Why do Christians worship on Sunday?

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.

The Gentile nations had by this time lost all knowledge of the true God and of His work in creation. Israel alone had the knowledge of this and of the fact that God had rested on the seventh day. In the law God was enforcing His creatorial rights over man, and by Sabbath observance Israel was to have His creatorial work in constant remembrance.

We Christians are not under the law but under grace. The Sabbath, as the sign of the law covenant, has therefore lost its significance for us, as we see in such a Scripture as Colossians 2:16. Nevertheless there can be no doubt that a rest of one day in every seven is the wise and beneficent intention of God for man. The resurrection of Christ is the seal of our faith, and hence the first day of the week, on which He rose from the dead, became the day that Christians have from the very beginning devoted to His worship and service, and it has become the day on which we cease from our ordinary toil. Israel's week worked up to the day of rest. The Christian's week starts from the day of rest, based upon the resurrection of Christ.

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."

It is well for Christians to remember that the religious observances of days is not consistent with the spirit of the good news. To keep one day different to another is to say that in some sense this day is holier than other days; but to the Christian every day is holy. It is true that the Lord has marked out for us the first day of the week as set apart from the other days. It is the day of our Lord's resurrection. It is the day on which the Holy Spirit was given (Lev. 23:15-16; Acts 2:1). It is the day on which the disciples came together to break bread (Acts 20:7). The Apostle told the Galatians and the Corinthians on this day to lay by them in store as God had prospered them (1 Cor. 16:1-2). If we compare this with Hebrews 13 we will see that this is included as one of the sacrifices we may offer to God on that first day of the week. Finally we find in Revelation 1:10, that the Spirit of God calls this day "the Lord's day." In Greek the word "Lord's" is an adjective; so we might better translate it "the Lordly day." This word is only used in this way twice in the New Testament: "the Lordly day" and "the Lordly supper" in 1 Corinthians 11:20. This word beautifully links together the supper and the day. In many lands the Lord's people have liberty to use "the Lordly day" for their Lord. In many lands it is set apart as a day on which we may turn away from our usual employments, and use this day not for ourselves but for our Lord. The Sabbath of old was a day of rest. Often for the Christian, the Lord's day is the busiest day in the week. The Sabbath of old was made for man (Mark 2:27). The Lord's day belongs to the Lord, and we have the privilege of using it for Himself. Alas, in China many have not this privilege, and it may be that the Lord's people can only use it in this way at very heavy cost to themselves. But let us remember that the Lord has said, "Them that honor Me, I will honor, and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed." 1 Sam. 2:30.

Some people talk about the "Christian Sabbath" meaning the first day of the week. There is no such thing in the Bible as the "Christian Sabbath." "Sabbath" means "rest," and the Lord said, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." John 5:17. The Lord Jesus could not rest in a world full of sin and suffering: He could not keep the Sabbath down here; and so we find that continually the Jewish leaders were finding fault with Him because He broke the Sabbath. No more can a true Christian keep the Sabbath in such a world. He has no more right to be resting here than his Master. If his Master must work, so must he. But in Hebrews 4:9 we read: "There remaineth a keeping of a sabbath to the people of God." The sabbath rest is ahead of us. Soon, in the glory, we will rest with Him who has purchased that rest for us. Then we will keep sabbath: but not now.

In Romans 14 the Spirit of God gives us further teaching on the subject of days from another point of view. We have suggested that this chapter referred especially to the Jewish believers who had been brought up to such things; and there are many even Gentiles in our own day who are in a very similar position. They have been brought up to forms and ceremonies, and they have a conscience that they should observe them. We are to bear with these saints, and remember they keep the day as to the Lord. We sometimes hear very bitter things said against those who keep Christmas day. It is true that "Christ was not born in December. The time at which Mary went to visit Elizabeth proves that, if compared with the order of the twenty-four courses of the priests. Zecharias was the eighth course" (J. N. Darby). But there are many dear children of God who esteem this day above other days: not in the spirit of Galatians 4, but in the spirit of Romans 14. To such the Spirit says, "He that regardeth the day regardeth it unto the Lord." Rom. 14:6. And to those who judge and criticise their brethren for this act, the Lord says very plainly, "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own Master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand … But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ … Let us not therefore judge one another any more; but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way." Rom. 14:4, 10, 13. It is true that the one who is under the dominion of days and meats is called by the Holy Spirit "weak in the faith." But we are to receive such, and not judge him. (See Rom. 14:1.) And in all these things may we ever remember the words: "Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace." Rom. 14:19.

