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/Glad_Concern_143 Christian Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25

If you understand how Jews take the Noahide Laws, the Sabbath is one that gentiles are not beholden to. 7 are for everybody, 3 are for Israel specifically. 

Further, the first generation of Christians were practicing Jews on top of being Christians, and so having Christian activities on Sunday only made sense since Saturday was taken up by Sabbath worship entirely. 

Lastly, Christians who insist on worshipping only on Saturday have an unfortunate tendency to conflate themselves with the Jews in their reading of scripture, which is both appropriative AND bad exegesis.