But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies... 2 Peter 2:1
"Justin Martyr's reasons for not observing the Sabbath are not at all
like those of the so-called Barnabas, for Justin seems to have
heartily despised the Sabbatic institution.
--He denies that it was
obligatory before the time of Moses, and affirms that it was
abolished by the advent of Christ. --He teaches that it was given to
the Jews because of their wickedness, and he expressly affirms
the abolition of both the Sabbath and the law.
So far is he from
teaching the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first
day of the week, or from making the Sunday festival a continuation
of the ancient Sabbatic institution, that he sneers at the very
idea of days of abstinence from labor, or days of idleness, and
though God gives as his reason for the observance of the Sabbath, that
that was the day on which he rested from all his work, Justin gives
as his first reason for the Sunday festival that that was the day
on which God began his work! Of abstinence from labor as an act
of obedience to the Sabbath, Justin says:"The Lord our God does not take pleasure in such observances."
A second reason for not observing the Sabbath is thus stated by him:
"For
we too would observe the fleshly circumcision, and the Sabbaths,
and in short, all the feasts, if we did not know for what reason they
were enjoined you - namely, on account of your transgressions
and the hardness of your hearts."
As
Justin never discriminates between the Sabbath of the Lord and the
annual sabbaths he doubtless here means to include it as well as them.
But what a falsehood is it to assert that the Sabbath was given
to the Jews because of their wickedness! The truth is, it was
given to the Jews because of the universal apostasy of the
Gentiles. But in the following paragraph Justin gives three more reasons for not keeping the Sabbath:
"Do
you see that the elements are not idle, and keep no
Sabbaths?
Remain as you were born. For if there was no need of circumcision before
Abraham, or of the observance of Sabbaths, of feasts and
sacrifices, before Moses; no more need is there of them now,
after that, according to the will of God, Jesus Christ the Son
of God has been born without sin, of a virgin sprung from the
stock of Abraham."
Here
are three reasons:
1. "That the elements are not idle, and keep no
Sabbaths." Though this reason is simply worthless as an argument
against the seventh day, it is a decisive confirmation of the fact
already proven, that Justin did not make Sunday a day of
abstinence from labor.
2. His second reason here given is that
there was no observance of Sabbath before Moses, and yet we do
know that God at the beginning did appoint the Sabbath to a holy
use, a fact to which as we shall see quite a number of the fathers
testify, and we also know that in that age were men who kept all
the precepts of God.
3. There is no need of Sabbatic observance since
Christ. Though this is mere assertion, it is by no means easy for
those to meet it fairly who represent Justin as maintaining the
Christian Sabbath.
Another argument by Justin against the
obligation of the Sabbath is that God directs the government of
the universe on this day equally as on all others!
as though this were inconsistent with the present sacredness of
the Sabbath, when it is also true that God thus governed the world
in the period when Justin acknowledges the Sabbath to have been
obligatory.
Though this reason is trivial as an argument against the
Sabbath, it does show that Justin could have attached no Sabbatic
character to Sunday. But he has yet one more argument against the
Sabbath. The ancient law has been done away by the new and final
law, and the old covenant has been superseded by the new.
But he forgets that the design of the new covenant was not to do
away with the law of God, but to put that law into the heart of
every Christian. And many of the fathers, as we shall see expressly
repudiate this doctrine of the abrogation of the Decalogue.
Such were Justin's reasons for rejecting the ancient sabbath.
But
though he was a decided asserter of the abrogation of the law, and
of the Sabbatic institution itself, and kept Sunday only as a
festival, modern first-day writers cite him as a witness in
support of the doctrine that the first day of the week should be
observed as the Christian Sabbath on the authority of the fourth
commandment."
J.N.Andrews
