For a long time Adventists have promoted the Sabbath as God’s covenant sign in these last days. Why are we not more successful in persuading Christian friends that they ought to switch to the seventh day?

No doubt some are stuck in their ways (a mindset not unknown among Sabbatarians, ancient and modern). Many Sunday keepers no doubt love the Lord as fervently and obediently as any Adventist. So what’s their holdback? Is it partly our lack of grace—in theology even more than method?

My thesis is that in showcasing the Sabbath we Adventists typically take people to the wrong mountain: to Sinai rather than to Calvary. We have yet to learn the meaning of John 1:17: "The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."

Then what does it mean to teach the Sabbath truth as it is in Jesus? How do we present the seventh day as a sign of God’s grace in the New Covenant rather than as a relic of works from the Old Covenant?

Let us reverently visit our Lord the afternoon he died. The scenery is profoundly different than the first Friday in Eden. In place of beautiful meadows and forests, we see the bare rocks of Golgotha, the "place of the skull." Instead of the happy songs of paradise birds, we hear the mocking shout: "Crucify Him!"

So much has changed, but one thing remains the same between those Friday afternoons. Once again, Jesus completes a work for humanity. With his dying breath he cries: "It is finished!" (John 19:30). Mission accomplished! A hostage world is redeemed.

As the sun begins to set, friends of Jesus lay him to rest inside a tomb. There he remains over Sabbath hours. After his quiet Sabbath repose, Jesus arises and ascends to heaven’s royal throne.

The Sabbath thus memorializes Christ’s two greatest accomplishments: creating us and redeeming us, giving us first, life, and then new life. These are the reasons above all others that God is worthy of our worship. (See Rev. 4:11; 5:9)

In this salvific context, Scripture declares the Sabbath to be the special covenant sign, or seal, between God and his people: "Keep my Sabbaths holy, that they may be a sign between us. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God" (Ezek. 20:20 NIV). God says, in effect: "I created you and I saved you. Remember this every week by setting apart the seventh day for me, even as I have set it apart for you. It is the special sign or seal of the covenant between us."

The significance of the Sabbath increases as we probe deeper into its meaning as a symbol of salvation. God’s law demands that all human work be faithfully accomplished within a time deadline: "Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work" (Exod. 20:9 KJV). Conscientious people work hard all week determined to accomplish their tasks, but the end of the week comes and, as usual, the work is not quite completed. Each Friday afternoon at sundown we are compelled to confess our unfinished business. The inbox is still overloaded; the garage isn’t cleaned out; the garden isn’t weeded.

So what to do? God invites us, though undeserving, to rest anyway—not because we have finished our work, but because he has finished his work and earned the right to rest. This is the core meaning of the Sabbath. We turn away from our inadequate works and identify ourselves with his perfect work. And so, right there among all the duties required by the Ten Commandments, God offers us rest from our unfinished works by reminding us of his perfect work on our behalf.

The enemy of our souls has deceived most people to trust their own works for salvation. No wonder he hates Sabbath rest. Week by week, the Sabbath assures believers that despite shortcomings, we stand complete in Christ. There is tremendous therapy for legalism here. Finally we have relief from those awful feelings about not being good enough. There’s no need now to worry about our shortfall of spirituality or attempt to work our way into God’s favor.

This powerful message of the Sabbath encapsulates the distinctiveness of the Christian gospel. Other world religions focus upon self-improvement, what people must do to save themselves (whatever salvation means to a Muslim, Buddhist, or Jewish person). Christianity, though, celebrates Christ’s accomplishments on behalf of a lost humanity. So the Sabbath points us away from ourselves, away from our works, to trust in what Jesus has done for us.

Despite this grace-based soteriology, some advocates of the New Covenant shun the seventh day, suggesting that now the Sabbath is not a day but a person. Yet every Christian denomination enjoins some form of baptism as a sign of the new covenant. Nobody says: Jesus is our baptism, so now we don’t need to be baptized. Where is the logic, then, in suggesting that Jesus is our Sabbath and we don’t need to keep it holy for him?

The fact is that Jesus didn’t call himself the Sabbath, but the Lord of the Sabbath (Matt. 12:8). As Creator, he gave humanity the Sabbath in Eden as an invitation to enter his relational rest. As Savior, he faithfully kept the seventh day all his life, and in death he memorialized it forever in his covenant of grace.

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