The Sabbath and the Covenant with the Second Adam

(Richard Bacon, Monday, September 04, 2000)

In my previous post I asserted that in the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath bridges the two tables of the law, respecting man's duty toward God and man (i.e. love of God and love of neighbor). Further, I pointed out that in the Deuteronomy version of the Decalogue, it is the commandment that describes one's duties toward God and man. Further, though we have not yet discussed the ramifications of the fact, the book of Colossians clearly refers to the Sabbath as a shadow of Christ Who was to come. Christ himself is both God and man and therefore we see again that the Sabbath points to Christ. Also noted was the fact that when Christ walked the earth bodily he worshipped in the synagogues of the Jews, keeping the Sabbath both as a day of worship and as a day of mercy, hence using it to fulfill both tables of the law. On Calvary, he fulfilled the Sabbath, reconciling God and man. On the new earth, the Sabbath will culminate signifying the eternal rest of God and man.

The Sabbath and the Covenant with the Second Adam

The Edenic covenant Sabbath of the first Adam foreshadowed Jesus Christ as man's eternal rest. After Adam transgressed the covenant, Jesus Christ as the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45-49) came as the mediator of the new covenant, the covenant of grace. Yet in many basic aspects this second covenant is the outworking of the original Edenic covenant. Though, as we saw in the last installment, God is eternally in covenant with himself via the three persons of his existence, yet there was the need for man's salvation that Christ place himself under the law so that he might redeem those that were under the law.

First, there was an eternal aspect to this covenant. This was not something that God developed as "plan B" in the event Adam should fall. God's works are known to him from the beginning. This covenant between the several persons of the triune God, involving the incarnation of the second person of the triune God as the second person of humanity (1 Corinthians 15:47). The work of Christ was eternal, certain, personal, binding, and substitutionary.

Second, the enemy of the covenant was none other than Satan himself. The first Adam, in the garden, listened to the serpent who was the personification of the adversary Satan. Thus the first Adam found in himself in league with Satan in the first creation. Thus Adam broke the first covenant of God and covenanted instead with Satan, death, and hell and against God.

But the second Adam destroyed the works of the devil by rising again from the dead on the first day of the week, thereby transforming himself from the stone that the builders rejected (in his death), to the chief cornerstone of men's faith and of God's church (in his resurrection). See Psalm 118:22ff. and Acts 4:11ff. Thus Isaiah predictively wrote of the scoffers in Jerusalem in the day of Christ's death, "Because ye have said, 'We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement, '...therefore thus saith the Lord God, 'Behold, I lay in Zion for a Foundation a Stone, a tried Stone, a precious Corner Stone, a sure Foundation: He that believeth shall not make haste'...And your covenant with death shall be disannulled and your agreement with hell shall not stand...For the Lord will rise up [note the reference to the resurrection - RB]...that he may do his work - his strange work - and bring to pass his act...this also cometh from the Lord of hosts...." (Isaiah 28:15ff.)

When this remarkable passage is compared with Psalm 118:22ff., where the same phrases occur ("chief cornerstone" and "this is the Lord's doing") and which passage is unmistakably Messianic, dealing with Christ's victory over death and the grave in his resurrection, it takes on a new meaning, for "this is the day the Lord has made" refers only in a typical fashion to the Sabbath(s) of the Old Testament, but is fulfilled completely in Christ's resurrection and his victory over death and the grave. It was on that day that Christ began to enter into his rest (Luke 24:1, 26, 46; cf. Hebrews 3:1; 4:10, 14; Romans 1:4; Isaiah 25:7-9; 26:19; 33:1-5; 1 Corinthians 15:1, 12-22, 45-49, 54-57)

Third, God's covenant with the second Adam involved the unconditional promise of eternal life for the first Adam and all his elect descendents. Christ referred to himself as "the resurrection and life" (John 11:25). Paul wrote to the Corinthian church of the resurrection of Christ and stated that if Christ is not risen from the dead, we are yet in our sins. He went on to maintain that as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. The contrast between the first and second Adam is the contrast between death and life. He went on in the next few verses after chapter fifteen to direct that same church at Corinth to put something aside and store it up on the first day of the week (the day of the resurrection of which he had previously been speaking for 58 verses) for the saving of the temporal lives of the brethren on the same day on which Christ assured the saving of their eternal lives. Thus the New day is brought into connection with life just as the Old day had been (Heb. 4:1-11).

