Category Archives: Current issues

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Once-Saved-Always-Saved? Maybe not

There are different definitions of once-saved-always-saved, and in this post I am challenging only one version. The point is not to make Christians nervous about their salvation; biblical writers assure Christians who have been persevering that they will persevere (Phil 1:5-7; Heb 6:9-10). The point is to recognize that apostasy is possible and that it happens sometimes.

If you have been a Christian very long, you probably know some who started with you in the faith who have since fallen away. I have known many who were zealous colleagues who no longer even claim to be Christians; some, in fact, claim to be something else.

Calvinists and Arminians may disagree on whether a person was provisionally converted or not, but they both agree that only those who persevere to the end will be saved. A Calvinist would say that someone who falls away was not genuinely converted to begin with (cf. John 6:64; 1 John 2:19)—that is, from the standpoint of ultimate salvation, which God already knows. An Arminian would say that, from the standpoint of human experience, which is what we can know, the person was provisionally converted but fell away and thus was not ultimately saved. But both agree that a person who turns away from faith in Christ and never returns is not ultimately saved. Both of these perspectives have biblical support, one from the standpoint of God’s foreknowledge and the other from the standpoint of human experience.

But “once-saved-always-saved” as it is commonly taught in many churches is neither Calvinism nor Arminianism. Many teach a cheap version of “Once-saved-always-saved,” wherein anyone who professes conversion remains in Christ no matter what happens. Let us say they become an atheist theologically, an axe-murderer morally, or even simply a spiritual couch potato that hasn’t thought about God for years. Are they still counted as believers in Christ? (Because this contorted hope seems to flourish particularly in some Baptist churches, I should note, lest you think I am picking on Baptists, that I’m a Baptist minister myself, albeit a charismatic evangelical one.)

Various texts warn that a person will be saved only if they persevere. Christ has reconciled you to present you to God, Paul warns, “if you continue in the faith” (Col 1:23). God cut off unbelieving branches and grafted you in, but if you do not continue in his kindness, you too may be cut off (Rom 11:22). (Paul speaks here of individual Gentiles, not of Gentiles as a whole, since in the context he did not believe that every individual Jewish person had been cut off.) The letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2—3 repeatedly offer promises to those who overcome, conditioning the reward on perseverance. One must hold onto what one has, lest someone else take one’s crown (Rev 3:11), presumably the crown of life (2:10); those believers who overcome will not be blotted out of the book of life (3:5).

Jesus warned some who “believed” in him that they would become his disciples and know the truth if they continued in his teaching (John 8:30-32); they did not do so (8:59). In John’s Gospel, saving faith is faith that perseveres, not the faith of a fleeting moment. Jesus warns his own disciples to continue in him; if someone did not do so, they would be cast away and ultimately burned (15:5). (Fire was a familiar Jewish image for Gehenna, used also elsewhere in the Gospels.)

A wide array of texts warn that a person will be lost if they do not persevere. Because Galatian Christians were trying to be made right with God by keeping the law, Paul warned that they had been cut off from Christ and had fallen from grace (Gal 5:4); Paul was laboring again until Christ would be formed in them again (4:19). Paul even disciplined himself to ensure that he did not fail the test (1 Cor 9:27), but warned the Corinthians to check themselves to see whether they were failing it (2 Cor 13:5). Some of these references could be hyperbolic, dramatic ways of warning his hearers that they were on the verge of losing something they had not yet lost (cf. perhaps 2 Cor 5:20; 6:1, 17-18). Nevertheless, they hold out the terrifying possibility of apostasy.

This is especially emphasized in Hebrews. Punishment for turning from the way of salvation now is harsher than under the law (Heb 2:1-4). Those who turned from God in Moses’s time never entered God’s rest; how much more would that be true for those now who, hardened by sin, stopped believing Jesus Christ (3:7-15; 4:1, 11)!

Hebrews 6 warns particularly explicitly that those once converted could fall away. Being “enlightened” (6:4) refers to conversion (10:32); “tasting” the heavenly gift and future era (6:4-5) refers to experiencing it (the same Greek term applies to Jesus experiencing death in 2:9); being made “partakers of” or “sharing in” the Spirit (6:4) also refers to genuine believers (cf. the same Greek term in 3:1, 14). But if this person “falls away” (6:6; the language appears in the Greek version of the Old Testament for turning from God, e.g., Ezek 18:24; cf. different wording in Mark 4:17), they cannot be repent anew because they are crucifying Jesus again and publicly shaming him; they will be burned (Heb 6:8).

