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New Testament Lord's Day Worship
The first reason Christians worship on the Lord's day is a remembrance of Christ's bodily resurrection from the dead.
The first of four main passages addressing why Protestant Christians worship on Sunday and not Saturday is out of remembrance for this specific historical event. This event is record in all four of the gospels (though there is quite a variance of views on when Jesus actually died during the passion week, ranging from Wed. thru Fri.).
Please note the text references:
"In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week,..." (Mt 28:1)
"And very early in the morning the first day of the week" (Mk 16:2)
"Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared to Mary..." (Mk 16:9)
"Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning" (Lk 24:1)
"The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early," (Jn 20:1)**
**(Technically the Greek gloss for the word the English word "day" does not appear. However, every translation I can find supplies this idea which the context surely commends. This will be key in the book of Acts where the disciples worship on the "sabbath" in the synagogue and then gather for worship on a different calendar day, "the Lord's Day).
These women went to tomb, found the stone rolled away and Christ was not there. He had bodily risen from the dead.
I am referencing this text first to establish a textual basis for worship on what we call the Lord's Day (Rev 1). We gather corporately for worship based on a biblical text. Please note there is no command in any of these four texts to worship on this particular day.
Strict Sabbath-keeping denominations still gather for corporate worship on the Sabbath (our calendar day of Saturday, "the seventh day"). Quickly to be fair, they do so out of what they believe is obedience to the Decalogue, believed not to be abrogated in any way, a lack of command to worship otherwise, this is when Christ went to the synagogue, and a multitude form of genetic fallacies.
By way of reminder, a "genetic fallacy" put simply is to say an argument is wrong based on the source of the argument not necessary the argument itself. Import Roman Catholicism or Seventh-Day Adventists. If Rome or the SDA said something erroneous elsewhere then it must be wrong here too (sorry just don't have time to deal with every issue, well at least not in this series, maybe elsewhere).
As a Protestant Christian (a Baptist in particular), I worship on the Lord's day corporately. I do not do it solely based on this historical narrative event. This event provides the the memorial or remembrance focus for this particular day of the week (similar to the Lord's Table, 1 Cor 11). There are other reasons too. When the multitude reasons are combined the weight surely points to the fact that in the NT believers worshiped on the Lord's Day (as distinct from the calendar Lord's day) and this is both instructive descriptively (this is what they were doing) and prescriptively (commands and principles that don't contradict what they were doing) for Christians today in 2016. It is these other reasons found in the NT which we will address in future articles.
May this article help those struggling with this issue.
Comments and suggestions encouraged.
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