What is the Lord's day?

"I was [or became] in the Spirit on the Lord's-day, and heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet." (v. 10.) This does not describe his usual spiritual condition, but a state in which he was, under the Spirit's power, receiving inspired communications from Christ. "The Lord's-day" is not "the day of the Lord," from which in the original it differs in form as widely as in meaning. The day of the Lord is the time of Christ's power and glory on earth. But the Lord's-day was a day which John spent in Patmos. In creation God appointed a day of rest, and in His covenant with Israel marked it specially as His own. The covenant is gone, and the rest of the old creation broken. God therefore, instead of calling us to share his rest from the old creation, calls upon us to share His joy in the new. The day on which this new creation began, by Christ's resurrection from the dead, is called "the Lord's-day." It is not a transfer of the sabbath from the last day of the week to the first, for this would destroy the meaning of both, but an entirely new thing, resting on an entirely new foundation.

The question might then be asked, "Has the Christian believer no Sabbath day to keep?" The answer is, No. If we speak of a Sabbath day then surely it must mean the seventh day, and if we desire to keep the Sabbath day holy we must keep not the first day of the week but the seventh day. But some will say, "the Sabbath has been changed from the last day of the week to the first day." This is often said; but there's no scriptural authority for it. Neither Christ nor His apostles declared such a change. It is, therefore, wrong to call the first day of the week, known by the name "Sunday," the Sabbath or "Christian Sabbath." The first day of the week is the Lord's day, the day of resurrection, the day of the new creation. This day was kept in the very beginning of the Christian age as a precious memorial of Him who was dead and was raised from the dead, who is seated in the Highest Heaven and who is coming again. It was with the early Christians, and should be so still, a day of worship, when they came together to break bread and partake of the blessed cup, to show the Lord's death, till He come again. Some one has expressed it in the following short sentences: " Israel was commanded to observe the Sabbath day; the church is privileged to enjoy the first day of the week. The former was the test of Israel 's moral condition; the latter is the significant proof of the Church's eternal acceptance. The Sabbath day manifested what Israel could do for God; the Lord's day perfectly declares what God has done for us."

Further, the Revelation was given to the Apostle at a special time. It was on "the Lord's day." This term must not be confounded with "the day of the Lord," an expression found in the prophets, and used by the Apostles Paul and Peter, to signify the day when the Lord will suddenly come as a thief in the night to execute judgment (1 Thess. 5:2; 2 Thess. 2:2; 2 Peter 3:10). Obviously the things which are described in chapters 2 and 3 of the Revelation, and the greater part of "the things that are about to be after these things," do not take place in the day of the Lord. There would be no meaning in the Apostle being carried in spirit to the day of the Lord to see things that must take place a couple of thousand years before that day. Thus it seems clear that the Lord's day is the resurrection day, referred to in other Scriptures as the first day of the week. It is called the Lord's day to indicate that it is not a common day; as, indeed, the Lord's Supper is so called to distinguish it from a common meal. It is a day specially set apart, not by a legal command, as in the case of the Jewish Sabbath, but as a special privilege for the worship and service of the Lord.

Thus it is in a place withdrawn from the world, in a suited condition — in the Spirit; and on a special occasion — the Lord's Day, John is arrested by a great voice, as a trumpet, in order to see these wondrous visions, and hear these solemn communications.

This is the reason why Christians keep the first day of the week, and not the seventh or sabbath day. The rest was acquired by the power of Christ's redemption, and the first day, when He arose from the dead, was that which proclaimed it to faith, spite of man's guilt and ruin. The seventh day will be the rest of man on earth; the first day celebrates Christ's taking us in Him to heaven. Then was life from the dead, life more abundantly, liberty from the law and every consequence of sin - in a word, the victory of grace. The Christian therefore has the first day distinctively, because it belongs to and witnesses of the perfected work of Christ, and consequently introduces heavenly rest. The first day is in contrast with the seventh, which appertained to the round of man's labour in nature and of the Jew's under the law, in which Adam and Israel utterly broke down. It is the Lord's day emphatically, and thus testifies of the triumph of Christ's word and the glory of His person - not the day which guilty unbelief would have perverted into the proof and means of His inferiority. It is positive, direct blessing to him who owns and honours it - not because it is the close of legal toil, but the commencement of Christian hope - the resurrection-day when we begin our spiritual life; and look on for what will crown so precious a pledge.

Not the first day but the Sabbath was the memorial of creation rest, which the law imposed in due time as a most holy commandment peculiarly bound up with God's authority and honour. The resurrection of Christ has brought in a new creation, after having by Himself purged our sins on the cross. Hence the first day is the day of manifest and triumphant life in Christ, our life, when our hearts go forth in worship, communion and service. A bodily rest which one shared with the ox and the ass certainly does not rise up to the blessed associations of Christ risen from the dead. Nor does the canon of the New Testament close without stamping this day as 'the Lord's day' (Rev. 1:10). Efforts have not been wanting on the one hand to make this a prophetic day with which it really has not one idea in common. For 'the day of the Lord' will be one of ever-increasing and solemn judgments from God on the earth, whereas 'the Lord's day' is one of heavenly grace, bringing us already into the victory of His resurrection from the dead, the pledge of our own resurrection or change at His coming. On the other hand it is to lower the character and authority of the first day of the week beyond calculation, to treat it merely as the day appointed by the church.

