Paul and the Sabbath

Some have asserted that the apostle Paul endorsed a disregard for the Sabbath commandment. Two texts, Romans 14:5 and Colossians 2:16, are often cited to support this assertion. We’ll examine those passages separately. But let’s just think a minute. If Paul had advocated the abandonment of the seventh-day Sabbath, we could expect to find much intense discussion of it in the New Testament. “No small dissension and disputation” (Acts 15:2) was raised over the issue of circumcision. Where is there any evidence of a controversy over the Sabbath? There is none.

When given an opportunity to press charges against Paul, the Jews could not even come up with anything that they could prove against him! (Read Acts 21:33, 34; Acts 24:5, 6, 12, 13; Acts 25:7, 18, 19, 25, 27.) If Paul had broken the Sabbath, a crime worthy of death (Exodus 31:14, 15; 35:2; Numbers 15:32-36), the Jews certainly would have capitalized on it.

Paul is the one, you remember, who said that the law is the standard by which we will be judged (Romans 2:12), that it is the doers of the law who shall be justified (Romans 2:13), that to break the law is to dishonor God (Romans 2:23), and that the law is holy, just, and good (Romans 7:12). “Do we then make void the law through faith?” he asks in Romans 3:31. “God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”

In Acts 21:24 James and the elders in Jerusalem affirmed to Paul, “Thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest the law.” Paul’s own testimony supports this fact: “Neither against the law of the Jews, neither against the temple, nor yet against Caesar, have I offended any thing at all.” Acts 25:8. (See also Acts 25:10; Acts 26:22; Acts 28:17.)