Bible Evidence of Sunday Worship

Doctrine, Feature

RICHARD K. FOSTER

As someone who was a serious Adventist for many years, I know how big a hurdle worshiping on Sunday is in the minds of people from an Adventist background. I can remember listening to and reading the arguments of former Adventists and thinking that what I was hearing made sense, that Adventist teaching is seriously flawed, and Adventism is not the place to get true gospel teaching. However, even after having these thoughts, I remember thinking, “But how could one go to church on Sunday?”

Worshiping on Sunday is a serious hurdle that must be cleared, because pretty much every good gospel church out there meets on the first day of the week. Furthermore, the question about attending church on the first day of the week, Sunday, is a question that deserves a good answer. 

I have friends who, even after managing to disentangle themselves from thinking the Sabbath is the seal of God, that Sunday is the mark of the beast, and that Sabbath-keeping is salvational are still certain that first-day worship is “man-made” and that the seventh-day would be more proper. So I will attempt to show, in short summary, that Christian worship on the first day of the week has origins in the New Testament itself and not hundreds of years later. 

The Christian Church Was Established On the First Day Of the Week

The first thing we must realize is that the two establishing events of the Christian Church occurred on the first day of the week. It’s not a stretch to say that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most significant event in redemptive history. If Jesus had died but did not rise, there would certainly be no salvation and no Christianity. The resurrection is the foundation upon which Christian faith stands or falls. Importantly, all four gospel accounts explicitly state that the resurrection occurred on “the first day of the week”. Even more, the day of Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit also occurred on the first day of the week. This fact requires a little bit of study to understand, but that will be seen. 

Was it just a coincidence that these two extraordinary events that established the church both happened on the first day of the week? 

Not at all. In the Old Testament record we can clearly see that this was foreshadowed in the feasts given to ancient Israel:

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest, and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, so that you may be accepted. On the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it” (Leviticus 23:9-11).

The feast of firstfruits mentioned here “on the day after the Sabbath” is attributed by Paul in the New Testament to the resurrection of Christ: 

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Corinthians 15:20).

Furthermore, in the Day of Pentecost we see the fulfillment of another Old Testament feast:

You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering. You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath. Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to the Lord (Leviticus 23:15-16).

Notice that this feast was to be fifty days after the previous feast, the feast of firstfruits. In real time in Acts 2, this is exactly what happened. The Holy Spirit was poured out upon the Apostles fifty days after the resurrection, and three thousand souls were added to the new church as a result. Both feasts were to occur “the day after the Sabbath”. This timing happened exactly as typified with both the resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit. So we learn from this that it was exactly according to God’s predetermined plan and purpose that these two monumental events of the church would occur on the first day of the week. 

…it was exactly according to God’s predetermined plan and purpose that these two monumental events of the church would occur on the first day of the week. 

Having established that the timing of these feasts and their fulfillments is the case—that in the Old Covenant the first day was specifically set apart by God for these feasts, and the first day in the New Testament is also marked out by God as the day on which these events occurred in real time—these facts alone should put to rest the claim that the first day of the week is simply a “man made day” when it comes to using the day for religious purposes. The day is obviously marked out by the Lord both in Old Testament worship as well as in the events that are of utmost importance to the New Testament Church. 

The Appearances of the Resurrected Lord

A very interesting pattern emerges from a careful reading of the New Testament. Prior to the resurrection, the gospel records show Jesus favoring the Sabbath as the day on which to perform miracles and attend public worship. After His resurrection, though, there’s not a single example of the resurrected Christ appearing to His disciples on the Sabbath, nor is there any example of worship that is specifically Christian occurring on the Sabbath. In fact, in the majority of post-resurrection appearances of Christ, the Bible explicitly indicates that they occurred on the first day of the week. There are a couple of instances in which we are not told on what day the appearance happened, but it’s possible they might have been on the first day also. What we learn for certain from these examples is that the day the resurrected Lord preferred for His appearances to His disciples was the first day of the week. 

The Apostolic Example

Looking at the New Testament. we also see several examples of Christian worship explicitly mentioned on the first day of the week. In fact, the very first occurrence ever of Christian worship of the resurrected Lord on the first day of the week is recorded in Matthew:

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb… And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him (Matthew 28:1, 9).

In light of this and other biblical evidence, it’s not a stretch by any means to say that first day Christian worship has its origin on the very day of the resurrection itself, as we clearly have this biblical example.

