Not under Law but under Grace

Part Nine

by G. A. N. James

This is the ninth part of the series of messages on the subject of Law and Grace, entitled “Not under Law but under Grace.” We have already established the limitation of the Law of Moses in fulfilling God’s aim to deliver humanity after the Fall from the bondage of death and sin into Life and righteousness. We have also dealt with the purpose of the Law in God’s unfolding plan of salvation to foreshadow and point to the true Life and righteousness which Christ would bring to humanity. We examined the fulfilment of the Law in Christ who came to reveal the true substance or body of Life and righteousness, which the Law foreshadowed. We examined the truth that Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one who believes and accepts Him. We then examined the truth that the righteousness of God apart from the Law is now manifested and is imparted by God to a believer in Christ by grace rather than achieved or produced by a believer’s efforts. In the seventh part of the series of messages on Law and Grace we began to examine the Sabbath under grace. We pointed out that the observance of the Sabbath, like all the ordinances and rituals of the Law, was a shadow or type of a reality the substance of which is fulfilled in Christ. For the Sabbath, this reality is Divine rest in Christ. We continued to explore this wonderful truth of the Sabbath under grace from the standpoint of the Scriptures in the previous message. In this message, we will continue to examine the Scriptural basis for the importance of the Sabbath under grace being not the ritual observance of Sabbath days, but the entering in by faith into the reality of Divine rest, which the observance of Sabbath days in the Old Testament merely foreshadowed.

The Sabbath under Grace, Cont.

We ended our last message by pointing out that it is one thing to observe ritualistically the statutes of the Sabbaths as prescribed by the Law, but quite a different thing to enter into the true Divine rest which God intended the Sabbaths to symbolize or foreshadow. Under the Old Covenant of the Law of Moses, the Jews observed the Sabbath days, but lacked the faith to enter into the rest which the Sabbaths pointed to.

The book of Hebrews in recalling the sad failure of the children of Israel to enter into the rest of God warns us about falling into this tragedy of unbelief in this way in Heb 3:7-19:

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, "Today if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw My works forty years. Therefore I was grieved with that generation and said, They always err in their heart, and they have not known My ways. So I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter into My rest." Take heed, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, while it is said, "Today if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation." For some, when they had heard, did provoke; however, not all who came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was He grieved forty years? Was it not with those who had sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they should not enter into His rest, but to those who did not believe? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

It takes faith to leave behind the symbols and rituals of religion and enter into the reality of spiritual things in heavenly places. This is the challenge that confronts New Testament believers. Paul puts it this way in Rom 7:6, “But now we having been set free from the Law, having died to that in which we were held, so that we serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of the letter.” Paul also makes a similar point in Gal 3:11-12, “But that no one is justified by the Law in the sight of God is clear, for, ‘The just shall live by faith.’ But the Law is not of faith; but, ‘The man who does these things shall live in them.’ He continues to point out further down that chapter in Gal 3:23-25, “But before faith came, we were kept under Law, having been shut up to the faith about to be revealed. So that the Law has become a trainer of us until Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But faith coming, we are no longer under a trainer.”

Under grace, faith lifts up the New Testament believer from the beggarly elements of religious symbols and rituals, as prevailed in the Law of Moses, into the heavenly realm of the spirituals. Relative to the Sabbath, under the New Covenant of grace, we need not observe times and seasons or days of rest because in Christ we come through faith into the reality of the rest of God for His people. We who have come to Christ have come to the true spiritual reality of Divine rest and have left behind the vanishing symbols of the rest of God represented in the observance of Sabbath days. Paul exhorts us in Gal 4:9-10: “But now, knowing God, but rather are known by God, how do you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements to which you again desire to slave anew? You observe days and months and times and years.”

From that same standpoint, we should not judge others on the basis of their observance of these Sabbaths because the observance of days is merely symbolical. It neither adds nor takes away from the more permanent rest of God that is in Christ and transcends time, unless one allows these observances to blind him from recognizing and entering into the true rest in Christ. What is essentially important is entering into the reality of the rest of God symbolized by these Sabbaths.

Paul admonishes us plainly in Col 2:16-17: “Therefore let no one judge you in food or in drink, or in respect of a feast, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbaths. For these are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.”

In other words, under the Law, the ritual observance of Sabbath days was a mere shadow of a reality, which was yet to come, not the reality itself. The body or substance or reality of the shadow of things to come signified by the ritual observance of the Sabbaths is the rest which God gives a believer in Christ under grace. Hence, when a believer comes to abide in Christ, every day is a life or walk of resting in Christ. The believer in Christ has ceased from his own works and rituals of righteousness and enters into rest in Christ. The believer in Christ is now in complete Sabbath or Divine rest in Christ every moment of every day. The believer in Christ knows that he can do nothing without Christ. Therefore, he abides and rest in Christ, by whose life and empowerments he accomplishes all his daily duties in the will of God.

