Response to Baptist Faith and Message - Article 8: The Lord’s Day

Point-of-View

Apr 8, 2003
TOM ASCOL
Grace Baptist Church, Cape Coral

Editor’s Note: In order to take account of differing evaluations of this article of the Baptist Faith and Message, the following essay in response to the commentary by Hershael York (March 27), is offered here.

An old courthouse adage says that it is better to have a good lawyer and a poor case than a poor lawyer and a good case. Hershael York’s exposition of Article 8 of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 demonstrates this.

Article 8 was significantly changed from its 1925 and 1963 wording by the study and revision committee of 1999-2000. Unbelievably, the revision was recommended and adopted without one word of explanation by the committee for the change.

For seventy-five years the article simply stated this: “The first day of the week is the Lord’s Day. It is a Christian institution for regular observance. It commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead and should be employed in exercises of worship and spiritual devotion, both public and private, and by refraining from worldly amusements, and resting from secular employments, works of necessity and mercy only being excepted” (the word “being” was added for clarification in 1963).

In the 2000 revision the first two sentences were left intact but the third was weakened and truncated. The phrase “should be employed in” was reduced to “should include” thereby lowering the activities of “worship and spiritual devotion” from their all-encompassing place of importance to the level of things that should not be forgotten on the Lord’s Day. In other words, instead of using the day as a special opportunity for spiritual renewal and service (a “market day of the soul” as John Bunyan put it), just be sure that in and around all of your other activities, don’t forget to go to church and pray.

The encouragement to avoid “worldly amusements” (professional football, spending the day at the beach, etc.) and to rest from “secular employments” (your vocational responsibilities) has been completely eliminated. Of course, this renders moot the exception of “works of necessity” (the work of the police and fire departments, or repairing a broken deadbolt on your door, etc.) and “mercy” (helping a stranded motorist repair her car, the work of hospitals and medical professionals, etc.).

After this significant reduction the 2000 revision then adds a sentence that may be the most problematic statement in the whole article: “Activities on the Lord’s Day should be commensurate with the Christian’s conscience under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.” Shouldn’t this be true of any activities on any day of the week? What possible function does this sentence play? Though I am quite certain that it was not the intention of the committee, this statement establishes a hermeneutical principle that the moderates and liberals in the SBC have been advocating for the last two decades.

If this principle were applied consistently then the whole Baptist Faith and Message could be reduced from its current eighteen articles to the following single sentence: “Belief and practice should be commensurate with the Christian’s conscience under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.”

Given the reduction of the Lord’s Day in the BF&M 2000, it is no wonder that York’s attempted exposition of it is at times confusing. For example, he pits the day of rest as a creation ordinance against “the law of Moses,” by which he evidently means the fourth of the Ten Commandments, all of which God Himself wrote with His very finger. Granted, new covenant believers are no longer required to keep a Jewish Sabbath, but do Christians acknowledge Ten Commandments or only nine? The Scripture references at the end of the article include Exodus 20:8-11, testifying to some kind of connection between the concerns of the Lord’s Day and the fourth commandment.

York’s unwillingness to see this connection makes his ethical assertion that Christians “should observe a day of rest” open to the charge of legalism. If God does not require it, why “should” we do it? I wholeheartedly agree with his conclusion that “it is right and reasonable” to use Sunday as a day of worship and “of rest in which we cease from labor that is not a work of necessity or of mercy.” That is a proper application of the fourth commandment. But there is no way that this conclusion can be legitimately reached from the watered-down version of Article 8 in the BF&M 2000.

York is obviously a good lawyer. Too bad the revised article 8 didn’t give him a stronger case.

Tom Ascol is pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral.

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