Sabbath

Saturday or Sunday as a day of rest and worship. The term comes from the Hebrew word shabbat, which means either ‘to cease' or ‘seventh'.

It was part of the law of Moses that everyone, even animals, had to rest from work on Saturday, the Sabbath day (Exodus 20.8-11). The thinking behind this was that since God had ‘rested' from creating the world on the seventh day, his worshippers should too. Keeping the Sabbath was a serious matter - and it even included giving the fields a rest once every seven years (Exodus 23.10-11). The Sabbath day began not at midnight, but at sunset on Friday evening and continued until sunset on Saturday evening.

Within the early Christian communities, the first day of the week (i.e. Sunday) became a special day for worship (Acts 20.7). This was partly because Sunday was the day on which they believed Jesus to have risen from the dead. Some Christians believe that Jesus or the apostles transferred the Sabbath rest from Saturday to Sunday. Others believe that worship on Sunday replaced rest on Saturday and that the apostles phased out the Sabbath concept altogether.

Seventh Day Adventists, on the other hand, believe that the seventh day (Saturday) should remain the Christian Sabbath. Christians differ among themselves about whether - and how - people should rest on Sundays. Sunday, understood as the Sabbath or not, is often known as ‘the Lord's Day', a phrase first found in Revelation 1.10. Many Christians, regardless of their beliefs about the Sabbath, do agree that the principle of resting one day out of seven is important in terms of maintaining a work/life balance.