Because Christ is the only true sacrifice for sins (10:1-21), those who sin by continuing to resist him have nothing left but terrifying judgment (10:26-31). Those who turn back from faith face destruction (10:39). One should not be like Esau, who had no second chance (12:16-17). If those who rejected God’s message at Sinai were judged (12:18-21), how much greater is the judgment for rejecting the new covenant (12:22-29).

Some of the warnings in Hebrews sound as if those who fall away cannot be restored; yet many of us know some people who did fall away and yet were restored. This is explained in various possible ways (e.g., that their previous conversion experience was incomplete or that their apostasy was incomplete), but it is also possible that Hebrews is simply warning that there is no other way of salvation. If we leave Christ looking for something beyond him, we will not find it. James 5:19-20 sounds as if turning back to the way of Christ someone who strayed from it brings that person back to salvation and forgiveness.

Hebrews repeatedly exhorts its audience to hold fast our confidence in Christ (Heb 3:6, 14; 4:14; 10:23); we must not abandon our confidence (10:35), which has the reward of eternal life (10:34-39). We have become Christ’s house, heirs of the future world, the author declares, if we continue to be believers in him (3:6, 14; 6:11-12); if we fail to persevere, we face judgment (2:2-3; 4:1; 8:9; 10:26, 38; 12:25).

To persevere in faith, we should continue to trust in Christ (Heb 3:19; 4:2; 10:35—11:1; on the topic of faith in Hebrews, see http://www.craigkeener.org/faith-the-assurance-of-things-hoped-for-%E2%80%94-hebrews-111/); support one another in the faith (3:13; 10:23-26); and grow more mature in biblical understanding (5:11—6:12). Similarly, 2 Peter advises various virtues that will keep one growing and prevent falling away and so missing the Lord’s eternal kingdom (2 Pet 1:5-11).

Many beliefs today are popular because they appeal to our weakness rather than because they are biblical. Such beliefs include spiritual justifications for materialism, theological exemptions from suffering tribulation, and even justifications for not sharing our faith with others. The idea that someone who professes conversion will share eternal life even if they do not persevere as believers in Christ is another belief that is comforting—and dangerously false.

For some people with less self-confidence (sometimes including myself), such warnings are unnerving. But biblical warnings are qualified for those who have already been demonstrating perseverance and the seriousness of their faith (Phil 1:6-7; Heb 6:9-10). (Still, even this assurance could be accompanied by exhortation to persevere, Heb 6:11-12.) It is important to remember that the keeping does not depend on us having infinite strength; it is God’s own power that preserves us through our faith (1 Pet 1:5), and no one can snatch us from his hand (John 10:29).

If overconfidence in ourselves is an error, so is underconfidence in the one who drew us to himself to begin with. Our baptism is meant as a helpful reminder that we passed from one realm to another; we do not pass away from Christ because some bad thought comes to our mind or we fail one spiritual test. The latter misconception is probably a recipe for spiritual obsessive compulsive anxiety! Falling away refers to someone who is no longer following Christ, not someone who is simply imperfect in our maturity or discipleship.

The warnings are instead for those tempted to fancy that we are saved by a single act of prayer or physical washing rather than by Christ, who treat salvation only as a cheap fire escape instead of rescue from being alienated from God. It is God’s act in his Son’s death and resurrection that saves us, provided that we accept his gift, i.e., believe this good news. His gift is eternal life in his presence, an eternal life that begins when we truly believe—welcoming a new life in Christ.

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Distinguishing multiple issues in churches’ debates over homosexual practice, part II

(Part 1 addressed the nature of the discussion and the biblical question)

Pastoral practice

Second, such verses do not translate directly into pastoral practice without also taking into account other biblical principles. (Some interpreters doubt that Paul’s opinions here are binding on us, but because I am addressing those who share the conviction that we need to understand and follow Scripture’s message, I am focusing instead on what I believe the verses do and do not address.) This passage addresses the lostness of humanity, but some other passages give us more sense of Paul’s pastoral relationship with people in his churches.

