In Exodus 20:8, God commanded His people, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Are Christians required to observe the Jewish Sabbath? Was the Sabbath moved from Saturday to Sunday at the beginning of the church age? What day did the early Christians worship? These questions are often debated, yet the early Christians were united in their views of the Sabbath and its application for today.

Did the early Christians observe the Sabbath?

• “Is there any other matter, my [Jewish] friends, in which we Christians are blamed, than this: that we do not live after the Law . . . and do not observe Sabbaths, as you do?” – Justin Martyr (c. 160)
• “All those righteous men already mentioned, though they kept no Sabbaths, were pleasing to God. . . . There was no need of circumcision before Abraham. Nor was there need of the observance of Sabbaths, or of feasts and sacrifices, before Moses. Accordingly, there is no more need of them now.” – Justin Martyr (c. 160)
• “‘You will observe My Sabbaths; for it will be a sign between Me and you for your generations’ [Exo. 31:13]. These things, then, were given for a sign. . . . The Sabbaths taught that we should continue day by day in God’s service, . . . abstaining from all avarice and not acquiring or possessing treasures upon earth. . . . However, man was not justified by these things. Rather, they were given as a sign to the people. This fact is evident, for Abraham himself – without circumcision and without observance of Sabbaths – ‘believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness’ [Rom. 4:22].” – Irenaeus (c. 180)
• “To us Sabbaths are foreign.” – Tertullian (c. 197)
• “Let the one who contends that the Sabbath is still to be observed as a balm of salvation . . . prove to us that in times past righteous men kept the Sabbath, or practiced circumcision, and were thereby made ‘friends of God’ [Jam. 2:23]. . . . Just as the abolition of fleshly circumcision and of the old Law is demonstrated as having been consummated at its specific times, so also the observance of the Sabbath is demonstrated to have been temporary.” – Tertullian (c. 197)

The New Testament indicates that the Sabbath, as a Mosaic ordinance, is not binding upon believers; for Jesus “has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances” (Ephesians 2:14-15):

• “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. . . . Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” – Colossians 2:13-17
• “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.” – Galatians 4:9-11

The early Christians likewise believed that Jesus fulfilled, completed, and abolished the requirement to keep the weekly Sabbath:

• “Concerning [the Sabbath], Christ himself, the Lord of the Sabbath, says by His prophets that ‘His soul hates’ [Isa. 1:14]. In His body, He abolished this Sabbath.” – Victorinus (c. 280)
• “Paul blames [the Galatians] for maintaining circumcision, and observing times, days, months, and years, according to those Jewish ceremonies. For they should have known those things were now abrogated, according to the new dispensation. . . . Thus it was said by Hosea: ‘I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her Sabbaths’ [Hos. 2:11]. . . . The Creator had long before discarded all these things, and the apostle was now proclaiming them to be worthy of renunciation.” – Tertullian (c. 207)
• “Jesus destroyed the obligation of the Law given by Moses. That is, He did not rest on the Sabbath, but labored for the good of men. Furthermore, He abolished circumcision, and He took away the necessity of abstaining from the flesh of pigs. . . . However, he did not do this by His own judgment, but according to the will of God.” – Lactantius (c. 304-313)
• “We do not now deal with the Law any further than [to remark] that the apostle here teaches clearly how it has been abolished – by passing from shadow to substance. That is, it has passed from figurative types to the reality, which is Christ.” – Tertullian (c. 207)

The true Sabbath

The early Christians did not observe a literal Sabbath. Rather, they believed that the Sabbath requirement under the Mosaic Law prefigured the true, spiritual Sabbath that would be observed by Jesus’ followers every day of the week:

• “Those who lived according to the old practices [have] come to the new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath but living according to the Lord’s Day, in which also our life arose through Him.” – Ignatius (c. 105)
• “You [a Jew] now have need of a second circumcision, although you glory greatly in the flesh. The new law requires you to keep a perpetual Sabbath. However, you, because you are idle for one day, suppose you are godly. . . . The Lord our God does not take pleasure in such observances. If there is any perjured person or a thief among you, let him cease to be so. . . . Then he has kept the sweet and true Sabbaths of God.” – Justin Martyr (c. 160)
• “The Lawgiver also desires that every individual among us should be devoted unceasingly to this kind of work, even as God Himself is. Consequently, He directs us to continuously rest from secular things and to engage in no worldly sort of work whatever. This is called our Sabbath.” – Disputation of Archelaus and Manes (c. 320)
• “He had given the commandment to keep the Sabbath by resting on it for the sake of meditating on the laws. However, He has now commanded us to meditate on the law of creation and of providence every day.” – Apostolic Constitutions (c. 390)

When did the early Christians worship?