Moving on, we will consider a couple of texts that belong to a whole body of texts concerning various doctrines that present serious problems for Adventist beliefs. I often tell people that when I was Adventist, these texts were part of a “canon within the canon” that often caused me to wonder why God put them in the Bible to “confuse” people regarding Adventist doctrine. Practically, I didn’t regard these texts as God’s word specifically trying to teach me something. In my best case scenario, I saw them as simply recording historic facts; in a worse scenario, I regarded them as texts that really needed to be explained away so as not to trouble Adventist doctrine.

The first text comes from Acts:

  1. [B]ut we sailed away from Philippi after the days of Unleavened Bread, and in five days we came to them at Troas, where we stayed for seven days. On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight (Acts 20:6-7).

The Adventist “explanation” of this text is that they weren’t really gathered on Sunday, but Saturday night. In addition to this interpretation, Adventists add some eisegesis into the text and claim that this was really a Sabbath meeting that had gone on past sundown on Saturday night, so that Paul was simply continuing on the beginning of the first day what had started on the Sabbath. But there are at least several issues with the Adventist explanation:

  1. It assumes Jewish time reckoning from sundown to sundown. We shouldn’t assume that the Jewish time reckoning would be in place here though, instead of Roman reckoning, when the Author of Acts (Luke) is a Gentile, and the setting in the story is a Gentile setting. These facts make the Jewish reckoning very uncertain, if not very unlikely. 
  2. There’s no evidence of a seventh-day Sabbath meeting in the text. This idea has to be assumed and imposed. Furthermore, it’s based on the assumption that the early church continued to use the seventh-day Sabbath for worship purposes. 
  3. It doesn’t matter what time of day the meeting occurred. The fact is the biblical text explicitly states it was the first day of the week. 

The facts being considered, there is no question (and never has been except when seventh-day sabbatarians have tried to introduce one) that the church at Troas was meeting for religious activities on the first day of the week. 

The second text to consider is from 1 Corinthians:

Now concerning the collection for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come (1 Corinthians 16:1-2).

Again, the Adventist approach to dealing with this text is to inject assumptions into it that aren’t there. The claim is that putting “something aside” would have been done privately at home, then brought to the church service for offerings on the Sabbath. In thinking this text through, though, that explanation really doesn’t add up. Paul’s explicit reason for exhorting the churches to set aside something on the first day every week is so that collecting won’t have to take place when he comes. Yet if the church members were simply setting the money aside at home to then bring to church later on, a collection of the money would still have to take place at that time, to gather the money when Paul came. 

Not only is there the fact that a collection would still have to be made when Paul came, but the text says nothing about setting the money aside at home to bring to church on the Sabbath. It’s simply not there. What the text does teach us is that Paul was commanding a specific part of religious duty (the giving of offerings) to be performed on the first day of the week. And this wasn’t due to simply a local situation at one church, because Paul says he has also directed the churches in Galatia to do the same. 

The Significance of Apostolic Practice

Perhaps the main Adventist objection given to the practice of first-day worship is having no explicit text telling us to do so. It can easily be demonstrated, though, that this sort of instruction would be unnecessary. We see indications in the New Testament that for the early church, the apostolic practices established in the churches were just as instructive as the written words in the New Testament writings. It should also be remembered that for the first several decades of the church, the New Testament canon wasn’t collected yet. So the churches would have had to have followed the practices given by the apostles either through example, through verbal instruction, or through letters. In fact, Paul specifically taught this detail:

So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter (2 Thessalonians 2:15).

Notice that Paul here exhorts the church to hold to the “traditions” given by the Apostles, either in spoken word, or by letter. Now in the days of the apostles, the churches would have known directly what the “traditions” were that were taught to them by the apostles. We no longer have this particular benefit two thousand years later. But we do have a record of teachings and practices of the apostles contained in our New Testament. The exhortation given by Paul to the Thessalonians to hold to the “traditions” they were given from the apostles of Jesus is also relevant to us. In other words, we don’t need direct commands or injunctions for something to be a proper and biblical practice if we can see biblically that it was the practice of the apostles. 

…we don’t need direct commands or injunctions for something to be a proper and biblical practice if we can see biblically that it was the practice of the apostles. 

