JESUS points to Himself as the Place where the Decalogue is Fulfilled and therefore HE never reiterated the 4th commandment since it cannot satisfy the requirement of the Righteousness of God.
I appreciate a few things about language. It changes. Over the centuries certain words and expressions have taken on new meaning. Some examples...gay, sick, kicks, to name a very few. I have a question. When did the word
fulfil change its meaning to cancel, remove, expunge etc when applied to the moral law? A law Jesus declared would never change, a set of commandments that the prophets declared as a written expression of Christ's righteousness. In order to change God's commandments, world you not have to also change His character?
And why oh why do you guys keep demanding that God repeat Himself constantly to get your attention. Was not the first time sufficient? Was not Jesus's example sufficient? Was not the apostles example sufficient? Was not the early church's example sufficient? Is not the complete absence of any NT commandment or direction that annulls the Sabbath observance sufficient? Didn't not that one word, remember, touch a nerve? But no. All of that isn't enough. You want a specific repeat of Sinai with all the caveats attached specifically naming the NT church as the recipient, before you condescend to obey. But I get it. It's so much easier to go with the popular opinion. Where enemies are few. Criticism absent. Examples many. The majority.
Not at all....just that it is fulfilled in the new way of the spirit now, not in the old way of the letter and 'beggardly' elements of this world and flesh. If believers were commanded to keep the Sabbath physically, Paul would have simply said so instead of judging that Gentiles are not to be burdened with anything except to avoid fornication and eating of blood. And he ruled and instructed elsewhere it is up to the individual whether to keep sabbaths or not in the physical sense. Its' ok to just discuss the subject, whether or not and why or why not....but we are instructed not to let anyone judge,ie, govern and rule over us in this matter. Trying to impose sabbath-keeping on others violates Paul's instructions as an apostle, who had the Spirit of God and was speaking/writing by the Spirit of God.
Yes, I have read posts such as yours with minor variations for years. I am still totally bewildered that Christians, presumably relatively Bible literate Christians, who can't discern, or won't discern, the difference between the annual Sabbaths and the weekly Sabbath. I have tried to explain this before on this forum, but it always seems to hit a blank. So please, let me lean on your patience once again, and I will try as best as I can to explain why the weekly Sabbath is still relevant, and the yearly ones now voluntary and as many would say, "fulfilled or met in Christ". I hope I don't sound condescending, and I know much of what I say you will know already. Books have been written on this, I will try to encapsulate the major elements in one post.
On Mt Sinai, God's gave Moses the Ten Commandments. They were an expression of the righteousness of Christ, a righteousness that none of us can attain to on our own, and yet a benchmark of holiness without which no-one can be citizens of God kingdom. God knew this. He understood the hearts and minds of the people He wanted as His representatives to reach all nations to teach them His true character, a character heretofore besmirched and distorted by His and our arch enemy, the devil! God was never willing that any should perish, but that all, such as Assyria and Egypt and Babylon and all the tribes of the Philistines, should come to repentance. God chose Israel to deliver that message of love. For the most part, they failed to understand that imperative. And they failed to obey the law. But God wasn't taken by surprise, as He had a plan. The sanctuary and the services and sacrifices associated with it through the Levitical priesthood. This was the law of Moses, not to be confused with the law of God given on stone. The law of Moses was written on parchment, and stored on the side of the ark of the covenant, the tables of stone inside the ark. Paul speaks of these two laws each having different purpose, when he said,
“Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions,
(We will pause here, to remember that sin is the transgression of the law. 1 John 3:4. Thus Paul is saying that because a previous law was transgressed, even at that very time through the golden calf incident, God added another law as a remedy..."because of transgressions"... For the sin problem. That remedy was the law of Moses. It was the gospel of the OT. In types and symbols God portrayed the life and death of the coming Messiah, so that everyone participating could look forward in faith to Christ through the Lamb, and through faith, not by obedience or works, finds hope, reconciliation, and atonement....
till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. ”
Galatians 3:19 KJV
Unfeigned Bible
www.unfeignedbible.app
The weekly Sabbath was an essential component of the moral law. The yearly Sabbaths were symbolic of various elements of the ministry of the coming saviour. Passover. Feast of first fruits. Pentecost. Feast of trumpets. Day of atonement. Feast of tabernacles. When the
seed that should come, did come, the Son of God personally taking upon Himself the sins of the world, and becoming the true Passover Lamb, and fulfilling every type and symbol in the ceremonies and feasts and rituals that typified the gospel of the NT, then those types met antitype, symbol met reality. The ceremonial law becomes defunct, it becomes null and void as a means of reconciliation, nevertheless holding much value as a teaching tool for God's purposes for His people.
The Sabbath was never ceremonial or ritualistic in as much as it was a pointer to the coming of the Messiah. It was more a celebration. A celebration at first of creation. A celebration that we have a Creator and whose power and care (I am the Lord that sanctified you) exceeds anything the devil can imagine is a counterfeit.
The Sabbath was, and still is, a celebration also of salvation already provided. A celebration of the Lord of the Sabbath, a memorial of the fact that He had accomplished all things needful for a sanctified life that fulfills all righteousness empowering His people to obey God's commandments.
On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
You should also have capitalised "ALL THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS". Yes ,it is absolutely true that love is the fulfilling of the law. That is precisely how and why obedience can never be legalism. Obedience is born out of love. Obedience can never come from anywhere else. "If you love Me, keep My commandments". And we love God because He first loved us. It is the infusion of His Spirit that creates in us His character. It is a character of love. We love God, and find repulsive that we would worship anything or anyone else. We worship in Spirit and Truth. We surrender to His authority in our lives, and no other. If we find ourselves out of harmony with the will of God, in other words we discover in ourselves a proclivity toward sin in some sphere of our lives, do we them knuckle down and try harder to obey?? Is that how we are to overcome sin in our lives? No, never. We surrender. Again. Only more. More of our heart and mind and will do we surrender until when Jesus comes. Each and every day we die to self. Each and every day we grow more. We become more united with Jesus and His Father through their Spirit. And by faith, were receive all that He has to offer. Including His righteousness, which He demonstrated while on earth, was in obedience to all His Father's commandments.
So when the papacy comes along in the 6th century and demands all other churches to observe Easter only on Sundays, the first day of the week in celebration of the resurrection, and shortly thereafter enforcing all Sundays as sacred observance, and using the power of the state and legislation to persecute those churches who chose to continue to remember Passover on its original day and the Sabbath, despite being called legalists, Judaizers, and heretics for not bowing before papal authority, we ask, on whose authority is the replacement of the Sabbath established? Whether Sunday, any day, no day, or spiritualised rest, on whose authority does that become a new thing not practised or taught by the apostles or early church?