Except in the most extreme cases, Paul’s own pastoral practice was to graciously lead people to maturity, though forcefully and lovingly confronting sin in the church. Keep in mind that male homosexual practice was common among Greeks, and many Greek members in the Corinthian church probably had some of this behavior in their backgrounds (many interpreters see this in 1 Cor 6:9-11, although some do disagree). Paul did not single out homosexual practice, however, instead elaborating at length on the believers’ more dominant temptation of engaging female prostitutes (1 Cor 6:15-20).

One point that interpreters often do note is that Paul’s remarks condemn homosexual practice, not one’s sphere of temptation. If merely being tempted in some sphere makes us sinful, then I suspect that we are all in deep trouble. Am I violating an unwritten policy to publicly suggest that most Christians have experienced sexual temptation? Remembering our own vulnerabilities should give us compassion when we seek to help others who face forbidden desires (Gal 6:1). (One of my fellow-heterosexual colleagues complained, “I am not tempted to engage in sexual relations with someone of my gender, but I am tempted by polygamy.”) Yet sphere of temptation is not itself sin in any case. Otherwise what would we say about our Lord Jesus, who was tempted like we are, yet remained without sin (Heb 4:15)?

When I pastored, two of the godliest members in my congregation experienced generalized homosexual attraction and considered themselves gay. So far as I knew, they were celibate, just as (so far as I knew) the heterosexual single members were. One of them, a Christian college student, was fairly open about his orientation. I do not know if this openness would be more difficult for him today; this was in the days before this issue became a very polarized front in the “culture wars.”

Besides those who overcome temptation, most of us know (or have even been) other Christians who have struggled with and sometimes succumbed to temptation. In pastoral practice, our goal is to help these strugglers overcome. (One may think, for example, of many Christians addicted to cyberporn—is our response to seek their deliverance or to dissociate from them? Or does it depend on whether they get publicly caught?) The issue becomes more problematic when someone’s “struggles” are leading others in the church into what we believe is sin, or when someone argues that they do not need to change behavior that the church regards as significant sin. (To take an extreme example offered by another colleague, God forgives even axe-murderers, but if you find more severed heads on the pews the next Sunday it is probably past time to intervene.)

Those gifted in evangelism are always working to bring people into the church; those gifted pastorally are always working to mature those who are inside; those gifted in ways that we might call more prophetic are always calling God’s people back to God’s standard. We need all the gifts, and the proportion needed could vary in various churches: I have served in some churches where most members were zealous to serve Christ, and in some others where many of the church members themselves needed to be evangelized. Where to draw the lines on patience versus discipline may vary not only based on the kinds of behaviors involved but sometimes even from one church to another.

Although in principle Paul could have disfellowshiped most of the Corinthian church, in practice he disciplined only the most serious offender (who was living in an openly incestuous relationship—1 Cor 5:1-5). (When I was a lead pastor, we once considered church discipline, and it was for repeat offenses of slander. Another church that I was part of practiced it for two lapsed members committing heterosexual adultery.)

Church and society

But while Paul wanted the church to be pure, he did not want Christians to dissociate from non-Christians who practiced behaviors forbidden to Christians (1 Cor 5:9-11). Indeed, Paul suggested that evaluating those outside the church was not his responsibility: “For what do I have to do with judging those outside the church?” (5:12a). Certainly Paul did not want believers to dissociate from those outside the church for not sharing their sexual ethics (5:9-10), although he urged discipline for those within the church who violated the church’s teaching.

Granted that the political situation of the small first-century house churches differs from churches’ situation in the United States today, where we have more responsibility for our society, we need to recognize the difference between public pressure on the church and the church putting public pressure on society. Because most people seem oblivious to such distinctions, social changes outside the church will inevitably put pressure on us within the church, but that does not absolve us from the responsibility to make appropriate distinctions.

Pressure on the church is one matter. Outsiders should not complain if a church refuses to grant membership to, or especially leadership positions to, those who practice a lifestyle that contravenes convictions that the church believes are biblical, at least so long as they articulate consistent grounds for their practice. (Even from a purely secular perspective, the church simply would be exercising its religious freedom.) There are some beliefs, such as racism, that it is simply impossible to justify from a New Testament perspective. By contrast, there are some other issues where, if we truly want freedom of conscience for everyone, we must recognize the right of churches to hold views that they believe are justified based on a plausible reading of their sacred texts that does not infringe on the rights of those outside voluntary participants in their community.

