“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” Mark 2:27–28

In a world as frenzied as ours, rest is a rare commodity. Worker bees race to the office for a barrage of meetings and tasks. Then they wrestle their way home through rush hour just in time to sit on the sidelines of a kid’s event before collapsing in a recliner like catatonic zombies until it’s time to repeat the cycle. We desperately need an exit off the treadmill.

Sabbath is the Only Eden We Have Left

As a culture, we are in crisis. We are so busy that we have no time for the things that matter most: worship, family, meditation, and emotional recharging. From the very beginning, God knew our need for rest and embedded a radical regulation to ensure we would enjoy it. It is called Sabbath, and we need it now more than ever.

Sabbath has its origin in Eden. Genesis 2:2–3 (ESV), “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.” Clearly, God didn’t rest because he was tuckered out. He rested as part of the beauty of creation and embedded the Sabbath principle into our world. The principle is simple: creation’s greatest productivity is within a cycle that includes rest. For humans, that means that we will get more done in six days of work than seven. Our mind, emotions, and body need time to marinate, clear the clutter, dream, and reorganize. Without rest, our work is impeded because our creativity is stifled. Research shows that after fifty hours of work a week our productivity drops so low that the extra hours are virtually unproductive.

The only part of Eden we still have full access to is Sabbath. If we will return to the rest of Eden, the rest of our lives would rest less under the curse of Adam’s sin.

Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath

Jesus had much to say about Sabbath. His most frequent fight with the Pharisees was over Sabbath regulations. The Jewish establishment took the simple command “Don’t work on the Sabbath” and turned it into a small encyclopedia of prohibitions. For example, an egg laid on the Sabbath was off limits. Now, you could hatch that egg and eat the chicken. Or you could eat the eggs laid by a chicken hatched from the egg that was laid on the Sabbath. But you couldn’t eat that egg laid on the Sabbath. Is it any wonder Jesus deliberately flaunted those rules that turned the blessing of rest into a fretful list of rules requiring us to walk on eggshells?

Jesus consistently rejected their Sabbath regulations: he healed a man with a shriveled hand one Sabbath (Mark 3:1–6), a woman bowed double (Luke 13:10–21), a man with dropsy (Luke 14:1–24), a lame man at Bethesda (John 5:10–18), and a man born blind (John 9:1–7). Taken as a whole, the point of each of these events could be simply summarized: humanity should be served by the Sabbath, not burdened by it. Or to use Jesus’ memorable phrase: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” Jesus reclaimed the Sabbath from religion and gave it back to humanity.

By healing people, Jesus showed not how to Sabbath but who is Sabbath. The Sabbath is a blessing to bring health and healing. That’s not a thing, it’s a person. Jesus is our health, our healing, our rest. As he said in Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

A Critical Warning About Sabbath Keeping

Under Judaism of Jesus’ day, God’s gift of Sabbath was turned into law through human regulations. These meticulous rules became a burden rather than a blessing because the principle of rest became a ruler to measure righteousness. The Sabbath is not another rule to be added to your spiritual discipline. Rather, it is a creational principle to be celebrated as a gift. This is why Paul gives this important warning about legal regulations which we should apply here to Sabbath keeping (among other religious rules): “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’” (Colossians 2:20–21). Paul’s shrewd insight in Colossians 2:20–21 uncovers the empty arrogance of legalism. What you avoid doesn’t make you righteous. Nor do the religious practices you observe. What makes us righteous is the blood of Jesus. Religious activities, such as going to church, prayer, tithes, Bible reading, are only valuable in as much as they train us for serving others.

So let’s be clear—keeping the Sabbath is God’s gift to us, not our gift to him. It is a gift we receive so that we can rest from work to refresh our souls, worship God with other believers to lift our spirit, and reconnect with family and friends so we can invest in our communities. When the rhythm of rest punctuates our work, we will experience more productivity at work and more connectivity at home. This is the life God wants for you.

Mark Moore is an author and a teaching pastor at Christ’s Church of the Valley in Peoria, Arizona. If you'd like to read more of his work, visit markmoore.org.