The Lord's Day And The Sabbath

A brief defense

Theologians have discussed the Lord’s Day for far longer than I have been alive. Countless books, podcasts, and articles have been produced during the discussion of this topic. In light of that, I wanted to make a relatively brief case for my beliefs on the subject.

To start, we affirm that one day of rest per week is a moral command. Rooted in the creation of the world, God commands his image-bearers to rest because He Himself rested.

And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
— Genesis 2:3

More explicit instructions on the Sabbath are given to God’s people in the Ten Commandments. Notice again that God appeals to His creation ordinance when issuing this command.

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

— Exodus 20:8-11

By all accounts, it is clear that God’s people have an obligation to rest one day a week, as it is both instituted at creation and re-iterated in God’s law. So, if a person were to claim that Christians no longer need to follow this command, they would certainly have some explaining to do. It is singularly difficult to explain how only one commandment is made irrelevant while the other nine are still binding. Hodge, in his Systematic Theology, notices the universal nature of the fourth commandment.

“It appears, therefore, from the nature of this commandment as moral, and not positive or ceremonial, that it is original and universal in its obligation. No man assumes that the commands, “Thou shalt not kill,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were first announced by Moses, and ceased to be obligatory when the old economy passed away. A moral law is one that binds from its own nature.”

— Charles Hodge

We can clearly establish from multiple arguments that Christians still have a moral obligation to rest one day a week, yet many continue to have strange notions about this day. For starters, I typically find in this discussion that some people are particularly opinionated on the day of the week. Some people claim that the Old Testament Jews used a Lunar Calendar system, resulting in an outright denial of the one-day-in-seven Sabbath. This view is a strange one and widely rejected, putting far too much emphasis on theories about ancient calendars rather than the one-day-a-week principle laid out for us in Scripture. Another particularly opinionated group is the Saturday-Sabbath denominations. They hold tightly to the 1-in-7 principle but also emphasize that the Sabbath must always be the last day of the week. While all Christians affirm the moral component of the fourth commandment, one wonders if this particular emphasis is a bit of a stretch. It is entirely possible that the start and end days of the week were rotating in Egyptian calendars. If this were the case, seventh-day-Sabbatarians would be attempting to pinpoint an ethical requirement that was hardwired into the Roman calendar system. Honestly, I find these arguments to be a bit of a stretch, and I only mention them in passing here. After all, my primary argument does not rely on the particulars of the calendars.

Because as far as history is concerned, everyone agrees that the day was changed. It only took a couple of hundred years, but it is evident that early church Christians no longer used the Saturday Sabbath, meeting and worshipping on Sunday instead. Early Christians insisted that the day of Christ’s resurrection should be known as the Lord’s Day, and it did not take long before this day became the Christian day of rest. Saturday observers generally nuance this timeline, claiming that Sunday rest was only really a thing after it was forcefully imposed by Constantine. Honestly, I don’t see much validity in this argument, especially given the fact that we know early Christians were observing the Lord’s Day from Scripture itself.

And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight.

— Acts 20:7

And again, we see in Pauls letter:

Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.

— 1 Corinthians 16:1–2

But as we build our case, remember that these verses are only pieces of the big picture. To see the bigger picture, we must affirm that Christ is the Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8). Second, we ought to affirm that the extraneous festivals and holy days (certain yearly events are referred to as Sabbaths as well) of the Old Testament calendar were merely shadows of the true rest we find in Christ.

Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.

— Colossians 2:16-17

Therefore, in the bigger picture, Christ is not only Lord of the Sabbath, but every Sabbath points directly to Him!

Some people claim that the previous verse abolishes the Sabbath entirely, but I would emphatically deny such a thing. God would not abolish the day of rest that He instituted for our benefit! As it says in Hebrews 4:9, “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” Instead, Colossians 2:17 makes clear that the days of rest are intended to point us to Christ. As Christians, we no longer see Christ through shadows, so we rest in Christ on Sunday, the day of his resurrection. This is what the apostles taught, and this is what we continue to proclaim.

But who authorized the change from the seventh day to the first? Jesus did, by rising from the dead on the first day and meeting his disciples on this and subsequent first days. And the apostles did also, by adopting Lord’s Day worship and by failing to impose a seventh-day rest upon Gentile Christians.

— John Frame

In affirming the Lord’s day, we appeal to the authority of the apostles, not a specific verse or chapter of the Bible. Some biblicists may get hung up on this part, but it is important to remember that the apostles were divinely inspired to make such a change.

Although the Lords’s day may be said to be of apostolic institution, the authority upon which it rests is nevertheless divine because they were influenced by the Holy Spirit no less in sacred institutions than in setting forth the doctrines of the gospel either orally or by writing.

— Francis Turretin

However, in addition to these arguments, there are other reasons to keep Sunday as the Christian Sabbath. Contrarions will undoubtedly have various arguments against my claims, so this last bit is with them in mind. If you find yourself disagreeing with the particulars of the day or taking issue with the specifics, I would encourage you to triage these less-important calendar convictions into the proper place. God has given His people holy sacraments, and if you skip church because you have second thoughts about some small particular of the Lord’s day, you miss out on God’s gifts to you and the sweet fellowship He offers through His church. John Calvin, in his Catechism of the Churches in Geneva, advises that believers ought “Not to neglect the holy ordinances which contribute to the spiritual polity of the Church; especially to frequent sacred assemblies, to hear the word of God, to celebrate the sacraments, and engage in the regular prayers, as enjoined.”

Overall, I think I have made a fairly compelling case that Christians ought to observe Sunday as the Lord’s Day and that we have a moral duty to uphold it as a day of rest. I won’t go into the particulars of what rest entails, but it seems obvious to me that finding true rest in Sunday worship is certainly part of it.