Thus, for example, although I personally fully support women’s ordination (I offer my exegetical reasons why in my book Paul, Women & Wives), I, like most other supporters, would never support legally infringing on the rights of churches or denominations to follow their own internal beliefs that differ from mine. I will seek to persuade, but persuasion differs from an imperialistic approach of forcing conformity through laws or even ridicule. In this example, some may indeed oppose women’s ordination because they are sexist, but some may do so because they genuinely believe that to be the teaching of Scripture, and feel they have no choice as Christians but to follow Scripture. In the latter case, we may disagree with their decision on women’s ordination but respect their commitment to what they believe is true.

I would be barred from some churches for various beliefs I hold, such as supporting women’s ordination, contemporary Christian music or public use of spiritual gifts, or for challenging a pretribulational rapture, etc. But such differences cannot be a litmus test for respectful dialogue. Nor should they determine whether anyone should be allowed a voice in the public square, which is supposed to be open to everyone. I may offer contrary opinions, but ultimately I have to respect the right of various churches and various religions to practice their own beliefs. That is not simply secular tolerance; it is also Christian civility (cf. Rom 12—13). Those who do not like attending such churches do have other options.

Some critics today go so far as to condemn churches as intolerant for simply following their convictions, seemingly oblivious to their own intolerance. Denying someone the right to follow their convictions, trying to legally suppress their opinions, or verbally ridiculing them (now standard practice for all views on the internet), hardly qualifies as tolerance. Tolerance includes respecting people’s rights to follow their convictions, at least if they are consistent about them and do not cause serious bodily harm to others. (Admittedly, deciding what constitutes this latter point can be a sticking issue. For example, while I affirm that we must respect local culture, I agree with feminists that female genital mutilation exceeds acceptable bounds and should be universally illegal.) For those outside such churches to condemn them for following their convictions about the Bible is to meddle in others’ business no less than for those churches trying to control public law. Instead of insulting others who hold opposing views—playing to one’s own choir—those who really want to bring change owe it to everyone to reason with others persuasively.

But what about Christian behavior toward those outside the church? And do we treat evenhandedly, whether within or outside the church, the behaviors that we call sinful? I have already mentioned above the problem of trying to impose Christian values on societies that do not share our starting assumptions. (Some seek to use a public argument from the common good against same-sex sexual activity. While such an argument may persuade some individuals, so far the argument lacks adequate widely accepted research to support public laws in societies that respect individual rights. For the limited research done so far, see Stanton L. Jones [January 2012], “Sexual orientation and reason: On the implications of false beliefs about homosexuality,” digitally published among articles at www.christianethics.org.)

Here I want to turn to a point that many others are also making: What does it mean to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Lev 19:18)?

Loving one’s neighbor as oneself—Leviticus 19:18

Although Judaism in antiquity heavily emphasized love of neighbor (and one rabbi deemed it the greatest commandment), Jesus’s movement was distinctive. His was the one movement in antiquity that pervasively recognized love of neighbor as the chief commandment toward other people, making this the cornerstone of its ethics. Jesus listed it as the greatest commandment next to whole-hearted love for God (Mark 12:30-31), and he was echoed by his followers as diverse as Paul (Rom 13:8-10; Gal 5:14) and James (James 2:8). The extreme conservatives who associate an emphasis on love of neighbor with a modernist agenda are themselves taking lightly the heart of our Lord’s ethics.

Although some texts address more specific objects of love (John 13:34-35), love for neighbor is much more general. When a legal scholar asks Jesus what it means to love one’s neighbor as oneself, Jesus recounts the story of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)—though to most of his Jewish hearers, a good Samaritan would have been an offensive oxymoron. (That in spite of the fact that the context in Leviticus, which undoubtedly informs Jesus’s parable, shows that love of neighbor includes non-Israelite immigrants in the land as well as Israelites—Lev 19:34.) In some churches, telling the story about someone practicing a gay lifestyle who rescues a Christian in need might evoke roughly the same horror that Jesus’s good Samaritan story evoked for Jesus’s hearers.

