Committed to Lord’s Day Worship
For more than two-thousand years, churches have gathered on Sunday. This happens in Russia and the US, China and Brazil, Israel and Uganda, Iceland and Australia. It happens in cities and farmlands, deserts and jungles, and mountains and valleys. It happens this way all around the world. But why?
Why do Christians worship the Lord on Sunday?
As believers, we should learn (and be reminded) why we do things, like gathering on Sunday. When we let these things slip, other engagements may pull us away or we may go through the motions out of ritual rather than genuine desire. To understand why we gather on Sunday, we should first correct some wrong perspectives on this subject.
Sunday worship is not an old covenant requirement.
In the beginning, God created the world, the universe, and terrestrial life in six days (Gen 1). Then he reserved a seventh day to rest and observe his creation (Gen 2:1-3). Even so, the Old Testament never requires or reveals that people observed a weekly day of rest until the giving of the Mosaic law (Ex 20:8). This law served as the basis of a covenant God made with Israel. If they observed this law, among others, God would preserve and prosper them in the land. If they did not, he would expel them from the land for an extended period. It is important to know that this Sabbath law included more than a weekly, seventh day rest. It also included an annual observance of various Sabbath feast days and holidays and occasional Sabbaths that consisted of an entire year.
The importance of these Sabbath observances ended when Christ died on the cross (Col 2:14). That is why the New Testament does not require us to observe Jewish holidays and festivals. While there is nothing wrong with celebrating these holidays for instructive value, it is wrong to insist on their observance. About this, Paul says, “Let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ” (Col 2:16-17). When advocates for Judaism pressured believers to observe Jewish holidays in the region of Galatia, Paul said this to the churches, “You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain” (Gal 4:10).
Recognizing these things, we need to understand that Sunday worship is not some kind of Christian version of the Old Testament, Jewish Sabbath observance. The divine command and required expectation to observe holidays and festivals has ended. Jesus Christ fulfilled the purpose for which those days were intended.
Sunday worship is not a pagan or Catholic tradition.
Some people claim that by worshipping on Sunday, churches are following a pagan tradition that is somehow associated with a false sun god. This claim has no merit whatsoever. Others claim that churches worship on Sunday after an order from the Roman Emperor Constantine and the Roman Catholic Church in 321 AD. Though Constantine did give such a command, it did not change or establish a specific day for churches. His decision only acknowledged the long-standing practice of churches from the previous two centuries of church history. We worship on Sunday, as the Lord’s Day, because it is biblical, just as churches have done from the beginning.
Sunday worship is a new covenant result.
While Sabbath observance was a key aspect of the Old Covenant which God had made with the nation of Israel through Moses, churches gathering together on Sunday was and continues to be a result of the New Covenant which Christ has made with us through his blood (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25).
It is necessary to point out that Sunday gathering is different from Sabbath observance in a very important way. Whereas Sabbath observance was a requirement of the Old Covenant, Sunday gathering is a result (not a requirement per se) of the New Covenant. Furthermore, while the Sabbath observance recognized God as lawgiver and judge, Sunday worship recognizes Christ as Savior and resurrected Lord.
Since we have no explicit command to gather and worship on Sunday, then why do we observe this tradition and follow this practice? We find the answer to this question by tracing an important development throughout the New Testament from start to finish.
The Lord resurrected on Sunday.
All four of the gospel accounts tell us that Jesus resurrected on the first day of the week, which is Sunday (Matt 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1). Another way of saying this is that God chose the first day of the week, Sunday, as the day of Christ’s resurrection. When you read all four of these resurrection chapters, you will find that the disciples responded to the resurrection with humility, praise, and joyful celebration.
The Lord revealed himself to his disciples on Sunday.
After he rose from the grave, Jesus visited his disciples in a room with closed doors.
- First, on the day of his resurrection (John 20:19).
In this meeting you will notice again that they worshipped the Lord. They also listened as he taught them and corrected their thinking.
- Next, on the day one week after his resurrection (John 20:26).
One week following his first reappearance in the upper room, he appeared to his disciples again. Again, he did this on Sunday, the first day of the week. The Bible does not tell us explicitly “God chose the first day of the week to be a special day for Christians.” Instead, it points out that Jesus used this day for a special purpose, by rising from the grave and reappearing to his disciples on this day.
The Lord sent the Holy Spirit on Sunday.