The early Christians met for worship on Sunday, which they typically referred to as the Lord’s Day to distinguish themselves from the pagans. However, none of their writings indicate that the weekly worship service replaces or fulfills the Sabbath. Rather, meeting weekly on the Lord’s Day is an entirely new institution:

• “Every Lord’s Day, gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, so that your sacrifice may be pure.” – Didache (c. 80-140)
• “Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead.” – Justin Martyr (c. 160)
• “We [Christians] make Sunday a day of festivity.” – Tertullian (c. 197)
• “On the day of the resurrection of the Lord, that is, the Lord’s Day, assemble yourselves together without fail, giving thanks to God and praising Him.” – Apostolic Constitutions (c. 390)

While the early Christians met weekly for worship, they understood that God is pleased not by a ritualistic observance of the Lord’s Day each week but by a lifestyle of keeping His commandments:

• “In fulfillment of the commandment according to the Gospel, a person keeps the Lord’s Day when he abandons an evil disposition and assumes the disposition of the spiritual man, glorifying the Lord’s resurrection in himself.” – Clement of Alexandria (c. 195)
• “To the perfect Christian, who is ever serving his natural Lord – God the Word – in his thoughts, words, and deeds, all his deeds are the Lord’s. So he is always keeping the Lord’s Day.” – Origen (c. 248)
• “We are commanded to reverence and to honor the same One, being persuaded that He is Word. . . . We do not do this just on special days, as some other persons do. Rather, we do this continually in our whole life, and in every way. . . . For that reason, not in a specified place, or selected temple, or at certain festivals and on appointed days, but during his whole life, the spiritual man honors God.” – Clement of Alexandria (c. 195)

The Lord’s Day as the eighth day

Interestingly, many early Christian writers noted that although the Lord’s Day is the first day of the week, it is also the eighth day; and as such, it has spiritual and historical significance:

• “Moreover God says to the Jews, ‘Your new moons and Sabbaths I cannot endure’ [Isa. 1:13]. You see how he says, ‘Your present Sabbaths are not acceptable to me, but the Sabbath which I have made, [namely this:] when giving rest to all things, I will make a beginning of the eighth day, that is, a beginning of another world.’ Wherefore, we keep the eighth day with joy, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead.” – Barnabas (c. 70-130)
• “The eighth day possessed a certain mysterious significance, which the seventh day did not possess. . . . The commandment of circumcision, requiring them always to circumcise the children on the eighth day, was a type of the true circumcision by which we are circumcised from error and evil through the resurrection from the dead on the first day of the week of Jesus Christ our Lord. For the first day of the week, although it is the first of all days, yet according to the number of the days in a cycle is called the eighth (while still remaining the first).” – Justin Martyr (c. 160)
• “Concerning the observance of the eighth day in the Jewish circumcision of the flesh, a sacrament was given beforehand in shadow and in usage. But when Christ came, it was fulfilled in truth. For the eighth day (that is, the first day after the Sabbath) was to be that day on which the Lord would rise again, enliven us, and give us the circumcision of the spirit. The eighth day (that is, the first day after the Sabbath), the Lord’s Day, was foreshadowed.” – Cyprian (c. 250)
• “[Jesus revealed] to the prophets His own future appearance in the world by the flesh, in which the joy and knowledge of the spiritual eighth day would be proclaimed, to bring the remission of sins and the resurrection. Thereby, the passions and corruptions of men would be circumcised.” – Methodius (c. 290)

Conclusion

The early Christians did not observe the weekly Sabbath because they believed that Jesus had fulfilled, completed, and abolished this Mosaic requirement. Rather, they observed the true, spiritual Sabbath every day in their hearts as they did their best to live in accordance with the commands of Christ: “Not in a specified place, or selected temple, or at certain festivals and on appointed days, but during his whole life, the spiritual man honors God” (Clement of Alexandria).