One gay Christian struggling with his sexuality told me that he was a Christian because years earlier Christians protected him when some non-Christians were beating him for being gay. Yet many others report feeling rejected by the Christians they knew and thus have felt alienated from Christianity as a whole. Some maintain their love for Jesus but fear the loathing of the church.

Granted, some people will feel offended unless one approves of all their actions, whatever those actions are, and those bound by first loyalty to Christ are not authorized to relinquish convictions that we believe are divinely given. At the same time, this need not adversely affect the love we show on a personal level, and most of us can understand how painful disapproval can feel. Those of us who have experienced the sting of disapproval for other issues, especially those of us with sensitive hearts, recognize that it often kindles a sense of rejection. Such a sting often demands much commitment and assurance of love to surmount.

But if we love our neighbors as persons like ourselves, there are many areas of shared humanity where we can connect with others, affirm them, and show neighborly love. We do not have to agree on every detail to love or befriend others, even though that behavior itself is a point on which some will disagree with us. (If we had to agree on every point to be friends, certainly no two scholars would ever be friends!)

Those who practice a gay or lesbian lifestyle have often heard their behavior ridiculed in ways that typically gossipers or slanderers do not. I am told of a pastor who demoted the music minister for practicing a gay lifestyle but was himself having a heterosexual affair. Yet double standards on sins is hypocrisy—actually one of Paul’s main points in introducing the issue of homosexual practice in Romans 1.

Very few churches would ever go so far as Westboro Baptist Church with its theologically blasphemous “God hates f-” signs. Nevertheless, even those who use Romans 1 selectively to bludgeon one sin without challenging others in their own life or congregation may play to a certain choir, while completely missing Paul’s point in context. In Romans 1—3, all of us have sinned. Therefore all of us are equally invited to be met and transformed by God’s loving grace in Jesus Christ our Lord.

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Distinguishing multiple issues in churches’ debates over homosexual practice, part 1

Because I have sympathy for those who have been wounded by others’ insensitive and harsh treatment, sometimes in the name of Christ, the last thing that I wish to do is to add to their pain. At the same time, my primary vocation is as a Bible scholar, and I need to explain the text faithfully. Despite the pressing character of the debates in the church, I have long delayed this post because of my inadequacy to articulate sufficiently the balance between what I believe the text says and the needed pastoral sensitivity to apply it.

Framing the discussion charitably

Our politically partisan public culture lends itself to polarized expressions, playing to each side’s respective constituencies. Everyone is warned of the slippery slope consequences of the other side’s triumph on any elements of the debate. Although some of these consequences are plausible concerns, civil discourse invites us to do less name-calling and more dialogue. Discussion of homosexual behavior and faith today is so polarized that venturing into the issue at all frequently gets one pigeonholed as belonging to one extreme or the other—or, if one doesn’t buy into the polarization, pigeonholed as on the wrong side by both poles. Only because the issue is such a burning one in the church does it seem necessary to insert one’s neck into the guillotine of public debate.

Because I am familiar with only how these issues have been tied together in Western culture, I beg my many international readers’ indulgence for this one post as I try to address this issue with a largely Western Christian audience in mind. Because my public role is as a Bible scholar, my paramount professional concern is to avoid distorting the meaning of the biblical text. At the same time, as a pastor-teacher, I want to be sensitive to those wounded by those who have abused the text. That requires more delicate expression than may be possible in a blog post that will be read in different ways by different readers (even despite this particular post’s inordinate length). Thus I must beg the indulgence of my Western readers also.

Framing the discussion critically

Unfortunately, most Western Christians fail to distinguish various discrete questions—exegetical, pastoral, social, and so forth. Christians hopefully start by listening to Scripture. One question, then, is what biblical passages say about homosexual practice. Even when that question is resolved, however, another question is, based on wider biblical principles, how we should apply that information—in church practice, in pastoral ministry, and in how we treat our neighbors. The legal and political questions are yet another issue distinct from these.

Some voices, however, blend all these questions together as if holding one view on Scripture resolves all the other questions. To take the most extreme example I know of: when one country suggested the death penalty for particular homosexual offenses, critics were quick to blame the belief of many Christians that homosexual behavior is wrong, even though the vast majority of those who hold this belief opposed that policy. For another very extreme example: almost all Christians, however they read Paul, condemn the infamous and hateful cult known as Westboro Baptist Church, whose well-known, theologically perverted views I will not honor by repeating here. As another example of mixing categories, one who believes that the Bible condemns homosexual intercourse need not for that reason conclude that it should be illegal (since most do not, for example, insist on legal prohibitions for unmarried heterosexual intercourse or for gossip). Likewise, one who believes that the LGBT community has been mistreated by many churches need not for that reason assume that Paul did not in fact condemn homosexual practice, unless exegesis supports that conclusion.

