Chapter 6: What Jesus Really Testified
Christians claim to follow Christ. His example should settle every doctrinal dispute.
When religious leaders add traditions, modify commandments, or declare old laws obsolete, the question is simple: What did Jesus do?
Regarding the Sabbath, we don't need councils, creeds, or centuries of theological debate. We have Jesus's own testimony: His words, His actions, His custom recorded in the Gospels.
If Jesus kept the Sabbath, taught the Sabbath, and defended the Sabbath, then the Sabbath remains binding for those who claim to follow Him.
Let's examine what Jesus did.
Some churches teach the Sabbath was abolished at the cross or changed to Sunday by the apostles. If true, we should find Jesus preparing His disciples for the change, explaining why the seventh day would become the first day, or at least one clear command about Sunday worship. We find none of it. What we find is Jesus keeping the Sabbath, teaching the Sabbath, and defending the Sabbath against those who would twist its meaning.
"As His Custom Was"
Luke records Jesus's pattern of worship in a single, decisive phrase:
"And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read."
"As his custom was."
Jesus's custom was to worship on the Sabbath day--not once, not occasionally, not when convenient, but habitually.1 The Greek kata to eiōthos autō (κατὰ τὸ εἰωθὸς αὐτῷ) means "according to his custom" or "according to what was habitual to him." This was not isolated behavior but established pattern. I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 182.
A custom is a habitual practice, something done regularly, not by accident. Jesus, the perfect example of obedience to the Father, habitually kept the seventh-day Sabbath.
If Sunday worship were God's will, why did Jesus never model it? Why is there no record of Jesus worshiping on the first day of the week?
The Gospels record Jesus eating with sinners, touching lepers, healing on the Sabbath, rebuking Pharisees, every detail considered significant for disciples to imitate. Yet there is zero evidence Jesus ever sanctified Sunday.
His custom was the Sabbath. Saturday. The seventh day. The day God blessed and sanctified at Creation (Genesis 2:2-3), the day God wrote in stone with His own finger (Exodus 20:8-11).
The Sabbath Made for Man
When Pharisees accused Jesus's disciples of breaking the Sabbath by picking grain as they walked through fields, Jesus defended them, not by abolishing the Sabbath, but by clarifying its purpose:
"And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath."
"The sabbath was made for man."
The Sabbath was made for man, for humanity, not for Jews only. The Sabbath was instituted at Creation before there were Jews, before there was a nation of Israel, before the ceremonial law existed.2 Jesus uses the Greek anthropos (ἄνθρωπος), meaning "human being" generically, not Ioudaios (Jew). The Creation origin of the Sabbath (Genesis 2:2-3) precedes Abraham by over 2,000 years. Kenneth A. Strand, The Sabbath in Scripture and History (Washington, DC: Review and Herald, 1982), 13-37. Adam and Eve received the Sabbath. It was made for mankind.
"The Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath."
Jesus claims authority over the Sabbath, not to abolish it, but to restore its original purpose. He is Lord of the Sabbath, meaning He has the right to define how it should be kept. And how did Jesus keep it? He kept it by worshiping, teaching, healing, and doing good (Matthew 12:12).
If Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath and He kept the Sabbath "as his custom was," on what authority do churches declare the Sabbath obsolete?
Lawful to Do Good on the Sabbath
Jesus healed on the Sabbath repeatedly, not to break the commandment, but to demonstrate the Sabbath's true purpose. When religious leaders accused Him of Sabbath-breaking for healing a man's withered hand, Jesus asked:
"And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?"
Jesus didn't say "The Sabbath is abolished." He didn't say "After I die, you won't need to keep the Sabbath." He asked: "Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days?"
He assumes the Sabbath remains in effect. The question is how to keep it properly by doing good, showing mercy, and saving life.
In Matthew 12:9-13, Jesus heals the man's hand, then declares:
"Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days."
Jesus's argument was pointed. Just before this declaration, He asked: "What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?" (Matthew 12:11). An ancient Jewish legal text discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls--the Damascus Document, written by a strict sect around 100 BCE--specifically prohibited rescuing animals from pits on the Sabbath.† The Damascus Document (CD 11:13-17) states that if an animal falls into water or a pit, "he shall not raise it on the Sabbath." See Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 7th ed. (London: Penguin, 2011), 139-142. Jesus was not abolishing the Sabbath--He was arguing for mercy over rigidity within its observance.
The phrase "It is lawful" uses present tense, affirming the Sabbath's ongoing validity.
If the Sabbath were temporary, why does Jesus spend so much time correcting how to keep it rather than declaring it ended?
For a detailed response to the "Jesus broke the Sabbath in Matthew 12" objection, see Appendix B, Objection 7.
The Father Works, the Son Works
In John 5, Jesus encounters a paralyzed man at the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem. Sick people gathered at this pool because an angel periodically stirred the water, and the first person into the pool after the stirring was healed of whatever disease they had (John 5:4).John 5:4 appears in the KJV but is omitted from most modern translations (NIV, ESV, NASB) based on the Alexandrian Critical Text. Without this verse, the man's explanation in verse 7 about needing someone to help him into the stirred water makes no sense. See Appendix I for the textual evidence. This man had been paralyzed for 38 years. When Jesus asked, "Wilt thou be made whole?" the man explained his situation: "Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me" (John 5:7). For nearly four decades, he had watched others reach the healing water first while he lay helpless.