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.

It is simple ignorance of the facts to put down the origin of the observance of the Lord's Day to Roman Catholicism. I do not now refer to the Biblical grounds for it, having been asked as to the historical proofs. There was no Council (so-called) of the year A.D. 200; the first of those recognised as Church Councils being that of Nicaea belonging to A.D. 325. In A.D. 321 an edict of the first Emperor embracing Christianity was issued for the general observance of Sunday. Up till then, of course, it was impossible for most Christians to make it a day of rest. But the recognition of it as taking the place of the Jewish Sabbath was universal in the second century, i.e. as far back as writings of those who followed the Apostolic age are extant as witnesses to this. Ignatius, the disciple of the Apostle John, contrasts Judaism and Christianity and "opposed the keeping of the Sabbath to living according to the Lord's life." The epistle of Barnabas, in existence in the early part of that century, says "We celebrate the eighth day with joy on which, too, Jesus rose from the dead." Justin Martyr (A.D. 140) assigns the reason Christians had for meeting on Sunday because it is the first day on which God dispelled the darkness, etc., and because Jesus Christ our Saviour rose from the dead upon it. And he carefully distinguished Saturday from it. Bardesanes in a book addressed to the Emperor M. Aurelius Antoninus (A.D. 121-180), writing of the new race of Christians "wherever we be, called by the one name of the Messiah (as such), says, 'upon one day, the first of the week we assemble ourselves together.'" Dionysius (A.D. 170) in a letter to the church at Rome calls it "the Lord's holy day" in bearing witness to the same assembling of themselves. Irenaeus (A.D. 178) asserts that the Sabbath is abolished, his evidence to the existence of the Lord's Day being clear and distinct. A record of him in the history of Eusebius shows that in his time it was an institution beyond dispute. Clement (A.D. 194) contrasts the seventh day of the law with the eighth day of the Gospel, and so on, proof might be multiplied. But this may suffice. I have many of the authorities myself and have referred to them, but have found it convenient thus to summarise this early testimony from Smith's Dictionary of the Bible Vol. II (1st ed.), under the Lord's Day. It is a great and indisputable fact that four years before the first General Council the Emperor Constantine recognised it as "the venerable day," only now giving it legal sanction, insisting that worldly business should be intermitted during its continuance. The Council of Nicaea, referred to four years later, assumes the obligation of the day as an existing fact only, regulating the posture of worshippers.

This is, I conceive, the key to the difference of language in Romans and Galatians. In the former, there is a certain tenderness in dealing with such of the brethren there as knew the law before they knew Christ, and had been under it as Jews. Hence, in speaking of their days, and meats, and drinks, the apostle shows that the Spirit of God called for the utmost forbearance. "He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he regardeth it not. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks." The reason was, that the saints at Rome consisted largely of those who had been Jews, and, of course, also of many who had been Gentiles. The important point therefore was to exhort to mutual respect and forbearance one with another. The Gentile brother, that knew his liberty, was not to despite his Jewish brother, because he was still giving heed to certain distinctions, keeping days, etc. Nor was the Jew to judge his Gentile brother, because he did not abstain from meats and observe days. Remember, in speaking of these days, we are not to imagine that the apostle is alluding to the Lord's day, for it is an entirely new thing, having no connection either with creation or the law. The Sabbath was the rest of creation, and also the divinely-appointed and well-known sign between Jehovah and the Jewish people for ever, given them as a perpetual covenant, and separating them from all other nations. But the Lord's day has an entirely new character, spoken of in Scripture as the first day of the week. It belongs to the Christian only: Adam, man, the Jew, had nothing to do with it. So that when the apostle says, "He that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he regardeth it not," let us beware of allowing the evil thought that the Lord's day is included, and the keeping of it an open question. As for days or meats, Levitically distinguished, they are left to be regarded or not, according to spiritual intelligence. Not so the Lord's day; it may not fall under the form of an express command, but it is none the less obligatory, because it comes to us stamped with the Lord's will and recognition in various solemn and touching forms. It is the day on which He rose from the dead, the day on which He sanctioned, by His special presence, the coming together of the disciples, as the Holy Ghost afterwards led them thereon regularly, to break bread. So that there should be no question that the Lord's day is of the gravest importance, the understanding of which always goes with right thoughts as to the true grace of God in which we stand. The confusion of it with the Sabbath may have been adopted to strengthen its institution by deducing it from the law; but this is a complete fallacy, lowers and weakens its character, and is the fruit and the evidence of ignorance of the ground on which the believer now stands with God. In Galatians, instead of the exhortation to brotherly forbearance, which we find impressed on the saints at Rome, there is, on the contrary, amazing strength and vehemence, as is plain in chapters 3, 4. But of this more in its own place.