There are multiple, distinct issues, and it is important to critically distinguish them. Tragically, the real human beings for whom these are personal issues often are forgotten in the political crossfire. I want to explore some of these questions briefly, in what I hope can be my only foray into the subject (thus the unusual length of this post).

What does the Bible say?

First, what do biblical passages say? For those who, by Christian conviction, stand under the authority of Scripture, this question is vitally important. Because I believe that the biblical passages about homosexual behavior are fairly clear (while conceding that not everyone agrees), my focus in this post is more on pastoral application. Nevertheless, I start by noting that, for the clearest passages, especially Romans 1, I believe that the majority exegetical position is strongest. A variety of interpretations exist, many advanced by very capable scholars, but most exegetes, whether they agree personally with Paul or not, still regard Romans 1 as disagreeing with homosexual practice. (By “majority exegetical position,” I refer to academic, exegetical commentators, not to the separate question of featured voices in popular media, although they too have a right to their say.)

I would be happy to be persuaded otherwise, but so far it continues to appear to me that this is where the exegesis strongly points. Paul’s argument from “nature” makes sense in light of both some Stoic and many Jewish arguments against homosexual activity based on nature, by which they meant not genetics but primarily anatomical design. Ancient Greek homosexual relations were often, but not exclusively, pederastic, but Paul speaks more generally and includes lesbian relations. (Adolescents were considered adults; many relations began just before puberty, but others continued into adolescence and some involved adults. Among Romans, the issue was less of age than of status and position.)

For better or for worse, this is also what nearly all exegetes concluded until recent decades when different interests came to the fore. My own discussion appears in my Romans commentary (and a briefer summary of ancient background in the background commentary), so I will not elaborate on the exegesis here. The debate will continue, but engaging it is not the purpose of this post. For the sake of staying on task here I will address primarily those who share my understanding that the passage disapproves of homosexual intercourse. My point in this post is less to argue about the meaning of this passage than to challenge the lumping together of separate questions.

Regarding the exegesis, I would simply note two points that too often go unmentioned: passages specifically addressing homosexual practice (as opposed to sexual sins in general) constitute less than one-tenth of one percent of Scripture. In thirty years of public preaching, I have only once had occasion to specifically address Romans 1:26-27 from the pulpit, and that was to help set up for the senior pastor’s sermon on a different part of Romans 1. I was not avoiding the subject per se; it is just that the other 99.9 percent was keeping me busy almost 99.9 percent of the time. (The issue was not a divisive one in our church.) Because public debate has raised the visibility of some issues, they consume a greater proportion of our exegetical attention than their representation in Scripture by itself might warrant. (Admittedly, proportions in Scripture should not necessarily limit the proportions of our preaching; for example, I have never yet had occasion to preach from Leviticus.)

My second point here is the more important. The strongest New Testament passage to challenge homosexual activity (Rom 1:26-27) is a set-up. Paul first condemns what his fellow ancient Jewish people regarded as stereotypical Gentile sins—idolatry and homosexual intercourse (Rom 1:19-27). After his Christian audience (1:7) is presumably applauding his condemnation of these activities, however, Paul turns to a wider list of vices, including greed (certainly a widespread value in U.S. culture), envy, gossip, slander, disobedience to parents, and so forth. All these sins, Paul concludes, merit death (1:28-32). Perhaps I am the only Christian who has done so, but I confess that I have committed some of these other vices myself. (I cannot, then, cast the first stone.) If we shout against homosexual practice yet tolerate or even celebrate materialism or gossip in our churches or in our lives, we miss Paul’s point.

As many people note, we are even more inconsistent if we denounce homosexual sin while ignoring heterosexual sin—which is probably included in 1:24. It’s easier to rail against other people’s temptations than to address our own. When some Christians overgeneralize as if everyone who is gay or lesbian is hostile to religious freedom, or use the most militantly anti-Christian elements of the gay community to depict everyone who is gay or lesbian, might that not even count as slander?