This may be easy to overlook, because the book of Acts doesn’t say directly that the church started on Sunday, that Pentecost happened on Sunday, and that the Holy Spirit was given to believers by Jesus – as he had promised (Luke 3:16; John 14:26) – on the first day of the week. To know this, you need to know something about the day of Pentecost. This day was more than the one-time event that happened in Acts 2. Pentecost was an annual feast day required by the Mosaic Law. It celebrated the grain harvest (kind of like Thanksgiving for us today). It happened on the first day of the week, because the law said, “Count fifty days to the day after the seventh sabbath; then you shall offer a new grain offering to the LORD” (Lev 23:16). This puts the day of Pentecost each year on “the day after the seventh sabbath.” What day follows the Sabbath, or the seventh day (Saturday)? Obviously, it is Sunday. So, the Lord resurrected on Sunday. He appeared to his disciples on Sunday, and then reappeared to them again on the next Sunday. Then he sent the Spirit and started the church on Sunday, too.
Churches continued to worship the Lord on Sunday.
Throughout the New Testament, many years after the resurrection of Christ and the start of the church, we find that churches continued to gather on Sunday. “On the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight” (Acts 20:7). This occurred later during Paul’s ministry. In a letter to another church, Paul said, “On the first day of the week let each one of you lay something aside, storing up as he may prosper, that there be no collections when I come” (1 Cor 16:2). He asked them to collect a special offering for another church with material needs, and he asked them to make their contributions on the first day of the week. Why would he specify this day? Because this was the day they already gathered.
As we recognize the pattern of our Lord and the practice of the early church, we must also recognize that this is not a direct command. Instead, it is a longstanding tradition that the Lord himself established by his choice of Sunday for resurrecting, reappearing, and sending the Spirit. Churches adopted this pattern to for themselves. Church history beyond the first century, New Testament record gives us many examples of churches continuing this practice without relenting, and this practice has continued until this day.
Christians eventually called this “the Lord’s Day.”
The final book of the New Testament tells us something more about this weekly day of worship and gathering. The last living apostle, John, described something that occurred to him while he was serving a prison sentence of banishment on an island called Patmos. He said, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day” (Rev 1:10). This is the first and only time in the New Testament where this phrase occurs. He and all his Christian audience recognized this day as a day of special significance for the Lord. Again, they did not recognize it because the Lord commanded this as a covenant requirement. Instead, they recognized a pattern established by the Lord and continued to gather as a church and worship (even when gathering was impossible) on “the Lord’s Day.” The New Testament pattern and evidence indicates that this was Sunday, the first day of the week.
It is worth noting that John called this day the Lord’s Day and not the Lord’s hour or the Lord’s morning. To be sure, it would be exaggerating to insist that this requires us to worship the Lord for a solid 24-hour period every Sunday. On the other hand, it is not unreasonable to suggest that minimal participation in church activities and worship on Sunday misses the point as well. If you study the details of the church gathering in Acts 20, you will find that they remained together for teaching and eating long into the night. Since we recognize Sunday as the Lord’s Day, we need to think twice before we suggest that what we do here at FBC from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. is too much. Is four hours of worship, teaching, fellowship, and ministry too much activity for something that is called a “day” and which has special significance for the Lord? Our culture too easily pushes us to wish for a drive-through church experience on Sunday, allowing us to “pop in” and “pop out” as quickly as possible. This doesn’t fit with the nature of church gatherings in the New Testament.
Having answered the question of why Christians worship the Lord on Sunday, now it is time to ask this question in a different way.
Why do Christians YOU worship the Lord on Sunday?
The pattern set by our Lord and the practice followed by the early church and churches throughout the world until now is enough reason to impress upon your heart the desire and commitment to gather with your church on Sunday.
Sunday worship should be neither a ritual habit, a legal observance, nor an empty tradition that you mindlessly follow. It should be something about which you are excited, determined, and committed to doing because of what the Lord has done and because of how the church has continued to respond to him by gathering on the Lord’s Day.
A good example of this may be the way that we view the simple practice of birthdays in America. Children look forward to celebrating their birthday, but somewhere later in life, they begin to lose interest. They appreciate their birthday when it comes, but not with the same enthusiasm as when they were a child. Still later in life, they wish that their birthday would come and go with little to no recognition. Why? Probably because they do not want to face the unstoppable reality that they are growing older with time.
For believers more than two-thousand years removed from the events of the resurrection, the reappearance of Christ, and the beginnings of the church, the longstanding practice of gathering on Sunday may easily seem to be a mundane tradition with a distant past. We must recapture the joy and significance of this day. Perhaps Sunday church gatherings excited you more at some point in your past than they do today. If so, then you must ask the Lord to rekindle your passion and desire to gather with God’s people, to receive the teaching of the Lord from Scripture, to serve one another, to encourage one another, and to fellowship and eat with one another as a church on the first day of the week. May the Lord bless you as you faithfully worship him.
Thomas Overmiller serves as pastor for Faith Baptist Church in Corona, NY and blogs at Shepherd Thoughts. This article first appeared at Shepherd Thoughts, used here with permission.