Thus neither creation nor law nor human arrangement had to do with it. The first of the week is a day marked out by the Lord's repeated appearing, by the inspired sanction of the Holy Ghost, and by the final sanction of it as devoted to the Lord in the one great prophetic Book of the New Testament; just as the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11:20) alone shares, as distinct from all other suppers, the same striking and distinctive designation.

THE LORD’S DAY.

— “The Lord’s day” occurs but once in the Holy Scriptures, afterwards it became the common appellation of the Christian’s special day of rest and worship. That the first day of the week is meant seems evident from the following considerations: First, the difference of the expression used in the original from that employed to set forth the prophetic “day of the Lord,” for which see 1 Corinthians 5:5; 2 Corinthians 1:14; 1 Thessalonians 5:2. Second, the character of the first vision (vv. 12-20), which is of present application. Christ glorified in the midst of the churches could have neither place nor meaning in the period of coming judgment, spoken of in both Testaments as the “day of the Lord,” and which is dependent upon the setting aside of the Church as a public witness for God on earth. These, and other considerations, forbid the application of the disputed term to the “day of the Lord,” yet future.

This distinction is worthy of the serious attention of the reader. Let him examine it prayerfully in the light of Scripture. There may be nothing and there may be a great deal in a mere name. In the present instance, there is a great deal more involved in the distinction between "the Sabbath" and "the Lord's day" than many Christians seem to be aware of. It is very evident that the first day of the week gets a place, in the Word of God, which no other day gets. No other day is ever called by that majestic and elevated title, "the Lord's day." Some, I am aware, deny that Rev. 1:10 refers to the first day of the week; but I feel most fully assured that sound criticism and sound exegesis do both warrant, yea, demand the application of that passage, not to the day of Christ's advent in glory, but to the day of his resurrection from the dead.

We are aware, alas! that some persons have, through ignorance or misguided feelings, said things in reference to the Lord's day which we utterly repudiate, and that they have done things on the Lord's day of which we wholly disapprove. We believe that there is a body of New Testament teaching on the important subject of the Lord's day, quite sufficient to give that day its proper place in every well-regulated mind. The Lord Jesus rose from the dead on that day. (Matt. 28:1-6; Mark 16:1-2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1) He met His disciples, once and again, on that day. (John 20:19, 26.) The early disciples met to break bread on that day. (Acts 20:7) The apostle, by the Holy Ghost, directs the Corinthians to lay by their contributions for the poor on that day. (1 Cor. 16:2.) And, finally, the exiled apostle was in the Spirit and received visions of the future on that day. (Rev. 1:10.) The above scriptures are conclusive. They prove that the Lord's day occupies a place quite unique, quite heavenly, quite divine. But they as fully prove the entire distinctness of the Jewish Sabbath and the Lords day. The two days are spoken of throughout the New Testament with fully as much distinctness as we speak of Saturday and Sunday. The only difference is, that the latter are heathen titles, and the former divine. (Comp. Matt. 28:1; Acts 13:14, Acts 17:2, Acts 20:7; Col. 2:16)

354 But the first day of the week is marked out to the Christian, not indeed as law, but as blessing. Christ rose, Christ met His disciples on it, and again the same week following. On the first day of the week the disciples met to break bread: on the first day they were to lay by their profits for the poor saints; and in the Revelation it is definitely called the Lord's day. As such I own it; but I do not, with Presbyterian traditions, abandon the foundations of my hope, in seeking rest in the creation in which Christ has been rejected, nor in the covenant of the law of which He bore the curse. The Lord's day is the first day, not the seventh, and rests on redemption basis, which declares entire failure of the other rest.

A. Undoubtedly the Christian is declared to have died to the law as well as to sin; and to both without qualification. Grace and new creation have taken us out of Adam's relationship. We are in Christ risen and in heaven, and are told expressly in Colossians 2 that none should judge us in eating or in drinking, or in respect of a feast-day, or a new-moon, or sabbaths. Having died with Christ, we are not, as men living in the world, to subject ourselves to ordinances. This does not hinder but help our enjoying the first day of the week, "the Lord's day" or resurrection, not as in bondage but in liberty, not only for the remembrance of Christ in worship, but for edification also, as well as in the outgoing of heart with the gospel to the lost and burdened. Hence we see how the Lord pointedly wrought His works of mercy on the Sabbath, breaking through the formality of the self-righteous Pharisee; while the devotedness, to which the resurrection of Christ gave so mighty an impulse, deeply offended the rationalism of the easy-going Sadducee. We may notice too how the N.T., while showing our precious place as associated with Christ expressed by the first day (wholly distinct from the sabbath) carefully avoids any reference for it to the law, or even to a fresh commandment. For we are not under law but under grace. Such is Christianity as a whole and essentially. The Lord's day falls under that principle.