The Gnostics, the Sabbath Day, and the Apostle Paul
William Diehl
"You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid for you...." Galatians 4:10-11
"Let no one judge you in food or drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. Colossians 2:16-17
Many Christians are troubled by certain texts by the Apostle Paul which seem to be telling the Christian church that observance of the fourth commandment of the Decalogue in not necessary. In deed, a cursory reading of some of Paul's statements regarding justification by faith alone have lead many who are not rooted and grounded in the word of God to believe that Paul preached not only against observing the Sabbath commandment but against keeping God's Law at all!! It is only those who do not understand the context of these statements who stumble and are offended by these texts and fall away from the true Gospel and into antinomianism.
The history of the Christian church is full of the ship wrecks which some have made of their faith which foundered upon either the reef of Legalism on the one hand or on the rocks of Antinomianism on the other. The Apostle Paul had to confront the threat of false teachers on both the starboard and the port side of the Gospel ship. The false teachers on the right taught that before God would accept a sinner as righteous, he had to do certain works of righteousness. These works consisted in certain deeds that he had to perform before he could be assured of eternal life and acceptance with God.
One such group were the Gnostic Jewish converts to Christianity. They taught that Jesus was one of many great heavenly "illuminated" teachers or "intermediators" who came to reveal the secret rituals that were to be performed by the followers of the "hidden knowledge". The followers were to pass through the steps of initiation or "degrees" to each successively higher step until one became a Master of Knowledge such as Jesus was. These Jewish Gnostics incorporated the ritualism of Judaism into the Gnostic "secrets" and many saw the Christian religion as a source of higher "knowledge" and Jesus as the great Master of the Mystery Religions.
The rituals of these Jewish Gnostic "Christians" consisted of ritualistic ascetic observance of the feast days, the new moons, and the Sabbath. There were cultic ceremonies for each of these "holy days" which were to be stringently observed. There were also strict dietary observances, fasts, neglecting of the body, self imposed religious austerity, false humility, and the worship of heavenly messengers or Angels. Christ, to these apostates, was not the unique Creator God made flesh who cancelled our sins and gave us eternal life, justifying us by faith alone in His precious blood. Christ was merely one of many heavenly Masters to show the way to the Godhead and Divinity. Jesus was to them the great Example of how to work ones way to "perfection" through stages of cultic progression through asceticism and visions and heavenly revelations. Salvation was to perform the good works of the Torah just as Christ had performed and fulfilled the Torah. To them Christ was circumcised, observed the ceremonies of the Torah and had worked the works of the Law and finally earned His reward of eternal life by His works. Therefore by following the Example of Jesus as perfectly as He had performed the Torah, they could, through the "degrees" of mysticism, attain to blessedness, perfection and eternal life.
These Gnostics wanted nothing to do with the Gospel that Paul preached. He taught that the Lord Jesus Christ was first and foremost our Substitute. Christ "became" sin for us that we might "become" the righteousness of God in Him by faith. That is, God imputes the perfect life and atoning death of Jesus unto the believing repentant sinner and he is accounted sinless in the merciful reckoning of God. Paul taught that sinners are reconciled to God by grace alone through faith in the works which Jesus did for us on the Cross of Calvary NOT the works which the believer performs. Those who rest in the finished atonement of Christ on the cross receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and bring forth the fruits of the Spirit in their lives. The ritualistic observance of ceremonies and rites associated with the meat and drink offerings and holy days of the Torah were mere shadows of that which Christ was the substance and fulfillment.
These apostates then turned on Paul and slanderously accused him of teaching, "Let us do evil that good may come" (Rom 3:8). They blasphemously charged him with teaching that since we are justified only by the unmerited mercy of God, Christians are free to "sin that grace might abound". Paul was teaching nothing of the kind. Paul was teaching that obedience to the Law of God must never be used as a "means" to acceptance (justification) with God, but rather that obedience to the commandments was to be fulfilled in the believer only through the Spirit in works of love for God and one another (Rom 13:8). Thus love is the fulfilling of the Law. Rather than being saved "by" obeying God's Law, we are saved "to" the obeying of God's Law. Loving obedience to the Ten Commandments is the fruit of having been justified by God's grace.
The good works of love of the believing repentant saints are still in need of the imputed righteousness of Christ however. The incense of Christ's imputed righteousness must be the "salt" that is added to every good work, even those good works motivated by the Holy Spirit. Paul never intended believers to feel that the Law of God was to be willfully disregarded, including the fourth commandment. But to the believer the Sabbath takes on even more significance. The Sabbath day is a sign, not only of God's rest after havng created the universe in six days, but also of the rest we have in the finished redemptive work of Jesus . We "rest" in His perfect sinless life and His atoning death for our sins. We celebrate His victory.
Heb 4:9 There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into His rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest.
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