In Christ, in whom the new creation is complete and perfect (Col. 2:9-10), from the beginning to the end, God has found His eternal rest, and the believer his — a rest of which the Sabbath was but the shadow (Col. 2:16-17). With the commemoration, therefore, of a creation ruined by the fall of man — and so ruined that he had to accept of death in order to be able to get out from it and its condemnation — the Christian has nothing to do. Another thing, however, he has true reason to commemorate; namely, the day on which the new creation, in Christ its head, came forth complete and perfect from the sepulchre of the old, a triumph of the grace, the power, and the wisdom of God! This day indeed, not the seventh of the week of the old creation, but the first day of a creation altogether new, the Christian has every motive for turning into a day of rejoicing, and to thank God and the Lord for the holy privilege of being permitted, and by the Spirit led to the desire, of consecrating it to the memory and to the worship of Him who rose from among the dead, bearing him along with Him. The heart that appreciates the place it occupies in the presence of God in Jesus Christ, and the love, the grace, and the work which brought him there, the soul which by the Holy Ghost has learned to love the person of Him who died for Him and rose again, needs no law to oblige him to this; and for this reason its observance is never set in Scripture on the ground of duty, nor is it ever sought in any part of it to enforce it by commands or penalties; it is only made plain that it is pleasing to the Lord that the day should be observed, and that He has honoured it by giving it His name. For the heart that is led by the Holy Ghost, this is enough; and as to the soul which does not appreciate these things, that he should keep the day ostensibly and corporeally, drawing nigh to God with the mouth and honouring Him with the lip, while the heart is far from Him, this is worthless for the Lord. "God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship Him." This is the motto of Christianity; all else is worthless. The Lord's-day is not for the world, but only for the Church. That the world should make it a resting-day or not is no matter to God. Before the world can keep the Lord's-day, it must first be converted — die, be born again, and be raised from the dead. For men in the flesh — the world — in the old creation, He made rudimentary rules and ordinances — "Touch not, taste not, handle not," work not; and these were fulfilled in the letter by corporeal abstention from the prohibited things. All these were of the "old things" that have passed away. Now, that which has value for Him is only that which bears the stamp of "spirit and truth;" and where this is, there is no need of penalties and enforcements, whether ecclesiastic or other; where this is not, neither penalties nor commandments can create it; and for any Christian assembly to undertake to compel any one to keep the Lord's-day under pain of excommunication, would be a proof that they were as deficient in Christian intelligence as he. It is a legitimate case for the efforts of pastoral care and instruction; and when these do not succeed in correcting the error, a little patience and waiting, with much prayer to the Lord, will leave occasion to the Holy Spirit either to lead the erring one to better thoughts, or else to leave him to fall into some offence which will expose him in his true character, and render him amenable to discipline; but in any case the assembly has no right to exceed the limits the Lord has set. He has given no orders to put away for such a motive, and the assembly ought not. Let believers be taught the true import of their "heavenly calling," and, as risen with Christ, they will seek those things which are above, not those which are on the earth (Heb. 3:1; Col. 3:1, &c.), and this will free them from that spirit of "filthy lucre" which leads to the preferring an open shop on the Lord's-day, to the worship and service in spiritual things, of Him by whose cross the world is crucified to them and they to the world.

In Exodus 31:13-17 God emphasizes that the Sabbath was a sign between Him and Israel, and that the children of Israel were to keep the Sabbath. This was not given to Gentiles, and it is not given to the church in the present age (Compare Colossians 2:16-17). The Lord Jesus was in the grave on the Sabbath day, and was raised “the first day of the week.” From that time scripture emphasizes the first day of the week, mentioning for instance that on that day the disciples came together to break bread (Acts 20:7). Yet no law is made at all of this matter, for we are not under law, but under grace. We should regard the first day of the week as “the Lord's Day,” and therefore be glad for the privilege of using it solely for the Lord's pleasure, without attaching any legal bondage to it.

"This is the reason why Christians keep the first day of the week, and not the seventh or the 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 Jews 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."