Part II addresses pastoral practice, church and society, and loving one’s neighbor

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Which day is the Sabbath?

Jesus says that the Sabbath was made for people’s benefit (Mark 2:27). Years ago an Adventist layman wrote in to our Ohio town’s local newspaper, arguing that the Bible never speaks of the Sabbath being changed to Sunday. As I read the letter, I had to admit that the author was correct. Shortly afterward in the newspaper a local pastor countered, “We’re not under the law; therefore the Sabbath is on Sunday.” If you think that the pastor’s argument makes sense, you are a more clever person than I.

Some years after that I was doing my PhD work when I read an article from Christianity Today about “The Case for Quiet Saturdays.” It argued that the particular day was less essential than that we kept a special day for rest. That got my attention, because, whether the proper day is Saturday, Sunday, or just any day, at the time I was working every day of the week.

Sabbath is important

As I tried to study the biblical text honestly, I could see that this was not just a matter of keeping laws designated for Israel; God actually modeled the Sabbath rest in creation (Gen 2:2-3). Whether we take that narrative literally or not, the principle of the Sabbath is there, and it apparently is an example for all people, not just those who are ethnically descended from Abraham.

Moreover, it seemed clear that in Scripture, keeping the Sabbath was a serious matter. The law mandated a death penalty for violating it (Exod 31:14-15; 35:2; Num 15:32-36). Although most of us would not endorse execution for all other capital offenses in Moses’s law today, normally we at least view them as sins—offenses such as murder, sorcery, blasphemy, and sexual relations outside of marriage. Likewise, observing the Sabbath is one of Ten Commandments (Exod 20:8-11). We take all the other Ten Commandments as universal; why exclude this one? In the Prophets, God promises to welcome Gentiles into his covenant, provided that we observe his sabbaths (Isa 56:6-7).

Many festivals in Israel commemorated various events; for example, Passover commemorates redemption, tabernacles dwelling in the wilderness, and first fruits celebrates the beginning of harvest. Depending on how we read Exod 20:11, possibly the Sabbath celebrates God’s action of creating the universe in which we live; in any case, it recalls his model of rest afterward, as already noted.

A particular day?

Is the Sabbath necessarily a particular day of the week? This question arouses greater controversy among Christians, and answers often reflect different Christian groups’ interpretive considerations. Churches that accept early Christian traditions beyond the New Testament, traditions from the second century or later, have traditionally said that the Sabbath day must be Sunday. Even those who disagree with them can still appreciate the conviction and devotion of someone like the runner Eric Liddell (“Chariots of Fire”), who kept that day for the Lord.

This tradition affects especially those churches ultimately influenced by the church in the Roman empire, which is the majority of churches today. Nevertheless, the Ethiopian church through its long history often observed both Sunday as the Lord’s Day and Saturday as the Sabbath. Some other African and Chinese indigenous churches, as well as Messianic Jewish believers and Adventists today, observe the Sabbath on the same day as in Scripture.

Those who regard second- and third-century traditions as normative will observe Sunday, but this need not be normative for churches that start only from Scripture. The instructions for the first day of the week in 1 Corinthians 16:2 are for individual members, not about a specified meeting day; the meeting on the first day of the week in Acts 20:7 is probably a Sunday evening gathering (see my Acts commentary for details), and is probably assembled simply because Paul is leaving town the next day.

Churches that insist on following New Testament practice may thus consider a Saturday Sabbath. In Acts, “Sabbath” continues to designate the seventh day (technically Friday sundown to Saturday sundown); although most instances refer to traditional Jewish practice there, there is certainly no indication that the day was changed. Personally, when I discovered the Sabbath principle, I began following it on Saturday, like my Jewish friends. I couldn’t observe the Sabbath on Sundays because, as an associate pastor in a Baptist church at the time, I had special responsibilities on that day. (I took the duties seriously enough that I skipped my doctoral graduation because it would have conflicted with our Sunday service. Although having one’s main worship service on one’s day of rest might be easier for most worshipers, it can be more difficult for some of us with significant ministry responsibilities!)

