Sunday, Not Sabbath
By the second century Christianity was well on its way to separating from Judaism. One of the clearest marks of separation was meeting for worship on the first day of the week, Sunday, rather than on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The Christians called Sunday “the Lord’s Day”, most likely in honor of Jesus’ resurrection.
The practice began early on. Luke records that the church at Troas gathered on the first day of the week (Acts 20.7) and Paul advised the Corinthians to use that day to collect money for the poor in Jerusalem (1 Corinthians 16.1-3). John uses the term “the Lord’s Day” (Revelation 1.10) without having to explain his meaning, implying that the term was common and readily understood.
The early fathers regularly spoke of Sunday as the day of worship.
An early Christian manual of church practice, the Didache (AD 70-120) gave this instruction: “On the Lord’s own day, having gathered together, break bread and give thanks…” (14.1).
The Epistle of Barnabas 15 (c. AD 100) says: “Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead.”
Justin Martyr wrote in his First Apology 67 (c. AD 155): “But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead.”
Though a few early Jewish Christian groups worshiped on the Sabbath, worship on the Lord’s Day was so widespread that Christian historian Philip Schaff observed that by the second century, “there is no dissenting voice” (History of the Christian Church, Vol II, p. 201).
Despite the early church’s practice of worshiping on the Lord’s Day rather than the Jewish Sabbath, once Constantine made Christianity legal (AD 313) and decreed Sunday a civil day of rest (AD 321), some Christian leaders began finding a closer relationship between Sunday and the Sabbath. Eventually the Puritans of the 17th century codified the Sabbath as a perpetually binding law and treated Sunday as the Christian Sabbath on which no work must be done. That notion fueled American “blue laws”—no commerce on Sunday—which many of us remember from our childhoods. Most of those have been done away, not because courts struck them down, but because our society no longer wanted them. Blue laws began to fade in the late 1960s because businesses wanted to sell and people wanted to buy on Sundays.
In any case, every Sunday we worship and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, continuing the practice of the earliest church.
The practice began early on. Luke records that the church at Troas gathered on the first day of the week (Acts 20.7) and Paul advised the Corinthians to use that day to collect money for the poor in Jerusalem (1 Corinthians 16.1-3). John uses the term “the Lord’s Day” (Revelation 1.10) without having to explain his meaning, implying that the term was common and readily understood.
The early fathers regularly spoke of Sunday as the day of worship.
An early Christian manual of church practice, the Didache (AD 70-120) gave this instruction: “On the Lord’s own day, having gathered together, break bread and give thanks…” (14.1).
The Epistle of Barnabas 15 (c. AD 100) says: “Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead.”
Justin Martyr wrote in his First Apology 67 (c. AD 155): “But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead.”
Though a few early Jewish Christian groups worshiped on the Sabbath, worship on the Lord’s Day was so widespread that Christian historian Philip Schaff observed that by the second century, “there is no dissenting voice” (History of the Christian Church, Vol II, p. 201).
Despite the early church’s practice of worshiping on the Lord’s Day rather than the Jewish Sabbath, once Constantine made Christianity legal (AD 313) and decreed Sunday a civil day of rest (AD 321), some Christian leaders began finding a closer relationship between Sunday and the Sabbath. Eventually the Puritans of the 17th century codified the Sabbath as a perpetually binding law and treated Sunday as the Christian Sabbath on which no work must be done. That notion fueled American “blue laws”—no commerce on Sunday—which many of us remember from our childhoods. Most of those have been done away, not because courts struck them down, but because our society no longer wanted them. Blue laws began to fade in the late 1960s because businesses wanted to sell and people wanted to buy on Sundays.
In any case, every Sunday we worship and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, continuing the practice of the earliest church.