The Fourth Commandment (Ethics of Leadership Reflective Paper)

I am a Christian. The word Christian derives from the Koine Greek word Χριστός (Christόs). Essentially, to be a Christian is to be a little Christ. Christ, when He descended to the earth as God Incarnate, fully God and yet inexplicably and simultaneously fully human, fulfilled all the biblical law as per Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (emphasis added). Now that the law has been fulfilled in Christ, the elect saints receive the benefits. Romans 8:1-4 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (emphasis added). Although Christ has fulfilled the law and I am no longer condemned because I cannot, I have been regenerated and made alive by the power of the Holy Spirit and so now, it is my desire, in addition to my duty, to obey God’s moral law.

The fourth moral law is to honor the Sabbath day (now Sunday) and keep it holy by refraining from common labor on that day. Because I am under obligation to keep the God’s law, I am under obligation to refrain from labor on Sundays. Every Sunday I have to make a decision about what I am going to do with my time. Because, as a Christian, I hold the commandment of God supreme over any instruction of man, I choose to neither work nor study on the Lord’s day. I have six other days of the week to pour into academia, and it is enough. I also have those same six days to arrange a work schedule within; that is enough. I am convinced of this truth to the point that I do not fear to lose my job over it. Because I hold the moral law of God to be the highest standard in my life and the measurement by which I distinguish right from wrong, every week I choose to keep every Sunday holy to my God. I do so by refusing to allow common weekly labor to encroach on the one day each week I can devote to delighting in Him through worship, in Scripture (preached, taught, read, and studied), prayer, singing, fellowship, and the ordinances (baptism and communion).