John Owen on the Sabbath as a Day of Worship

"Thus, the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day, God finished His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because, on it, God rested from all His work that He had done in creation" -Genesis 2:1-3 

At the completion of the creation week, it was culminated by a day of rest. Which is not to say that God was tired. Rather, the implication is a cessation for the sake of enjoying the product of the preceding labor. For which enjoyment, God blessed the seventh day, and made it holy (KJV, "sanctified it"). We must ask what those actions mean for God. To bless that day was to make it a source of blessing, not to Himself, since God can never be more blessed, but for those to whom He gave it, the humans, male and female, the creation of whom would be recapitulated in the next verses. To sanctify it, or to make it holy, again, cannot be for His own sake, because God is the standard of holiness, the standing apart from mere creation. So, again, His action could only be for the man and woman, created the previous day. 

That distinction is essential, because there are some, influenced by antinomianism and dispensationalism, who claim that the Sabbath, as the day came to be called, was for God alone, and the human elements were created under the law for Israel, not the church, and that it was never properly a day of worship. Yet the words applied, and the attributes of God, preclude the use of the Sabbath for Himself. 

As Puritan John Owen comments on the passage, "'Sanctified' is further instructive in the intention of God, and is also explanatory of the former [word, i. e., 'blessed']. For suppose still (and the text will not allow us otherwise) that the day is the object of this sanctification, and it is not possible to assign any other sense of the words, than that God set apart by His institution that day to be the day of His worship, to be spent in a sacred rest unto Himself, which is declared to be the meaning of the word in the decalogue" (A Treatise on the Sabbath). "He set it apart to sacred use authoritatively, requiring us to sanctify it in that use obediently." 

Owen continues by pointing to Exodus 16:22-23: "On the sixth day, they [i. e., Israel] gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, 'Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord...'" Owen remarks, "The reason of it is plain and evident, for, there being a previous institution of the seventh day's rest (the observation of which was partly gone into disuse), and the day itself being then to receive a new peculiar application to the church state of that people [i. e., Israel], the reason of the people's act, and the rulers' doubt, and Moses' explanation, is plain and obvious." 

Yet, Owen did feel a need to deny that the Mosaic law added ceremonial elements to the sabbath, though he denied that the Sabbath, per se, was part of those Mosaic ceremonies. "The command of the Sabbath, in the renewal of it in the wilderness, was accommodated to the disciplinary state of the church of the Israelites. I admit, also, that there were such additions made to it, as to the manner of its observance and the sanction of it, as might adapt it to their civil and political state, and thus bear a part in that ceremonial instruction, which God, in all His dealings with them, intended... It is no argument, therefore, that this command was not in substance given before to mankind in general, [simply] because it has some modifications added in the decalogue to accommodate it to the existing state of the Hebrews." 

Owen's comments point us to the formulation of the Fourth Commandment, as it is found in Exodus 20:8-11 [emphasis added]: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." Not only does the commandment begin with a command to "remember," but it the makes explicit what is to be remembered, that is, the actions of God on the seventh day of creation. 

Furthermore, though Owen does not mention it, I would refer the reader to Leviticus 19:30: "You shall keep My Sabbaths and reverence My sanctuary: I am the Lord." The keeping of the Sabbath is explicitly connected to their revering of His sanctuary, making that connection explicit, though still not exclusive. 

The Importance of the Bad News to Prepare for the Good News

"Against such as these [i. e., unbelievers], the doctrine of justification may be defended, but it is vain to attempt their satisfaction in it. Whilst men have no sense in their own hearts and consciences of the spiritual disorder of their souls, of the secret continual actings of sin with deceit and violence, obstructing all that is good, promoting all that is evil, defiling all that is done by them; who are not engaged in a constant watchful conflict against the first motions of sin, to whom they are not the greatest burden and sorrow, causing them to cry out for deliverance from them; they will reject what is proposed about justification through the righteousness of Christ imputed to us. Neither the consideration of the holiness or terror of the Lord, nor the severity of the law, nor the promise of the Gospel, nor the secret disquietude of their consciences can prevail with them, who have such slight conceptions of the state and guilt of sin, to fly for refuge unto the only hope set before them, or really and distinctly to comport with the only way of salvation." -John Owen, "The Doctrine of Justification by Faith Through the Imputation of the Righteousness of Christ"

In his well-known prolix manner, Owen is advising us of an important consideration: until the unbeliever is conscious of his sin and its consequences, he has no interest in hearing about what Jesus has done for His people. This is a message that too many American evangelicals need to hear, because they suffer from the Gospel of Joel Osteen, that "Jesus loves everybody and wants us to be happy." It is too negative, we suppose, to tell about the sin in men and God's hatred of it. Yet, that is why the evangelical church has turned into a circus of self-esteem, rather than the body of Christ confronting the fallen world.

Particular Atonement Required by Reason

I think that the only doctrine in Scripture hated more than eternal conscience torment in Hell is particular atonement (also called definite atonement, or limited atonement), the belief that Jesus died for a particular group of people, for whom He fully achieved salvation. While this doctrine is often described as Pauline, it is also found in the direct teachings of Jesus. I don't see any way to avoid it in Scripture.

John Owen on Definite and Particular Atonement

One of my primary objections to Arminianism is what it makes of the atoning death of Jesus. He didn't die for anyone in particular, the Arminian claims, but rather for everyone in general, equally for the saint in heaven or the damned in Hell. In fact, according to the Arminian scheme, it was possible that no one would ever have been saved by the blood of Jesus.

I consider that to border on blasphemy. To claim that there was even a possibility in the purposes of God that He would have allowed the blood of His Son to fall ineffectual to the ground, is an aspersion on my God that deserves no consideration.

In describing the Arminian view, the Puritan divine John Owen said (Preface to The Death of Death in the Death of Christ): "It seems our blessed Redeemer's deep humiliation, in bearing the chastisement of our peace and the punishment of our transgressions, being made a curse and sin, deserted under wrath and the power of death - procuring redemption and the remission of sins through the effusion of His blood, offering Himself up a sacrifice to God to make reconciliation and purchase an atonement; His pursuing this undertaking with continued intercession in the holiest of holies, with all the benefits of His mediatorship - do no way procure either life and salvation or remission of sins; but only serve to declare that we are not, indeed, what His word affirms we are, viz., cursed, guilty, defiled, and only not actually cast into Hell."

I am so glad that Jesus told us otherwise: "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will but the will of Him who sent Me. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given Me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day" (John 6:37-40). Jesus refers back to the intra-Trinitarian covenant in prehistory, in which the Father gave Him a people, a particular people, to be redeemed. And that covenant was effectual, providing us with the confidence that the blood of Jesus cannot fail to save everyone for whom He shed it. 

This doctrine, unlike that of the Arminian, shows us that it is impossible that even one drop of the blood of Jesus could fall to the ground in failure.