Others say that the principle applies to any day. Paul appears to approve of both those who honor one day above another and those who honor every day the same (Rom 14:5). Many Gentiles belonged to the Roman church (Rom 1:13; 11:13), and those who were employed by Gentiles, whether as slaves or free persons, could not choose when they would not work. At the same time, we should note what Paul says and what he does not say. Honoring “every day alike” would mean to keep all days sacred (cf. also the broader principle of Sabbath rest in Heb 4:9); those devoting our whole lives to God are not expected to limit worship to a single day. Paul does not, however, list the option of keeping no days sacred!

Keeping the Sabbath principle

Whatever the day, the way God designed our bodies, we need a day of rest. Living things need rest to rejuvenate; the law mandates this principle also for livestock and, by sabbatical years, for fields (Exod 20:10; 23:11-12; Lev 25:4; Deut 5:14). Our activity (or perhaps, non-activity!) of resting further communicates theology by what we do (or don’t do): we recognize our limitations as mortal humans. Observing a day of rest also requires us to trust God to make up for this day set aside in devotion to him. For ancient Israelite farmers to observe the Sabbath even during harvest (Exod 34:21) would demand faith in God.

If we do keep a Sabbath, we need to be careful not to treat this as a matter of spiritual superiority, looking down on other believers (Rom 14:5-6; Col 2:16). Paul repeatedly warns believers against division, rivalry, arrogance, and looking down on one another. Such attitudes defeat the purpose of depending on God, and are like doing our righteousness for other people’s approval instead of God’s (Matt 6:1). Jesus contested his contemporaries’ application of the Sabbath, so we recognize that today we should keep it in different ways than Jesus’s contemporaries (cf. Matt 11:28—12:8).

We have noted that Sabbath remains valuable for our health. For those who cannot devote every day directly to God’s work, it is also important to set aside at least a day to focus attention on him and renew our spiritual purpose for the rest of the week. Although pure legalism is counterproductive, I confess that I have to discipline myself somewhat rigidly to observe the Sabbath. That’s because I become so engrossed in my work that I wouldn’t take a break if I didn’t have to. That is, I wouldn’t stop until my body made me stop; by that point we in fact lose more productivity in the long run!

When I realized that the Sabbath principle really was biblical, I was initially unhappy about it. I was working on my PhD and thought I was too busy—even though I am far busier now than I was back then. At that time, the stress of nonstop work was building up, week after week. Recognizing the principle to be biblical, however, I realized that I needed to obey it and I began observing Sabbath.

What I immediately discovered was that it was like a circuit breaker. Granted, stopping my work Friday evening felt like breaking me in a different way—I felt like I was putting the brakes on suddenly. But before the Sabbath was over, I had been able to fully relax, and the stress of the past week dissipated. This way I never carried a week’s work-related stress for more than a week, and it couldn’t accumulate. Hopefully my seventeen books so far (one of them roughly four thousand pages long) illustrates that God enabled me to be productive nonetheless, whether you think that’s because, or in spite of, taking a Sabbath.

I do have to admit that I did eventually learn that we need more than just a day of rest. (Even though there’s no biblical requirement for how many hours a person should sleep a night, lack of sleep does catch up to one!) Also, in the early days I sometimes tested the limits to see what could be subsumed under the category of rest. (Writing this some weeks before April 15, I can tell you that doing some of one’s income tax on that day is not a restful activity.) For myself, I lay aside all my book and article writing on the Sabbath; while I am happy to talk about the Bible on any day, I don’t perform my official faculty responsibilities on that day. This discipline helps me not to fixate on my writing and teaching as if there is nothing else in life, like Jack the proverbially dull boy (presumably a less interesting Jack than the one who fell down and broke his crown).

Nevertheless, besides normal prayer and spending time with my family, I do try to catch up on some emails to friends during the Sabbath, as well as reading some of my mail, and so forth. An Orthodox Jewish scholar friend laughs that I keep Shabbat like a Reform Jew (though he graciously welcomed me to spend Shabbat the Orthodox way with his family; that was a particularly enjoyable Sabbath for me).

Not everyone will draw the boundaries in exactly the same places. What is helpful for all of us to realize, however, is that God built us with limits. Observing those created limits by celebrating Sabbath helps us function the way that God designed us. A restaurant chain used to say, “You deserve a break today.” Whether we deserve it or not, God made the Sabbath for people (Mark 2:27)—for our good. It’s a wonderful way to renew your joy and strength.