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 The Third Commandment
According to Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible, the third commandment reads: “Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord, your God; in it you shall do no work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the stranger who lives in your city
How should we keep the Sabbath day holy? How do the Original Christians do it?
This commandment doesn’t mean that on one day of the week nothing at all can be done, but we understand it this way:
We should come together in community on this day; we should review the past week together and close it with the power of the Lord. The sinfulness that still needs to be dealt with, that is, what is still not cleared up, we should clear up with our neighbour, so that we can go freely into the new week. When all of this is done insofar as is possible, then we should praise and glorify God and thank Him and also talk about Him, who is the infinite love and who was with us all through the previous week. This is what the Original Christians do every Saturday evening. We come together in prayer; we review the week together; we close the previous week and then have supper together at the table of the Lord. We thank God; we praise and glorify Him and consciously take Christ again with us into the coming week, so that He may help us fulfil the commandments and the Sermon on the Mount.
And so on the Sabbath day, the Original Christians honour our eternal Father together and consciously cultivate the inner life more than the outer life on this day. In this way, this day is a source of strength for us. We won’t just waste this strength senselessly, but will draw from the wellspring, which is God, the hope and strength and confidence and also the joy for the coming week.
Besides, the Original Christians are glad for the free hours, in which we can do something for ourselves personally – something that gives us joy. But the so-called leisure-time stress is something we avoid, because the effects of this would determine the coming week for us. How would Monday then be, which should be a dynamic workday, a day of activity?
As Original Christians, we try to be more calm and collected on this work-free day, to go within even more, to draw strength, to “tank up”, so to speak, in order to be able to go full of strength into the coming week with Christ, our Redeemer.
In the words of the Bible “The Good News”, this third commandment says: “Forget not the day of rest. It is a special day that belongs to the Lord. Six days in the week you have the time to do your work. But the seventh day should be a day of rest.”
When we compare the texts of the two Bibles, we can see that the truth is described in both books with differing words. And so, we see that we shouldn’t cling to the letter, but instead should grasp the meaning, and we can fathom the meaning only when we strive to live more and more according to the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount in our daily life.
to "The Fourth Commandment" / return to "The Second Commandment"
Die Zehn Gebote GOTTES
»Der Buchstabe wird erst dann lebendig, wenn der Mensch die Gebote zu erfüllen beginnt. Dadurch reift er ganz allmählich in das allumfassende Gesetz der Liebe und des Lebens hinein. Nur wer mit dem Herzen und im Geiste der Liebe die Gebote erfüllt, der wird das allumfassende Gesetz erkennen und so zur Wahrheit finden, die inwendig in der Seele des Menschen ist.«
aus dem Buch »Das ist Mein Wort«
Dieser Text ist auch als Buch »Die Zehn Gebote Gottes« erhältlich beim Verlag DAS WORT.
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