Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

12. “For it has been written, I say, saith the Lord, that every knee shall bow to me and every
tongue confess to God. Then, therefore, each one of us shall give an account to God concerning
himself.” Here we are having the day problem, which the devil in all ages has used to upset myriads,
clearly and unequivocally settled. The Christian says, “Keep Sunday,” the Jew, Saturday, and the
Moslem, Friday. Go round the world eastwardly and Saturday would become Sunday; go round
westwardly and Monday is your Sunday. Here Paul certifies the utter nonessentiality of the day
problem. You must simply satisfy your conscience and that of others and be true to God. “Sabbath”
is a Hebrew word which means “rest,” symbolizing the soul-rest we have in Jesus when sin is dead
and gone. The sanctified have perpetual Sabbath in the soul and life, i.e., seven Sabbaths every week.
We see in the above Scripture that every man is to follow his conscience as to this matter. All days
are holy when you are holy. God requires you to be holy. If you are truly holy, all your days are holy.
If your own heart is not holy, it is idolatry to depend on holy days. You will go straight to hell
through holy days if you yourself are not holy. Hence the silly nonsense of the people who try so hard
to get you to Judaize on Saturday and at the same time let the devil have your soul. There is no issue
here raised on holy days, but holy people. When we are all right, the day is all right. We must all
keep Sunday for the conscience of Christendom (1 Corinthians 8:12). If your conscience requires you
to keep Saturday, then do it for the sake of your own conscience, at the same time remembering that
God requires you to keep Sunday for the conscience of Christendom. So, in that case, you have two
days to keep. It will not hurt you to desist from labor and attend church two days in the week. The
Christian church began all Jews, revolutionizing in a century and becoming all Gentiles. The
primitive Jewish Christians kept Saturday, and commemorated Sunday also as a sacred memento of
our Lord’s resurrection (Acts 20 and 1 Corinthians 16:3). This is corroborated by Justin Martyr and
other Christian fathers who lived and wrote in the second century. As the Gentiles never did keep
the Jewish Sabbath, the universal hebdomadal division of time which followed the evangelization
of the nations and exists this day, is demonstrative proof that the early Christians kept Sunday. Some
fanatics tell us the Pope of Rome changed the day, when there never was a pope till the seventh
century, when Procas, King of Italy, crowned Boniface the Third Bishop of Rome. When a student
in college I read the Roman historians Suitonius, Pliny, Sallust, and Livy, who wrote in the first
centuries of the Christian era their graphic accounts of the Christians suffering persecution under the
Emperors. They are to be taken as perfectly reliable, because they were all heathens and in no
sympathy with the martyrs. In their descriptions of their martyrdom, they simply narrate how their
persecutors questioned them, “Doininicum servasti?” “Hast thou kept the Lord’s day?” The answer
came, “Christianus sum; intermittere non possum,” “I am a Christian; I can not omit it.” On this
confession they killed them. Now this is positive proof that these early martyrs kept Sunday, which
is called the Lord’s day, whereas Saturday never was so called. If those martyrs had kept Saturday,
they would have asked them: “Sabbaticum servasti?” “Have you kept the Sabbath?” This question
they never did ask them. It is a shame to have weak Christians upset about the old Jewish Sabbath.
The very genius of the gospel dispensation corroborates the charge. The old dispensation was under
the law, which was work first and then rest, — “if you do not work you shall not rest,” — while our
dispensation is under the gospel characterized by love and mercy, which says, “Rest first and then
you will be in good fix to do your work.” Some people in our time worship a day-god, others a
water-god, and still others worship gods of wood and stone in a fine edifice, worship the institutions
of their own making and many other gods. Get saved through and through. Keep your eye on Jesus,
be sure that you are holy, then all your days will be holy. Every knee shall bow and every tongue