I just happened to be in the neighborhood and thought I would get in on some of the casual, or not so casual, conversation. Hoping to make some new friends here. Lord bless ya'll.

Great topic. I'm new to the forum, but not new to the issue. I've seen so many people hash and rehash this issue, but the truth is very simply this. When God instituted the Sabbath it wasn't Christian and it wasn't Jewish. It was His, and because it was His, and still is I might add, it applies to all of humanity and not just a small segment.

I've seen the argument posed that Jesus is the Christian's Sabbath, i.e., we just rest in Him everyday. Well, that sounds good, but the problem is it's not biblical. If the Sabbath is fulfilled in Christ such that Christians don't have to observe it anymore then the same goes for any of the other commandments God gave. Jesus fulfilled the rest of God's Law too. Does that mean I no longer have to honor my mother and father? Does that mean that I can steal, commit adultery, murder, lie, and anything else that His law addresses? Common sense says no. But Paul said where there is no law there is no sin. If the Law has been done away with, because if we dispose of the Sabbath we must also do the same for the rest of God's Law seeing as how they were given together as a single unit, then there is no longer a need to preach repentance since there is nothing left to tell us what sin is.

It has been said that Jesus never said anything to believers requiring them to observe the Sabbath. Did anyone stop to think that He never told them not to? Jesus clearly said that He didn't come to change the Law. If the Sabbath was no longer meant to be kept Paul would have said so. The fact that he expressed what he did to the Galatians should not be misconstrued to mean that he was telling them they should no longer observe the Sabbath. Why would he tell them to cease from observing something that God had commanded? That would be like saying it's okay to commit adultery now because you no longer have to obey the seventh commandment. Did it ever occur to anyone that the days he was referring to might have something to do with something other than the Sabbath?

It has been also suggested by many, that to continue to observe the Sabbath is to go back under legalism, but I can say the same thing to those who will staunchly say that it is sin to lie, steal, commit adultery, and murder. The transgression of one law is no different than the transgression of another according to James.

I believe the problem lies in the idea that if one were to observe the Sabbath he wouldn't be able to do the things he would like to do, i.e., go shopping, go to the dragstrip, watch his sports on the tube, do his yardwork, and anything else that detracts from what the Sabbath is about. I notice in Scripture that Jesus never once complained about keeping the Sabbath because He kept it in accordance to His Father's will, not His own. It wasn't a burden to Him, but it certainly is to most professing Christians. If Christians were truly following Jesus' example there wouldn't be any complaints at all, but it seems that many Christians feel that Jesus did what He did so we wouldn't have to. What a Laodicean mindset that is. Jesus spoke of self-denial in Luke 9:23. How many professing Christians are actually willing to deny themselves in order to honor what God ordained? Not too many I'm afraid. I guess that's what grace is all about. It affords me the leeway to live the way I want rather than the way God wants. But that isn't really grace, that's a license to sin, which raises the question, what is what the modern day church considers conversion really all about?