Does Christ’s Sabbath Rest Cancel the Fourth Commandment?

Theological sparring on X rarely produces much light. This time, however, it exposed a real divide over the Christian Sabbath. Owen Strachan, one of evangelicalism’s best-known defenders of ESS, tweeted that “the Sabbath is fulfilled in Christ” and that Christians possess rest “at all times.” He concluded that Christians need not enforce Sabbath keeping.¹ The post drew both agreement and sharp criticism. Some called Strachan’s position antinomian.

X rarely settles a theological question, but it gives Christians something worth discussing over coffee, after worship, or behind a podcast microphone. This dispute is hardly inconsequential. It concerns the continuing validity of God’s moral law, its third use, and whether all Ten Commandments remain a rule of life for believers.

Strachan later clarified that he loves Sunday worship, tries to rest on Sunday, and calls Sunday the Lord’s Day. That matters, because he isn’t telling Christians to abandon Sunday worship or spend the day frolicking as if Christ had never risen.

The real dispute, then, is not whether Christ fulfills the Sabbath. He does. The question is what that fulfillment means. Does Christ remove the one-in-seven weekly command, or does he remove its Mosaic shadows while preserving the creation pattern and moral duty beneath them?

The Truth Strachan Is Protecting

Matthew 11:28-30 directs weary sinners to Christ, not to a calendar. Hebrews 4:3 says that those who believe enter God’s rest, while Colossians 2:16-17 warns against judgment over festivals, new moons, and Sabbaths that were shadows of the coming Christ. Sunday observance cannot reconcile us to God. Only Christ can give our guilty consciences rest.

We do not keep the Lord’s Day to complete Christ’s obedience or improve our justification. We enter our Sabbath rest by faith in Christ, as the gift of salvation.

Rest in Christ, Not Release from the Law

Yet fulfillment does not mean erasure. Paul asks the question directly in Romans 3:31: “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.” Christ’s finished work changes our relation to the law. It doesn’t turn the Decalogue into a nine-commandment document. Would it make sense to argue that since Christ fulfilled the law in my place, I’m free to choose which commandments, if any, I will obey?

Louis Berkhof distinguished the law as a covenant of works from the law as the expression of our obligation to God.² Believers are free from the law as a means of earning life and as a condemning power, but not as a rule of grateful obedience. He stated the danger bluntly:

“It is pure Antinomianism to maintain that Christ kept the law as a rule of life for His people, so that they need not worry about this any more.”

Louis Berkhof Systematic Theology, 614

That warning is not a personal verdict on Strachan. It identifies the danger in the argument: we cannot say that because Christ obeyed God’s law for us, Christians are now free to ignore it. The law cannot save anyone. It directs the redeemed in a life of gratitude to the Lord who saved them.

A second Reformed voice entered the debate when Matt Ferris posted a quotation from Michael Horton’s 1993 book The Law of Perfect Freedom to show that the Reformed world has not agreed on the Sabbath.³ I bought the book in Logos and traced the argument. The quotation was genuine, and its context initially seemed to imply that Horton stood in lockstep with Strachan on this issue.

Michael Horton Before and After

In 1993 Horton argued that the Fourth Commandment belonged to the ceremonial rather than the moral law. His conclusion was plain: classifying the command as ceremonial meant “that it is no longer binding for Christians.”⁴ He still defended regular Sunday worship as apostolic church practice, but he denied that Sunday should be regarded as a divinely ordained and sanctified day.

The story changed on December 24, 2011, when White Horse Inn published Horton’s “Are We Required to Attend Church on Sunday?” Near the end, Horton explicitly named The Law of Perfect Freedom and wrote, “I have changed my own position in (The Law of Perfect Freedom), convinced now that the Lord’s Day is grounded in creation as well as redemption.”⁵ A few paragraphs earlier, he had stated the point even more sharply: “There are Ten Commandments, not Nine.”⁶

This was an explicit public correction. Horton restored creation as a ground for the Lord’s Day and affirmed the command’s continuing moral intent. He urged Christians to order the day around the Word, sacraments, the communion of saints, and works of necessity and mercy.⁷ Christ fulfills the ceremonial form without abolishing the command’s moral substance.

Fulfilled, Not Forgotten

The positive case for the continuing validity of the Fourth Commandment begins before Moses. Genesis 2 records that God rested on the seventh day, blessed it, and made it holy. Exodus 20 then grounds the Fourth Commandment in God’s own six-and-one pattern. Creation and redemption are not rival explanations. Together they show a gift given by the Creator and renewed for a redeemed people.

It’s true that the New Testament does not repeat the command in one sentence and change “seventh” to “first.” The case is cumulative. Christ rose and appeared to his gathered disciples on the first day, while the apostolic church gathered for the breaking of bread. John called it “the Lord’s Day.” Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). It’s a gift for human good, now rightly enjoyed under Christ’s lordship.

The Jewish Sabbaths, festivals, and covenant shadows have reached their goal in Christ. Believers enter God’s rest now, yet a Sabbath rest remains for the people of God, and we are told to strive to enter it. Salvation in Christ points toward the final rest; it does not exhaust the theme.

The Heidelberg Catechism holds the weekly and lifelong dimensions together:

Q. 103. What is God’s will for us in the fourth commandment?

A. First, that the gospel ministry and education for it be maintained, and that, especially on the festive day of rest, I regularly attend the assembly of God’s people to learn what God’s Word teaches, to participate in the sacraments, to pray to God publicly, and to bring Christian offerings for the poor. Second, that every day of my life I rest from my evil ways, let the Lord work in me through his Spirit, and so begin already in this life the eternal Sabbath.

Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 103

Keeping the Lord’s Day holy is more than ceasing from ordinary work or avoiding a Dodger game. The Lord’s Day is ordered toward God and the communion of saints. We stop ordinary work so that we may give ourselves gladly to worship, Word, sacrament, song, fellowship, and works of mercy.

Christ Our Rest, Sunday His Day

Strachan is right to put our hope in Christ rather than our performance and to say that the Jewish Sabbath, as an old covenant sign, has been fulfilled. Those truths do not relieve Christians of receiving the Lord’s Day as God’s appointed time for worship and rest.

We do not keep Sunday to finish Christ’s work. We receive it because his work is finished. The same grace that justifies us teaches us to uphold God’s law and delight in it (Romans 3:31; 7:22). On the Lord’s Day, Christ gathers weary sinners through Word and sacrament, gives our bodies rest, and directs us toward the Sabbath without evening. Jesus Christ is our true Sabbath rest. That is why we delight to keep the Lord’s Day.

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