Another argument brought up a lot when letting others know you keep Sabbath is Colossians 2:16. Not that this verse is opposing Sabbath-keeping, because when reading it in context, it is quite the opposite. But people use this verse to say "Well, don't judge me because I don't keep the Sabbath." I've had this verse thrown at me several times and I have yet to tell one person "you have to keep the Sabbath." This goes back to the line of thought in the last comic of those things we have been taught that go against Scripture. When presented with something from Scripture that says "You should do X", not Joshua saying "You should do X", but Scripture, the pre-programmed "reasons" for not doing X start coming out.

But let's look at the verse being used here. The chapter starts out and Paul is telling the Colossians that he hasn't seen many of them in person (hence the video call). Then goes right into a warning: Walk like Jesus did, don't let other's philosophy and human tradition sway you. That last part, the human tradition, Paul brings up again at the end of the chapter, saying how it appears to have wisdom but that they have no value. I mentioned in the last comic that Paul is speaking against the Gnostic-like believers who were harassing the new believers here. We can see this through Pauls' words of "do not handle, do not taste, do not touch". These are things that Gnostic teachings promote. As quoted from Christianity.com "Other Gnostics, perhaps the majority, held that the body must be kept in check by strict asceticism." As Gnostics aren't really a major group today, people mistakenly look at these "do nots" and associate them with the Law. The context of everything Paul is speaking about here though isn't about the Law, but of human tradition.

So, keep that in mind when you look at the Sabbath. Is your keeping (or not keeping it) due to human tradition [i.e. something someone is teaching that the Bible says]? Or is it due to what you have studied out in Scripture?

A side note: Paul says "symbolic" instead of "a shadow" because when looking into the Greek and the associated Hebrew words to that Greek word, the first word given had a definition of symbolic. When you look at the whole of Scripture in context, that makes more sense.


https://thestraightandnarrow.cfw.me/comics/544

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