1 Corinthians 13

Chapter 13. The Lord’s DayOn the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income. (1 Corinthians 16:2)On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit. (Revelation 1:10)Mention of this unique epistle of the Church would not be complete without an authoritative reference to the sacred and important institution of the Christian Sabbath so inseparably associated with the worship and fellowship of the Church of Christ. As we have seen in the case of several other themes discussed in this epistle, there are two extremes between which the truth is to be found; the extreme on the one side of unlimited license and the utter secularizing of the Sabbath day, on the other a return to the spirit of legalism and disposition to Judaize the Christian Sabbath, and insist upon the observance of the seventh day as essential to its true meaning and divine character. There is a widespread propagandism abroad among the churches which would throw around this sweet and holy Christian institution the shadows of Mount Sinai, and which would make the mere question of the seventh day a principle of cardinal importance and, indeed, the very central point of our faith and testimony. It is most unwholesome to elevate any subordinate question to so supreme a place of importance. And it is very necessary that God’s people should be guarded against misrepresentations and misconceptions which otherwise would bring their consciences into bondage and detach them from the true center of faith and testimony to what may easily become a mere side issue. Let us, therefore, endeavor to trace the true Scriptural doctrine of the Sabbath through the various dispensations.

Section I: an Ancient Institution

Section I—an Ancient InstitutionThe Sabbath is a primeval institution as old as creation. Its supreme authority does not rest upon Mosaic law, but it has come down itself from Eden and is as old as the human race, the institution of marriage and the first promise of redemption. It was given for man, and not for any single race of men. It was given for rest and refreshment, and not for bondage and ceremonial observances merely. It was given because it recognizes an essential need in human nature. Even races that have not known the beneficent teachings of the Bible have been led to institute appropriate times of rest and relaxation as a necessity of the constitution of man. It is essential in considering this subject that we always recognize the earlier institution of the Sabbath, because this at once lifts the character and claims of the day above all questions connected with Jewish law. Even the fourth commandment, which reinstated the Sabbath, distinctly recognizes its prior existence by using the words, “Remember the Sabbath day” (Exodus 20:8). Speaking of another matter, the covenant made with Abraham for his seed, the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians brings out an important principle, that the law, which came centuries later, could not annul the previous covenant or make it of non-effect. The primary institution stands, notwithstanding any later and more legal and special commands which may have been added to it. So the Sabbath of creation stands, notwithstanding all that may have been supplemented for the Jewish people and the Mosaic dispensation at Sinai. This lifts this sacred day to a lofty height and a universal scope that cannot be claimed for any of the older institutions of the Mosaic system. This blessed memorial of the crowning of creation comes down to us with sweetness, the beneficence, the liberty and love of unfallen Eden, and heaven’s first smile over a newborn world.

