Sabbath-Keeping: A Spiritual Discipline?
The early church (Acts) kept the Sabbath on what we now call Saturday. Many Jewish believers would go to the synagogue that morning to hear the Scriptures read aloud, then meet again later in a fellow believer’s home to break bread and listen to teaching (Acts 20:7; Acts 2:42, 46).
It’s worth remembering that in the Jewish calendar, days begin at sunset—not sunrise—so the first day of the week started on our Saturday night. When we read that the early believers gathered on the first day of the week, we should understand that they were gathering on Saturday night, so to speak. Unlike us, early Christians didn’t have two-day weekends so it's unlikely that the believers in Acts carved out both Saturday and Sunday for worship.
The Shift to Sunday Worship
Eventually, the day we understand to be Sunday became the primary day of Christian worship. We have historical records indicating this shift began quite early.
Around 107 AD, Ignatius of Antioch contrasted Jewish Sabbath observance with Christian Sunday worship. In his letter to the Magnesians (chapter 9), he writes:
“Let every friend of Christ keep the Lord’s Day as a festival, the resurrection day, the queen and chief of all the days.”
Later, in 155 AD, Justin Martyr described Christian worship on “the day of the Sun” in his First Apology:
“And on the day called that of the Sun, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the Apostles or the writings of the Prophets are read… Then, when the reader has ceased, he that presides verbally instructs, and exhorts… Then we all rise together and pray… bread and wine and water are brought, and the one presiding offers prayers and thanksgivings… Then there is a distribution to each, and a participation…”
Both Jewish believers on Saturdays and Gentile Christians on Sundays engaged in the same core practices:
Reading Scripture
Receiving teaching
Prayer
Breaking bread (Eucharist)
Fellowship
Dallas Willard and the Formational Sabbath
Fast forward about 1900 years. Philosopher and spiritual formation teacher Dallas Willard (1935–2013) brought a fresh, formational lens to Sabbath-keeping.
In a Renovaré blog post, Willard described a Sabbath that is:
Observed on Sunday
Not legalistic, but deeply formational
A training in trust, rest, and presence
A space for solitude, silence, and sometimes fasting
A weekly reminder that we are not in control—God is
The Puritans and the Lord’s Day
The Puritans (16th–17th centuries) approached Sabbath with tremendous reverence. They called it the Lord’s Day and considered it vital to personal holiness, church health, and even social good.
Drawing especially from the Fourth Commandment and the Westminster Standards, they emphasized:
Setting aside the whole of Sunday for worship and rest
Abstaining from secular work and recreation
Corporate worship both morning and afternoon
Private family worship, catechism, and Scripture reading
Preparing hearts and homes the day before
Taking joy and spiritual delight in the day
Seeing it as a foretaste of Heaven
So… What About Us?
Is the Sabbath on Saturday or Sunday?
Do we fast (as Willard recommends) or feast (as Ignatius suggests)?
Or is there something else to consider?
If Sabbath-keeping is more than a historical artifact—if it is indeed a spiritual discipline, one of the “divinely appointed means” by which God grows his people—then it’s worth asking: How do we keep it?
And why?
Sabbath as a Spiritual Discipline
I’ve really appreciated reading A Heart Aflame for God by Matthew Bingham. It is carefully written, with a considerate, conscientious and pastoral voice, and rooted in the Protestant understanding of salvation by grace through faith (I hadn’t considered that Roman Catholic writings on spiritual formation were written through the lense of salvation by faith and works).
He defines spiritual formation like this:
“The conscious process by which we seek to heighten and satisfy our Spirit-given thirst for God (Ps. 42:1–2) through divinely appointed means and with a view toward ‘working out our own salvation with fear and trembling’ (Phil. 2:12) and becoming ‘mature in Christ’ (Col. 1:28).”
When Bingham expands on “divinely appointed means,” he writes:
Another key component of our definition is the stipulation that biblical spiritual formation will employ ‘divinely appointed means’ — that is, those means or methods that God plainly reveals to us in his word. God is the author of spiritual life, and in Scripture he has given clear and sufficient guidance for how we are to pursue it. To this end, the Bible repeatedly highlights some things rather than others as the tools that God has given his people for growing in their walk with him. Our job, then, is not to invent new ‘spiritual practices’ that seem attractive or appealing to us but rather to take up with fresh vigor and appropriate creativity those practices already given.
Now I don’t want to misrepresent Bingham, who does not list Sabbath-keeping among the spiritual disciplines he names (and I don’t know what he considers to be corporate spiritual disciplines) but I would gently add it to the list.
Why?
Because the Sabbath is:
Plainly revealed in God’s Word
Already given to God’s people
What Sabbath-Keeping Offers the Church
Y’all know me.. I hate to be too prescriptive, but I do think the Old Testament and the New Testament demonstrate that when we observe the Sabbath, we enact a deeply formative, gospel-centered practice.
Sabbath-keeping reminds us:
We are saved by faith, not works (rest!)
Jesus has already accomplished the work (rest!)
Our hope is not in this age but in the one to come (rest!)
And as Scripture shows us, the Sabbath is rarely just a private thing. It is corporate event—a gathered act of faith:
Corporate worship (Heb. 10:24–25)
Corporate teaching (Acts 2:42, 46)
Corporate Scripture reading (Acts 2:46)
Corporate Eucharist (Acts 2:46)
Corporate unity in the Body (1 Cor. 12)
Corporate edification
Encourage one another (Heb. 3:13)
Bear one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2)
Teach and admonish one another (Col. 3:16)
Confess and pray together (James 5:16)
Avoid isolation (Prov. 18:1)
So, Yes—Sabbath Is a Discipline
Do I think Sabbath-keeping is a spiritual discipline?
Yes. Yes, I do.
Sabbath-keeping is a divinely appointed, corporate means of grace. It forms us and joins our lives to the life of Christ and his Bride, the Church.
And Sabbath-keeping is biblically accomplished now, just as in the early church, with:
Scripture readings
Teachings
Prayer
Breaking of bread (Eucharist)
Fellowship
Should you want to incorporate “appropriate creativity” into Sabbath-keeping, that is all fine and dandy. But it is my hope and prayer that someone else’s “creativity” places no burden on your own shoulders.
Let Sabbath be what it’s always been: a gift.
A holy rest.
A weekly homecoming.
A foretaste of Heaven.
Amen.