Should Christians keep Saturday as the Sabbath?

I often get asked about ‘the biblical Sabbath’, if the biblical Sabbath is Saturday, why do Christians worship on Sunday? Are we ignoring the fourth commandment? And should Sabbath-keeping still be a binding practice for followers of Jesus?

As with all questions I get asked, the answer requires us to pay close attention to the shape of the biblical story.

Sabbath in Israel’s Scriptures

For ancient Israel, the Sabbath was not merely ‘a day off.’ It was a sign of the covenant: a weekly reminder that God had rescued His people from slavery in Egypt and invited them into His rest. Sabbath was a miniature rehearsal of the age to come.

When I was preparing my Gifford Lectures some years ago, I was struck by this: in rabbinic thought from roughly the first to sixth centuries AD, the Sabbath was seen as a day of anticipating the age to come. One could say then, ‘one day God is going to renew the whole of creation and He gives us each week, a day where we can imagine we’re already there.” 

On Shabbat, they performed actions then that symbolised the future age. As one example: you shouldn’t kill a fly on the Sabbath, because in Isaiah 11 it says that the new creation is a world where all creatures live in peace. So in not killing the fly we perform the age that is to come. 

This reframes how we read several New Testament passages about the Sabbath such as when Jesus is found healing people on that day. Jesus is not dismissing Sabbath-keeping or rejecting the rabbinic law. He is announcing that the age of Sabbath anticipated has arrived.

Jesus is saying, the time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is arriving, so repent, get on board and believe the Good News. And what is the Good News? That with Jesus, God’s Kingdom is arriving here and now.

So why don’t Christians keep Saturday as the Sabbath? The Early Church wrestle deeply with this exact question. 

Interestingly, when we find in various passages in the New Testament, the Ten Commandments listed as still mandatory, i.e. in Mark 10 or in Romans 13, the Sabbath commandment is absent. Why? Because the true Sabbath, the arrival of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven, has already come - and is coming - through Jesus. God’s future has arrived in the present.

The Resurrection changes everything

The decisive moment, of course, was the resurrection: the ontological reality.

Jesus rose not on the seventh day but on the first, the beginning of God’s new creation. Early Christians quickly began gathering on “the first day of the week,” not to abolish the Sabbath, but to celebrate that the new age had begun.

This was not a rejection of the Old Testament. It was the fulfilment of it. 

The Sabbath had always pointed forward to God’s coming renewal of creation. Early Christians saw that renewal had already begun in Jesus. 

Still a call to rest

So, does all this mean rest no longer matters? Certainly not. Humans are not designed to run endlessly. Sabbath teaches us that time itself is God’s gift, and that rest is part of worship.

But the New Testament never mandates a specific day of rest for Christians. 

Paul says explicitly in Colossians: “Let no one judge you… in respect to Sabbaths.” The issue is not a calendar regulation but a life shaped by God’s rhythm of work, worship, and rest. 

Living the reality sabbath anticipated

The Christian life is meant to embody the Sabbath principle: trust in God rather than in our own frantic striving; make space for worship; practice justice; rest joyfully in God’s love. 

Sabbath worship is a weekly reminder of resurrection, of the world that has begun and the world that is coming. It is a moment to celebrate and worship the One who is the fulfilment of our anticipation. For the deeper Sabbath is Christ Himself, in whom God’s new creation springs to life. 

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For more reading on this topic and God’s Kingdom on earth, Tom’s new book, God’s Homecoming publishes February 2026.