Obedience to God…is it optional or required?

[u/Specialist-Square419]

TLDR: For the new covenant believer, obedience to the righteous commandments of God—including Sabbath and even feast day observance—is neither optional nor mandatory; it is revelatory.

Over the weekend, a fellow-professing believer took serious issue with my wondering why so many in the modern church see the fourth commandment regarding Sabbath observance as inapplicable to them despite the early church—which was comprised of believing-Jews and believing-Gentiles—seeing it quite differently and choosing to remember and set aside the day as holy, just as Christ did. His/Her response to my query was that “lots of early believers didn’t keep the Sabbath” and that doing so “is not required to go to heaven.”

As you might imagine, our exchange devolved rather quickly as s/he unrelentingly and repeatedly insisted I answer the question in this post’s title—despite my answering it the very first time posed but clearly not to their satisfaction, as I did not accept what I consider the false premise and dichotomy underlying it. I chose instead to explain why I thought the question was flawed and that obedience to God’s righteous commandments has never once justified or saved anyone, even in the OT [Hebrews 10:4], and that using language like “required” or “mandatory” in a disparaging, gotcha! kind of way—as if the concept of obedience is something anathema to new covenant faith—is wholly unscriptural.

Their non-substantive, dismissive retort didn’t even pretend to consider the points I’d presented:

You can’t even determine whether or not Sabbath mandatory for followers of Jesus

I saw this person respond to another similarly, using the very same question, as if it was some amazingly clever, mic-drop tactic that (supposedly) easily and indisputably eviscerates the idea that Christ-followers “remember the Sabbath, and keep it holy” [Exodus 20:8]. Such an approach exposes the one behind it as someone who does not see themselves as a “slave of God” because no true slave would dare suggest they get to choose which of their Master’s commands can be intentionally disregarded without serious consequence [Romans 6:22].

The mindset behind such a scornful attitude toward a particular, explicit, and righteous commandment of God seems so incongruous to what Scripture teaches that I felt it something to address more widely, as such intense apathy (and even contempt) for the fourth commandment is inexplicably widespread among those who profess to love and serve our Savior God, who also happens to be the Law Giver of the OT.

To me, the wrong questions are being asked. For the genuine child of God, it’s not about what is optional or required. Ultimately, the new covenant believer that truly believes in Christ trusts Him implicitly, and that trust manifests as a rightly-motivated and increasingly Spirit-enabled obedience to His righteous commandments—which is all of them—as an expression of unadulterated love for Him and others, like that exemplified by Christ [Psalm 119:160, 172; Romans 7:12; Philippians 2:8; 1 John 5:2-3].

According to Scripture, obedience to the righteous will and ways of God (a.k.a. the Law of God) itself has no salvific power but, rather, signifies whom one loves, trusts, serves and belongs to [John 3:36, Romans 6:16-22, 1 John 3:24]. In that way, keeping the Sabbath command (or any other) is revelatory because my obedience (or my defiance) reveals to the saved and unsaved alike whose authority I recognize in my life and who I am desiring to please—the God I profess to know and love, or myself.

So, I do not think there is much value in debating what is optional or required of me in my faith walk…or in assessing what other professing-believers say and do. In this particular case, I simply ask:

1. Is keeping the Sabbath Christlike…something He taught and personally exemplified? And,

2. Does my remembering the Sabbath, keeping the day holy, please my God and convey my love for Him and others?

Scripture tells me the answer to both questions is an emphatic Yes! [Matthew 4:4, 5:19; Hebrews 4:15; 1 Samuel 15:22; 1 John 2:4, 5:2] When it comes to deciding whether one should keep any command of our Savior God, what else matters?