The Fourth Commandment, Part I: Is Sunday "the Lord's Day"?

We might wonder whether Christians should take Sundays off. We might use the term “Sabbath” in connection with that discussion. But before we consider what “Sabbath” means for Christians now, there is a question of terminology to clear up. This might seem frustrating – let’s answer the big question! – but given the traditional Christian claim has been that Sunday is the new Christian Sabbath (rather than the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday), it’s necessary.

At Creation, God “rested” on the seventh day – it was the finalisation of Creation, of that initial work (Genesis 2.2). This day, in our terms, is Saturday. That is what is observed by the Israelites as a rest day even before Sinai, and what is denoted in the Fourth Commandment.

But the special days that seem marked in some way by early Christians in the New Testament (let alone later) don’t seem to correspond to the Saturday Sabbath. We have two points of reference for this: (1) John says in Revelation 1.10 that his vision came to him on “the Lord’s Day”; (2) in Acts 20.7, the Ephesian church gathers “to break bread” on “the first day of the week”, and in 1 Corinthians 16.2, Paul directs a collection for the church in Jerusalem to be taken “on the first day of every week”.

The example of John seems to be of a specific day – if as some claim “the Lord’s Day” denotes every day, it is a needless reference by John, who gives no relevant information by saying so – and we know the first day in Biblical terms roughly corresponds to our Sunday (or rather, dusk Saturday to dusk Sunday – that the meeting in Ephesus was on a Saturday evening is suggested by Eutychus falling asleep and out of the window, Acts 20.9).

Are the two the same? And why the first day? Let’s answer the second question first. This is simple: as we see in John 20.1 and Matthew 22.1-2, it was “after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week” that the women went to Jesus’ tomb and discovered that it was empty. Jesus rose on the first day of the week. Whether it was a day of obligatory worship for early Christians or not, the fact that the Ephesian and Corinthian churches met on the first day is, it seems clear, connected to the other key New Testament use of that term. They met on Sundays because Jesus had risen on a Sunday.

Was this “the Lord’s Day”? The early testimony of the post-New Testament church says so, which is indicative, but what can we do when the term is not used elsewhere in Scripture? As the 2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith puts it (1.9): “The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself; and therefore when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which are not many, but one), it must be searched by other places that speak more clearly.” John was worshipping God in a set-aside time-slot, on a specific day. It wasn’t his usual night-time prayers, or something that happened as he walked to a nearby village on the island of his exile. He was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day”. What is the only other set-aside time for worship on a specific day mentioned in the New Testament?  

The first day of the week, the day of Jesus’ resurrection, the beginning – as one early Christian writer put it – of the new creation. What we may say from this, then, is that New Testament-era Christians no longer went to synagogue on the Sabbath (Saturday) by necessity, as we see Jesus do in Luke 4. The ordinary day of their observance was Sunday – the Lord’a Day.

Next time I’ll look into what “the Christian Sabbath” is – a specific day, any given day, or a lifestyle – and what that means for the Fourth Commandment for Christians.