"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Exodus 20:8-11
The commandment about the Sabbath Day has been the subject of so much controversy - not to say confused and wrong thinking - that it is imperative for us to be clear in our minds as to its precise importance and significance. It is sometimes taken for granted, for example, that the Sabbath commandment is in a different category from the others, in that it refers to an institution rather than a fundamental moral law, as those which follow it do. But this is highly debatable, and an arbitrary distinction which is scarcely substantiated by the Old Testament itself, which gives far more prominence to the Sabbath commandment than to any of the others. Furthermore, the implication that, because it is different from the other commandments, it is somehow more restricted to the Jews and therefore less applicable to the Church or the world, is demonstrably false, since the concept of the Sabbath is traceable to the order of creation in Genesis 2, and therefore as universally applicable as the institution of marriage or the doctrine of work. Not only so: while it is true that men may hold, and have held, legalistic conceptions of Sabbath observance (our Lord Himself criticised the Pharisaic attitude of His day) it is neither logical nor honest to brand any serious attempt at honouring the law of God as legalism. One does not - or ought not to bring a charge of legalism against a man for making it a point of honour to be absolutely honest ('Thou shalt not steal') or absolutely pure ('Thou shalt not commit adultery'). Why then should a similarly strict and thorough obedience to the Sabbath law be regarded as legalistic?