# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1863_S337
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report of the sixth ordinary synodical convention of the Norwegian Evang. Luth. Church. 337

of innocence, and this one can easily see from the fact that God laid work upon him already in Paradise. But when one has work, one needs rest, and all the more so at certain times, in order to be led, as it were, from the creature to the Creator himself, just as Luther says that nature too demands that one have at least one day in the week for rest. One must therefore regard it as settled that the Sabbath, that is, a day of rest, does not depend on the Third Commandment, but is a gift from God to mankind from the beginning, and nowhere does one find that God later took this gift away from mankind. As proof of this one could also cite Exodus 16:19 and other passages, where it is said that the Lord gave the Sabbath, and indeed already before the giving of the Law at Sinai. Here one might perhaps object that it must then remain fixed to the day which God first instituted for this purpose, namely the seventh. But since God gave it for man's sake, the difficulty is easily resolved when one compares how it came about at the creation and how the New Testament Sabbath, or Sunday, arose. For in the history of creation particular works are set before our eyes, which God performed on each of the six days, and whose remembrance is, as it were, bound especially to each of these days. On the seventh day, however, he did no work, but rested; there God was alone with his Word, and therefore the remembrance of his name was to be bound to this day, whereas on the other days it was bound to the works that had been done. In the New Testament it is otherwise; there we see that Christ calls himself Lord of the Sabbath; through him all things were created in the beginning, and through him accordingly the Sabbath too originally came to be, and he has now bound the remembrance of his name especially to another day. In the Old Testament, where the Law came in because of sin, everything was but shadow; in the New Testament the shadows have ceased. Yet Christ did not abolish the Sabbath — for it was made for man's sake — but taught how one should rightly keep it, with works of love and especially with contemplation of the Word of God; and in that he rose again on Sunday, revealed himself to his apostles, conferred the office upon them, and at the same time poured out his Spirit, he bound the remembrance of his name to that same day. Against this teaching the passage Romans 14 does not stand, since it concerns only the day that was kept according to the Levitical ceremonial law. Had the apostle meant Sunday as well, he would have come into conflict with himself, with the other apostles, and with the early Church — not only because he himself preached on that very day at Troas, but even more because he designated this day to the Corinthians as a day for works of love, and especially because it is called the Lord's Day, which can only have come about because the Lord had, as it were, specially sanctified, blessed, and distinguished this day. If, then, Romans 14 speaks of holding all days alike, this can by no means be applied to Sunday, which in the New Testament is named and used in so wholly distinctive a manner. It is said that Christ has bound the remembrance of his name—

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