It was laid down by the law given to Moses that the seventh day was to be a day of complete cessation of labour for man and beast. There was no mandate to make it particularly a day of worship, as is the Christian Sunday. Worship for Israel was regulated by another set of ordinances. The weekly 'sabbath', which means a cessation, being still, resting. There was a seventh year sabbath in which no work was to be done on the land, and the fields allowed to lie fallow. Similarly a fiftieth year of jubilee subject to the same restriction. All of this was part of the Law Covenant under which Moses pledged Israel to God as a separated and holy nation, and God undertook their support during these "Sabbath" years.

The Law Covenant is not applicable to Christians, for Christ made an end of it, "nailing it to his cross" as Paul said to the Colossians, but the ethical principles of the Ten Commandments are certainly binding upon Christians, in even higher degree than Israel of old, as Jesus explained on more than one occasion, but the ceremonial and ritual provisions are not, and the sabbath was part of the ceremonial law. The principle of the sabbath, however, the practice of periodic laying aside the interests and occupations of daily life so that worship and praise might be given to God for his goodness and provision, is obviously as appropriate for Christians as for Jews, the difference being that whereas to Israel under the Law Covenant the observance was a ceremonial matter to be fulfilled according to the letter, to the Christian it is an act of worship offered spontaneously and not of obligation. Any day of the week is appropriate for such an offering and in fact even more than one day in the week if the heart so prompts. It has been truly said that to the Christian every day is a Sabbath.

It is evident that the Apostolic Church recognised this fact and quite naturally adopted the first day of the week, the day of the Resurrection, for their weekly gathering together for worship and fellowship. To what extent the social customs of the times permitted this to be a day of rest is not now accurately known. The Greeks and Romans had no weekly day of general cessation of labour as did the Jews, and many of the Gentile Christians were slaves anyway. There is no doubt, however, from the evidence of early Church writers as well as the New Testament that the Christians did gather on the first day of the week to celebrate the resurrection of their Lord, to pray and worship and receive the ministry of the Word and hold their "love feasts".

Only gradually did changing social conditions permit anything like the Jewish "day of rest" to become a feature of the Greek and Roman communities. It was not until the Fourth Century that Constantine the Christian Emperor of Rome legalised the weekly day of rest, on the first day of the week, throughout the Empire, and so Sunday became a day given over to worship and religious exercises unhindered by the claims of daily labour. In this way the Christian Sunday became the equivalent of the Jewish Saturday.

There would seem therefore to be no ground for insisting that Christians must observe the seventh day as the Sabbath merely because that was the day imposed upon Israel by their Law Covenant. Christians are not under that Covenant and they are free to set aside for rest and worship whichever day they feel appropriate. There is nothing to forbid the adoption of Saturday for the purpose if that should seem desirable and proper to some. But the Western nations have grown and developed out of the Roman empire and spread their culture and customs over much of the world during the past thousand years and in consequence Sunday is firmly established as the normal weekly holiday (holy-day); because this institution is of such inestimable value to all Christians in facilitating worship and evangelism we do well to uphold and retain it. There are plenty of forces in the earth today seeking to undermine the day and make it as any other day of the week. That would be bad, not only spiritually, but physically; not only for Christians, but for all men, and we do right to resist those forces with whatever powers we have.

It was on the first day of the week, when the risen Lord left the garden tomb and "rose in the power of an endless life" that the Christian faith began and Judaism ended. It is that, above all things, that we celebrate when we come together on the first day of the week