Jesus heals him on the Sabbath. The Jews accuse Him of breaking the Sabbath. Jesus responds:
"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."
The Father works on the Sabbath. The Son works on the Sabbath.
What kind of work? The work of redemption, healing, and restoration--the purpose the Sabbath was made to celebrate. God rested from creation on the seventh day, but He never stops His work of sustaining, redeeming, and blessing humanity.
Jesus mirrors the Father's Sabbath activity. He doesn't abolish the Sabbath; He fulfills its purpose by doing good, healing the sick, setting captives free.
Verse 18 records the reaction:
"Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God."
The Jews accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath. But their accusation doesn't make it true. Jesus violated their man-made traditions (burdensome rules added to God's law), but He never violated the Sabbath commandment itself.
He kept the Sabbath. He taught the Sabbath. He defended the Sabbath against legalistic perversions.
If Jesus broke the Sabbath, He sinned. If He sinned, He cannot be the sinless sacrifice. The entire gospel collapses.
The truth: Jesus perfectly kept the Sabbath, demonstrating how the Father intended it to be observed through worship, rest, mercy, and the work of redemption.
The Pattern for Disciples
After Jesus's resurrection, did the apostles abandon the Sabbath and start worshiping on Sunday? They did not.
The book of Acts records the apostles continuing to worship on the Sabbath:
- Acts 13:14 - Paul goes to the synagogue "on the sabbath day"
- Acts 13:42-44 - Gentiles ask to hear the gospel again "the next sabbath," and "the next sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God"
- Acts 16:13 - On the Sabbath, Paul goes to a riverside prayer meeting
- Acts 17:2 - "And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures"
- Acts 18:4 - "And he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks"
Paul's "manner was" to worship on the Sabbath, just as Jesus's "custom was" to worship on the Sabbath.
If Sunday were the new Christian day of worship, why is there no record of the apostles teaching it? Why do they continue keeping the Sabbath decades after the resurrection?
The pattern is clear: Jesus kept the Sabbath. The apostles kept the Sabbath. The early church kept the Sabbath.
Sunday worship came later, introduced by the same power that changed other commandments and persecuted those who refused to comply.3 The earliest reference to Sunday worship appears in Justin Martyr's First Apology (c. 155 AD), written in Rome. Emperor Constantine's Sunday law (321 AD) was the first civil enforcement. See Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday: A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity (Rome: Pontifical Gregorian University Press, 1977), the definitive scholarly study on this topic.
What Jesus Never Said
In all four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), in every sermon, every teaching, every conversation Jesus had about the law, the commandments, and the kingdom of God, He never said:
- "The Sabbath is abolished."
- "After I die, worship on the first day of the week."
- "The Sabbath was only for Jews."
- "Any day is acceptable as long as you worship."
- "The Sabbath is a shadow; now that I'm here, it's fulfilled and done away."
He never said any of that.
This is what He did say:
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."
"I am not come to destroy the law."
The Sabbath commandment is part of the law, the fourth of the Ten Commandments written in stone by God's own finger. Jesus came to fulfill the law's purpose, not to abolish it.
"Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law."
Look outside. Is heaven still there? Is earth still here? Then the law (including the Sabbath) still stands.
The Roman Catholic Church's Three Changes
The Catholic Church didn't stop at the Sabbath. Having presumed authority to change the one commandment containing time, the same councils formalized other departures from Scripture:
| What the Catholic Church Changed | Biblical Truth | The Catholic Church's Substitute |
|---|---|---|
| When we worship | Seventh-day Sabbath (Saturday) | Sunday ("Lord's Day") |
| Who we worship | Father as "only true God," Son as His Mediator (John 17:3) | Co-equal Trinity (erasing Father-Son hierarchy) |
| What happens at death | The dead sleep unconscious (Ecclesiastes 9:5) | Immortal soul, purgatory, saint worship |
All three emerged from the same councils and the same merger of Greco-Roman philosophy with Christianity.4 The Council of Nicaea (325 AD) addressed the date of Easter and formally moved away from Jewish calendar reckoning. Constantine's letter after Nicaea explicitly cites separation from "the Jews" as justification. The Trinitarian formula was finalized at Constantinople (381 AD). Sunday legislation developed through subsequent church councils and imperial decrees. See R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988). Protestant churches that claim "sola scriptura" keep all three substitutions.
Side-by-side counterfeit table: https://theremnantthread.com/studies/counterfeit-table.html
Why mention Trinity and the state of the dead in a chapter about Jesus and the Sabbath? Because all three changes came from the same source: councils that elevated tradition over Scripture. The Sabbath change isn't isolated. It's part of a pattern. If a church claims authority to change God's law in one area, the logic permits changes in any area. Readers interested in a deeper examination of the Godhead question can explore Appendix G, which presents Jesus's testimony about the Father and addresses common objections to the subordinationist position held by the pre-Nicene church fathers.
This chapter's focus remains on Jesus and the Sabbath. If the Catholic Church changed the Sabbath by authority alone, she can change anything by the same authority. That pattern--human tradition overriding divine command--is the heart of the controversy.