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Comment by judah | Hacker News Reader

I personally believe there's a strong pro-Sabbath argument to be made from the New Testament:

In the gospels, Jesus says he is the master of shabbat; how can a person be a master of something he is abolishing?

Again in the gospels, we read Jesus ruling it is lawful to do good on the sabbath - if he was aiming at abolishing sabbath, why talk about what's lawful to do during sabbath?

Then, in the epistles, the author of Hebrews writes, "There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God."

Combined with the historical reality that the early Christians were almost all Jews who saw themselves within Judaism, it is probable the early Christians were sabbath keepers.

As others in this thread have noted, spiritual significance aside, the physical rest and ceasing of ahabbat is healthy. Its importance is amplified in our work-obssessed culture; more so in the startup culture.

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>Again in the gospels, we read Jesus ruling it is lawful to do good on the sabbath - if he was aiming at abolishing sabbath, why talk about what's lawful to do during sabbath?

He was claiming to be God

>Then, in the epistles, the author of Hebrews writes, "There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God."

The point of the book is to say that all the things of the old covenant (the priests, the sabbath, the commandments) are inferior to the new things. In the new, the 'sabbath' is Christ himself. We are to labour to enter into this rest.

That being said, I honour the original (pre-Sinai) shabbat by getting out and enjoying nature, thus honouring His creative acts. It's exhausting, not restful at all. I'm thankful that I live in a culture where I can dedicate the Sunday entirely to worshipping the risen Christ and rest, but as a believer I'd have liberty to do it on any other day if Sunday was not workable.

I agree with you that the case can be made, although I don't know how much I agree with your case, and I still think the case is stronger against a mandatory Sabbath.

Hebrews 4 talks a lot about entering into Sabbath rest. But my interpretation of its main gist is that those who believe and obey the good news enter into God's Sabbath rest. I don't think it's speaking about a literal Sabbath day.

I agree that early Jewish Christians probably practiced the Sabbath, but did early Gentile Christians?

There are also passages in the NT, such as Romans 14 and Colossians 2:16-17, which support the idea that a Christian has freedom to practice an explicit Sabbath day or to not practice it.

So I concur with you that, in Christianity, taking an explicit Sabbath day is permissible and even beneficial. I just don't think it is mandated, and I think a Christian can legitimately believe that he/she shouldn't take an explicit Sabbath day.

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