten Commandments were of local and temporary obligation that He treats them as the law of the universal and eternal kingdom which He came to establish.
Nor has He left us to infer merely from His dealing with them in such instances as this of the rich young ruler. He tells us explicitly that His mission as regards the law was, not to abrogate it, but “to fulfil it,” that is to say, “to fill it out,” complete it, develop it into its full reach and power. The law, He declares, in the most solemn manner, is not susceptible of being done away with, but shall never cease to be authoritative and obligatory. “For verily I say unto you,” He says, employing for the first time in the record of His sayings which have come down to us, this formula of solemn asseveration — “Verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass away one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished.” So long as time endures, the law shall endure in full validity, down to its smallest details. The concluding phrase of this declaration, rendered in our Revised Version “until all things be accomplished,” and perhaps even more misleadingly in the Authorised Version, “till all be fulfilled,” is not a mere repetition of “Till heaven and earth pass away,” but means, in brief, “until all which the law requires shall be done, until no item of the law shall remain unobserved.” So long as the world stands no iota of the law shall pass away — till all that it prescribes shall be performed. The law exists not to be broken or to be abrogated, but to be obeyed; not to be “undone,” to employ an old English phrase, but to be “done.” It is to be obeyed, and it shall be obeyed, down to the last detail; and, therefore, in no detail of it can it be set aside or safely neglected. “The thought is,” remarks H. A. W. Meyer justly, that “the law will not lose its binding obligation, which reaches on to the final realisation of all its prescriptions, so long as heaven and earth remain.” Now, the law of which our Lord makes this strong assertion of its ever-abiding validity, includes, as one of its prominent constituent parts, just the Ten Commandments. For, as he proceeds to illustrate His statements from instances in point, showing how the law is filled out, completed by Him, He begins by adducing instances from the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not kill”; “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” It is with the Ten Commandments clearly in His mind therefore, that He declares that no jot or tittle of the law shall ever pass away, but it all must be fulfilled.
Like Master, like disciple. There is an illuminating passage in the Epistle of James, in which the law is so adverted to as to throw a strong emphasis on its unity and its binding character in every precept of it. “For whosoever shall keep the whole law,” we read, “and yet stumble in one
point, he is become guilty of all.” “The law is a whole,” comments J. E. B. Mayor; “it is the revelation of God’s will; disregard to a single point is disregard to the Law-giver, it is disobedience to God, and a spirit of disobedience breaks the law as a whole.” If then, we keep the law, indeed, in general but fail in one precept, we have broken, not that precept only, but the whole law of which that precept is a portion. We might as well say, if we have broken the handle or the lip or the pedestal of some beautiful vase, that we have not broken the vase but only the handle or the lip or the pedestal of it, as to say that we have not broken the law when we have broken a single one of its precepts. Now, the matter of special interest to us is that James illustrates this doctrine from the Ten Commandments. It is the same God, he declares, who has said, Thou shalt not commit adultery, and Thou shalt not kill. If we do not commit adultery but kill, we are transgressors of the holy will of this God, expressed in all the precepts and not merely in one. It is obvious that James might have taken any others of the precepts of the Decalogue to illustrate his point — the Fourth as well as the Sixth or Seventh. The Decalogue evidently lies in his mind as a convenient summary of fundamental duty; and he says in effect that it is binding on us all, in all its precepts alike, because they all alike are from God and publish His holy will.
An equally instructive allusion to the Decalogue meets us in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul is dwelling on one of his favourite themes — love as the fulfilment of the law. “He who loveth his neighbour,” he says, “hath fulfilled the law.” For, all the precepts of the law — he is thinking here only of our duties to our fellow-men — are summed up in the one commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” To illustrate this proposition he enumerates some of the relevant precepts. They are taken from the second table of the Decalogue: “Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet.” Clearly the Ten Commandments stand in Paul’s mind as a summary of the fundamental principles of essential morality, and are, as such, of eternal validity. When he declares that love is the fulfilment of these precepts, he does not mean, of course, that love supersedes them, so that we may content ourselves with loving our neighbour and not concern ourselves at all with the details of our conduct toward him. What he means is the precise contrary to this: that he who loves his neighbour has within him a spring of right conduct towards his neighbour, which will make him solicitous to fulfil all his duties to him. Love does not abrogate but fulfils the law.
Paul was not the originator of this view of the relation of love to the law. Of his Master before him we read: “And He said . . . Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hangeth the whole law, and the prophets.” That is to say, all the precepts
of the law are but the development in detail, in the form of announced obligations, of the natural workings of love towards God and man. The two tables of the Decalogue are clearly in mind as respectively summed up in these two great commandments. And the meaning is, again, not that love to God and man supersedes the duties enumerated in these two tables, but that it urges prevailingly to their punctual and complete fulfilment. As loving our fellow-men does not so fulfil all our duty towards them that, loving them, we are free to rob and murder them; so loving God does not so fulfil our whole duty to Him that, loving him, we are free to insult His name or deny Him the time necessary for His service. Love, again, means not the abrogation but the fulfilment of the law.