Besides the fact that both apostolic practices and direct commands are desirable to follow when revealed in the word of God, there is also an important principle of biblical interpretation that must be mentioned. We form our doctrines as Christians both from explicit biblical statements and implicit evidence that can clearly be drawn out of the Scriptures using sound rules of interpretation. A prime example of this principle of forming doctrine from implicit evidence in the Scriptures is the doctrine of the Trinity. 

We believe the Trinity is biblical, but not because of a proof text that explicitly tells us God is one in substance and three in person. Rather we believe the Trinity is biblical because the indicators are throughout the New Testament, even though it’s not explicitly stated in a single verse or verses using the words Christians have always used to described it. In certain places, however, the Bible clearly tells us there is only one God. Yet in other places the Father is mentioned as a separate person from the Son, the Spirit is mentioned as a separate person from both the Father and the Son, and divine attributes are ascribed to all three separate persons. Using these Scripture building blocks, we reasonably conclude there is one God, but three divine persons. 

In the same way we can take the scriptural evidence concerning the first day of the week and conclude it had a significance in the early church as a day to worship the resurrected Lord. 

A Review Of the Facts

  1. The most significant event of redemptive history, the resurrection of Christ, occurred on the first day of the week.
  2. The Christian Church was established on the first day of the week. Both the resurrection of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost established the first day of the week as God’s inauguration of something brand new: the body of Christ—the church. 
  3. Both of these events were foreshadowed by Old Testament feasts that were to occur the day after the Sabbath. 
  4. The Bible records that the risen Lord was first worshiped by some disciples on the morning of the first day of the week, shortly after He rose. 
  5. The first day of the week appears in Scripture as the day on which the risen Lord preferred to appear to the disciples. 
  6. Post-resurrection, there are no examples of Christian worship occurring specifically on the Sabbath. Significantly, there are examples of Christian worship specifically occurring on the first day of the week. There is also no example of the resurrected Lord appearing on a Sabbath as He did on the first day. 
  7. In Acts 20:7 we have an explicit biblical example of the church gathering on the first day of the week for activities of worship. 
  8. In 1 Corinthians 16:1-2 Paul gives a command to multiple churches to set aside offerings on the first day of the week, so that they won’t have to be collected when he comes. The reasonable conclusion is that the churches were to do this on the first day of the week because they were together on that day. 
  9. A direct statement instructing first day worship isn’t necessary if the practice can be seen to be a biblical apostolic practice. 
  10. Biblical doctrine is formed from both explicit statements as well as on the implicit evidence given in Scripture. 

Conclusion

The implicit evidence found in the New Testament when taken together points strongly to the first day of the week being a significant and special day for the early church. 

Imagine with me what it would have been like to have been one of the early disciples of Jesus who would have lived through the experience of the Lord being crucified, dead, and rising again on the third day. We know from reading biblical accounts the terror and devastation the disciples experienced when the Lord was crucified. We know that from that moment until they learned He was risen, it was a time of unspeakable sorrow and hopelessness. The Bible records that they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment. But how devastating a Sabbath it must have been. How it must have been a joyless day of sorrow and heartache, knowing that the One in whom they had hoped so deeply lay dead in the grave. 

Now imagine going from that experience of devastation over the Lord’s death, to learning on that morning after the Sabbath that He had risen from the grave. Again, we can go the Scriptures and see the indicators of their reaction to the news that He had risen. Dark night and sorrow was immediately, in an instant, turned into unbelievable joy! We can only imperfectly imagine as Christians how this miracle must have been the greatest event the disciples could have possibly experienced in this world! The reality of it is beyond imagination. 

The Sabbath would never be same again for these disciples. It would forever be remembered as the day their Lord lay dead in the grave, the day when they were without hope. However, the first day of the week would never be the same again, either. Every week on the first day they would remember how He rose from the grave on that morning, defeating death, sin, evil, and the devil. And every week the first day would be a joyous celebration and worship of the resurrected Lord all over again. 

So it is for Christians today. We don’t worship on the first day of the week because of paganism or Constantine or the Pope. But every Sunday morning we can come to church and remember that we serve a risen Savior! He is not in the grave, for He is risen! Death, sin, darkness, hell, and the the devil have all been defeated, and their destruction assured! Because Christ is risen, our salvation is assured, if we have trusted in His finished work! †

Richard and Virlinda Foster
See their testimony.

Richard Foster
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