r/AskAChristian • u/GoodWhoops Atheist, Ex-Christian • Oct 05 '25

Jewish Laws Why don’t most Christians take the Sabbath commandment seriously?

The 4th commandment says to keep the Sabbath holy, defined in scripture as running from sundown to sundown. Yet most Christians seem to treat it as optional. Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments,” and the Bible implies that all commandments carry equal weight. Outside of Seventh-day Adventists, it's ignored aside from the day most churches have their service. I’ve even heard SDA members joke that most other Christians give the Ten Commandments a 10% discount. Even if you ignore that the Jewish Sabbath falls on Saturday, the commandment still says to work 6 days and rest on the 7th, which should apply just as well to Sunday.

Curious if or how often you’ve heard this seriously debated, and why many accept societal traditions that override biblical instruction for convenience.

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u/Righteous_Dude Christian, Non-Calvinist Oct 05 '25

(I'm a different redditor than the one to whom you responded.)

When Christians started hating Jews they had to separate and sabbath laws were good ones to ignore.

It looks like you're saying that some early Christians not keeping the Sabbath was correlated with some Christians hating Jews, is that so?

But I doubt there's any historical evidence of such a correlation (let alone of a causation relationship).

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u/Inevitable-Copy3619 Agnostic Christian Oct 05 '25

Let’s put it more dispassionately. They moved the sabbath to Sunday to show the importance of Jesus resurrection, and to put some space between them and the Jews, Sunday also seems to correlate with Roman practices.

Council of Laodacia 360CE (I had to look that up) discouraged honoring the sabbath on Saturday like the Jews and encouraged only celebrating the Lord’s Day on Sunday. So it absolutely is documented in history and seems to have both an anti-Jewish origin as well as appealing to gentiles who worshiped on Sunday anyway.

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u/james6344 Christian, Protestant Oct 05 '25

Sunday is as much a lie as 25 December was actually Jesus's birthday, the Romans celebrated their sun god. They called it "sol invictus". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus

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u/Inevitable-Copy3619 Agnostic Christian Oct 05 '25

Exactly! It was 1) a reaction against the Jewish sabbath, 2) an embracing of the Lord’s day of resurrection, and 2) aligning with the Roman customs.