The implication of this relationship between a believer and Christ for the practice of observing Sabbath days is very significant. No longer can the days and activities of a believer in Christ be categorized or defined in terms of what is secular and what is spiritual, or what is for God and what is for man. The believer in Christ now lives in Christ and Christ lives in Him and hence his entire life, including all his days and activities, now becomes sanctified in Christ and is the product of God's work in and through him.  In other words, to the believer in Christ under the New Covenant, every day, as well as every work or activity, is holy and is accomplished not by his own efforts but Christ who lives in him. No particular day or activity in which a true believer participates is holier than the others. Every day, Sunday to Saturday, is a holy day and all of a believer’s activities and life are holy unto God, whether in assembling with other believers for worship on certain days of the week or performing his daily tasks at home, school, work, and leisure. The believer in Christ lives no longer to himself but unto the Lord.  According to Col 3:17, “And everything, whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.”

Paul reminds us in Rom 14:4-8:

Who are you that judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. But he will stand, for God is able to make him stand. One indeed esteems a day above another day; and another esteems every day alike. Let each one be fully assured in his own mind. He who regards the day regards it to the Lord; and he not regarding the day, does not regard it to the Lord. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, does not eat to the Lord, and gives God thanks. For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. For both if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore both if we live, and if we die, we are the Lord's.

This is important because it demonstrates the futility of the debate on whether abstaining from work on Sunday or Saturday is necessary under grace to observe the true Sabbath and whether one day is holier than the other in the life of a believer in Christ. The truth is that by grace the believer in Christ under the New Covenant has entered into Divine rest in Christ and this rest transcends time, and every day is a holy day of rest in Christ. Whichever day one meets to worship God in the congregation of the people of God should be regarded with equal reverence as every other day in a believer’s life. A believer in Christ should be able to declare with the psalmist every day he wakes up: “This is the day which the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Psa 118:24).

In terms of physical rest, the importance of which some have incorporated into the debate of observing the Sabbath days, it is unreasonable to conclude that where physical rest is needed that one would derive any less benefit from resting on any other day besides the Mosaic Sabbath day. Believers in Christ, let us lift our faith to God to grasp the reality of the heavenly things which He offers to us and do not be short-sighted and be robbed by vain controversies generated by vain ambitions to perpetuate religious traditions which God has made obsolete.

To abide in Christ is to enter in and abide perpetually in Divine rest which is the true Sabbath of God. According to Heb 4:10, “For he who has entered into his rest, he also has ceased from his own works, as God did from His.” When one has entered through faith into Divine rest in Christ, he has ceased from his own works. There is no aspect of his performance that is his own, while certain other aspects are the Lord’s. Believers in Christ must get into that level of spiritual awareness in Christ where they recognize that all what they do are completely the outcome of the operation of Christ in them. This is the experience of entering into Divine rest in Christ by faith. Like Paul, every genuine Christian can truly testify: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I live; yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me. And that life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith toward the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself on my behalf” (Gal 2:20).

Under the Old Covenant, the observance of the Sabbath demanded that the people of Israel do absolutely no work, not even the preparation of their meals on the Sabbath day. In the New Testament, it is interesting to note that Jesus took His disciples through a corn field to find food on the Sabbath day and in the face of severe criticisms from Sabbath day keepers He used the occasion as an example and opportunity to teach on the futility of the manner in which the Jews observed the Sabbath day.

We read this account in Mar 2:23-28:

And it happened that He went through the grainfields on the sabbath day. And as they walked His disciples began to pluck the heads of grain. And the Pharisees said to Him, Behold, why do they do that which is not lawful on the sabbath day? And He said to them, Have you never read what David did, when he had need and was hungry, he, and those with him? How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest and ate the showbread, which it is not lawful to eat, except for the priests, and also gave to those with him? And He said to them, The sabbath came into being for man's sake, and not man for the sabbath's sake. Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the sabbath.

The truth, therefore, is that the Sabbath of God under grace is not intended by God to be dragged down into shallow and carnal debates and arguments of observing days and refraining from the duties and responsibilities of our daily lives. In fact, we can conclude from the Scriptural teachings on the Sabbath under grace, as we have explored, that the argument that the people of God should gather for worship and do no work on a Saturday because the Jews observed the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week, as well as the argument that Sunday is the day one should gather for worship because the Sabbath day shifted from Saturday to Sunday, the day of the Resurrection of Christ, are erroneous arguments based on the Old Covenant concept of the ritual observance of days. The will of God is for all believers through faith to enter into His Divine rest in Christ and cease from their own works and let Christ live in them through every deed every day. Whatever day of the week set and agreed upon for the assembly of a congregation of God’s people to worship God should be honoured and respected by every member of that congregation and should not substitute for the true observance of the Sabbath of God, which is entering into the permanent rest of God in Christ.

If we sincerely want to observe the Sabbath of God, we must acknowledge the true meaning of the Sabbath, and the reality or truth which the observance of the Sabbaths symbolized or foreshadowed under the Law, and enter into the truth and reality of the Sabbath under grace as the rest of God offered to all believers in Christ. This rest remains for all God’s people to recognize and enter in and it is that perpetual rest of God that transcends the temporal observance of earthly days.

We will conclude with Paul’s admonition in Col 2:8-9: Beware lest anyone rob you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

If you have been blessed by any of our messages and want to let us know, or have questions, or need prayer, you are welcome to contact us.
     Click here.