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Colossians 2:16-17
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.
(ESV)
The context shows that the
"festival or a new moon or a Sabbath" were
the regulations of the Jewish yearly
calendar. The Puritans, and the Seventh-day
Adventists following them, have argued that
Paul is not talking about the Sabbath of the
Decalogue but only about the Sabbaths of the
ceremonial law. They have "seen" two things
in Colossians 2 which they use to justify
their position:
1. They argue that
there were two types of Sabbaths in the Old
Testament -- the weekly Sabbath of the
decalogue and the ceremonial Sabbaths of the
yearly festivals recorded in Leviticus 23.
2. They also argue that the Sabbath in
Colossians 2 is "a shadow of the things that
were to come" (Colossians 2:17). They
believe that since the weekly Sabbath was a
memorial of creation (Exodus 20:8-11), they
argue that it could not be called a "shadow"
(Genesis 2:2-3). Colossians 2:16 must
therefore be referring to the ceremonial
rest days brought to view in Leviticus 23.
These claims are false for the
following reasons:
1. The special
times of Colossians 2:16 are called a
festival, a new moon or a Sabbath and
represent the annual, monthly and weekly
observances. Even Dr. Bacchiocchi of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church agrees saying
that is "the unanimous consensus of
commentators” that the sequence implies
annual, monthly and weekly observances.
2. This same annual, monthly and weekly
sequence appears five times in the
Septuagint, 2 Chronicles 2:4; 31:3; Nehemiah 10:33; Ezekiel 45:17; Hosea 2:11 and every
time, without exception means the days,
months, seasons and years of the entire
system of worship under the Mosaic Covenant.
3. Whenever the Old Testament links the
new moon celebration with the Sabbath, as it
does in Colossians 2:16, it is referring to
the weekly Sabbath (2 Kings 4:23; 1 Chronicles 23:31; 2 Chronicles 2:4; Nehemiah 10:33; Isaiah 1:13; 66:23; Ezekiel 45:17; 46:1; Hosea 2:11; Amos 8:5).
4. The
New Testament uses the same annual, monthly
and weekly sequence to show the Sabbath was
part of the Old Covenant and not binding on
Christians who live by the New Covenant
(Colossians 2:16-17 and Galatians 4:10-11).
5. Leviticus 23 points to all of the
sacred days of the Lord under the Mosaic
Covenant. After the Sabbath, the Jewish
feast days are given in the order of the
Hebrew calendar (Leviticus 23:4-44). In
Leviticus 23:3, the Seventh-day Sabbath is
listed along with all of the other appointed
feasts and holy convocations of the LORD
showing that it was part of the ceremonial
requirements of the Old Covenant. At special
times the Sabbath could be set aside because
of greater concerns. None of the other
commandments of the Decalogue could ever be
set aside.
6. When the Old Testament
refers to the yearly Sabbaths, such as the
Day of Atonement (Leviticus 23), it calls
them "a Sabbath of rest," which the
Septuagint consistently translates with the
compound Greek expression “Sabbata sabbaton”.
Colossians 2:16 only has “sabbaton”, the
same word that Matthew 28:1 uses for the
weekly Seventh-day Sabbath.
7. It has
been argued that since Paul calls the
Sabbath in Colossians 2:16 "a shadow of the
things that were to come", he could not be
referring to the Sabbath of the Decalogue.
But Colossians 1:16 has already shown that
all things were made by Christ and exist for
His sake. Adam himself was "a pattern of the
One to come" (Romans 5:14). The Sabbath and
all of the festivals recorded in the Old
Testament were instituted to point back to
the mighty works of God in the creation or
in their deliverance from bondage in Egypt.
They also pointed forward to God's new
creation and new act of deliverance at the
end of time.
8. In the New
Testament, the Greek word "sabbaton" is
translated to mean "Sabbath" 59 times.
Seventh-day Adventists believe that it means
the Seventh-day "Sabbath" in 58 of those
instances. The only time they change its
meaning is in Colossians 2:16-17. They have
to do this in order for their Doctrinal
system to appear reasonable.
The
Apostle Paul wrote over one-third of the New
Testament and never once told his Gentile
converts to keep the Mosaic Law or the
Sabbath. None of the other writers of the
New Testament told anyone to keep the
Seventh-day Sabbath either.
As
Christians, we rest in the finished work of
Jesus Christ and the security He offers
everyone who accepts Him as Lord and Savior.
Matthew 11:28-30 says,
Come to
me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you,
and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly
in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is
light.
In the immediate
context, Jesus is giving His audience an
invitation to come and trust in Him
personally. “All who labor and are heavy
laden” refers to those who were oppressed by
the burden of religious legalism imposed on
people by the scribes and Pharisees.
The larger application for the Church is
that Jesus provides rest for our souls, an
eternal rest for all who seek the
forgiveness of their sins and freedom from
the legalistic burden and guilt of trying to
earn salvation by good works. The Jews often
spoke of the Sabbath as a foretaste of the
unending Sabbath rest we will get in the age
to come. Hebrews 4 does the same
where the author links the
Seventh-day Sabbath rest with the divine
rest of salvation offered to us by Jesus
Christ in the gospel.
The Seventh-day
Adventist Church’s insistence that we must
all keep the Seventh-day Sabbath of the Old
Covenant makes them more like the scribes
and Pharisees that both Jesus and Paul
fought so hard against.
Colossians 2:16 can only mean that the weekly
Seventh-day Sabbath was no longer binding on
the Christian Church. It was a “shadow of
the things to come, but the substance
belongs to Christ.”
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