Fourth, God's covenant with the second Adam involved the penalty of death being placed upon the latter, who voluntarily suffered on behalf of the first Adam and all his elect descendents for the purpose of liberating them from death and the grave. So, in Isaiah 42:6-7 God the Father said of his Son, "I the Lord have called thee and given thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles, to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness." Jesus Christ, the second Adam, the elect Seed of the woman, paid the penalty for the breach of that first covenant by suffering death at the hands of the serpent 's seed, that brood and generation of vipers, the scribes and Pharisees. Those men were the instruments used by their father the devil, that old serpent, to bruise the heel of the Seed of the woman, even unto death. Compare Genesis 3:15 & Galatians 3:16; 4:4-5; Genesis 2:17 cf. Romans 16:20; Matthew 3:7; John 8:44; Revelation 12:9; Galatians 3:10-18.

Fifth, the covenant between the Father and the Son was universal (world-wide) in its scope. Just as in Adam all died, so in Christ "shall all be made alive." Due to the internationalization of the covenant, through the "great commission" given by the risen Christ, the sign of the covenant would thenceforth have to meet the requirements of universality (Matthew 28:19; John 20:19ff.). This will be discussed at length in a subsequent post. [i] For now, it will suffice to say that Sunday Sabbatarians (as opposed to those who simply go to church on Sunday and then spend the remainder of the day in their own activities) regard the first day of the week as the very purpose for which the world was created. If the creation is the terminus a quo of the sign of the covenant, then the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the terminus ad quem. That is not to say, as many do, that the Sabbath came to an end at the resurrection - far from that. It found its fuller form subsequent to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead on the first day of the week.

Sixth, there were specific legal ramifications to God's covenant with the second Adam. "When the time was fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law." Paul argued that Christ was under the law to redeem Christians, but that they are not under the law, but in the Spirit. Paul used the allegory of the two women: Sarah and Hagar and their respective offspring, Ishmael and Isaac. Paul compared Ishmael, son of the bondwoman, to Mt. Sinai. It was at Mt. Sinai that the ceremonial law was given and also where the moral law was given in the particular form of Ten Commandments. The table I previously attached to you indicates clearly that the substance of the moral law was not first given at Sinai. It was the form that was particular to Sinai, not the substance. The Christians, however, are the descendents not of Hagar through Ishmael, but of Sarah through Isaac. Christians are thus not like the slave boy Ishmael and not like the slave mountain in Arabia. Rather, they are the free sons of the free woman and enjoy the heavenly Jerusalem and the true Sabbath rest of the true Canaan (cf. Psalm 95:11; Hebrews 4:1-11; 11:8-16; 12:18-24).

Seventh, God's covenant with the Second Adam involved the Sabbath as a condition of the covenant. After laboring in the creation, God entered into a Sabbath rest. But in terms of the covenant with the Second Adam respecting the re-creation or redemption of the new heavens and the new earth, God did not rest. Rather, the second person of the triune God came to earth as man and performed his labors of redemption, laboring and teaching on week-days and teaching and resting on the Sabbaths of his earthly life. Finally, when he had completed his cross work he pronounced it "finished" and was laid to rest in his grave through the last Saturday Sabbath as the fulfillment of it. On the first day of the week (the day of light) Christ was "declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4) on which day he entered into his glory and his new creation rest, having ceased from his labors of redemption and new creation.

Summary:

It was seen in a previous post that the Sabbath was a sign of God's covenant with his first Adam (Adam Harishon). But if Joshua had given the people rest, then would the Psalmist not afterward spoken of another day. These are all suggestive considerations. The key thing that this post emphasizes is the significance first of the resurrection of Christ and second of the significance of his rising again from the dead on the first day of the week. If the Lord wills, we shall continue to press through the Old Testament in order to look for traces of hints or predictions or typologies that led the church universal to keeping Sunday as the Christian Sabbath, and that from the earliest known days in which the subject was discussed.

Pastor Richard Bacon, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church of Rowlett
Director, Blue Banner Ministries

_____

[i] It will become appropriate to study the Apostolic example in Acts 20:7, 1 Corinthians 16:1-2, and the phrase "Lord's Day" in Revelation 1:10. But those studies will wait until other axioms and theorems have been established from other texts.