Section II: A Mosaic Institution

Section II—A Mosaic InstitutionIt was taken up by the great Lawgiver, and reenacted for God’s peculiar people with all the lawful sanctions of that fiery law. Its observance was most rigidly specified and enforced. Its desecration was punished with death. It became as much a law of fear as a law of love, and while still retaining its ancient purpose, yet it suffered inevitably the peculiar touches and tints of that dark dispensation. “(For the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God” (Hebrews 7:19). “So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith” (Galatians 3:24). The law was essentially educational, temporary and a ministry of condemnation. It was designed to impress the human conscience with the supreme authority of God, and the awful nature and effects of sin. It was fitted to reveal man’s depravity and disobedience, to produce conviction of sin and to drive a guilty conscience to the Lord Jesus Christ and the grace of the gospel for relief. It was not intended or fitted to be permanent. While it contains the elements of the highest and purest morality, while its essential principles are holy and divine, yet its modus and its spirit are essentially legal and engendering to bondage, and God never meant the sweet and holy Sabbath to come down to us in New Testament times associated only with restrictions, severities and shadows of Mount Sinai. For a time they gathered round it, but they have passed away, and it stands out in the clear sunlight of its ancient institution and its yet higher Christian significance. The Lesson of Sinai As has been beautifully expressed in metaphorical language, it is like that same Mount Sinai, where it was reenacted 3,000 years ago. For days that lofty mountain had stood on the Arabian plain, with its clear summit piercing the sky and crowned with the cloudless sunlight of the heavens. Suddenly there gathered around it a dark and dreadful stormy cloud, lurid with awful lightnings, and rending the earth and air with its thunders of threatening judgment. For a time the Mount was lost to view in the enshrouding clouds of smoke and name. So the Sabbath rose through the Patriarchal age like that sunlit mountain until at length it became enwrapped in the shadows and the awful threatenings of Mount Sinai. But after a while Sinai’s shadows passed away. The fearful cloud, with its smoke and flame, ceased to hang around its awful brow. The camp of Israel moved forward, and the sunshine again bathed the mountain’s crown; so Judaism, too, has passed away, and left the Sabbath in the clear and beautiful light of its first beautiful dawning upon the new created world. Nay, there has come a new and brighter light, for now there is shining around it the glory of the resurrection. And it is not merely the memorial of creation, but it is the sign and seal of a new creation. Jesus canceled for us the curse through the cross, opened the grave of doomed humanity, gave to us life and immortality through the gospel, and made the Sabbath for us the hallowed type of the rest of faith into which we enter now and the still sweeter, everlasting rest which remains for the people of God. Beloved, don’t let us go back to Judaism; don’t let us get bound by the entanglements of the law; don’t let us take the Sabbath back 3,000 years, and blot out the light of the open grave and the new creation. It is not necessary in order to honor it that we should bind ourselves with the yoke of bondage which our fathers were not able to bear. Let us move on with the dispensation, let us live in the light of the gospel, and let us take the Sabbath from the hands of our risen Lord and our reconciled Father.

Section III: Reenacted Under the New Testament Dispensation

Section III—Reenacted Under the New Testament DispensationNow it is well to notice that God had already been preparing the minds and hearts of His people for a very radical change with the incoming of the new covenant. He told them He was not going to deal with them according to the covenant that He had made with their fathers, but He was to enter upon the covenant of grace in which love, forgiveness and liberty were to take the place of constraint, bondage and selfish effort. Very distinctly and repeatedly the old prophets intimated that there was to be such a change in the new creation, that the old heavens and the old earth should come no more into mind, and that all old things should pass away and all things be made new (see Isaiah 65:17). The Attitude of Jesus When the Lord Jesus appeared we find Him at once facing the Sabbath question, and we notice two distinct attitudes which He takes from the beginning. The first is a positive recognition of the Sabbath as one of the institutions which He assumed and incorporated into His kingdom and took under His direction and authority. “So the Son of Man,” He says, “is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28). In the parallel passage in Matthew 12:1-8, He assumes still more authoritative direction of this day; and, after citing several Old Testament precedents for a proper freedom in the observance of the day, as, for example, in the case of David and the priests themselves, who were obliged to minister in the many manual services, He then adds the strong expression of His authority to deal with the Sabbath supremely: “I tell you that one greater than the temple is here…. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:6, Matthew 12:8). The Lord Jesus thus distinctly recognizes the Sabbath; but, on the other hand, He has distinctly set His face against the severe Jewish conception of it, and from the very beginning insisted upon the new construction of its meaning and a new charter of liberty and beneficence in its observance. He openly defied the prejudices of the people by walking through the grainfields on the Sabbath day and allowing His disciples to pluck the heads of grain. He healed the man with the withered hand when He knew they were waiting to watch Him and condemn Him for it. He met their prejudices with the keenest sense of showing the inhumanity and cruelty of straining their conventional ideas to the extent of allowing a poor brute to lie in a ditch rather than break the Sabbath (see Matthew 12:11), and He most distinctly laid down the law that true Sabbath observance always carries along with it a spirit of thoughtful love which would not hesitate to perform any work of real necessity or mercy. While He recognized the Sabbath as an institution of Christianity, He also recognized His right to change it and set it free from all that was peculiar to the transitory system of Judaism that had encrusted around it. Not in any sudden or formal propaganda of a new Sabbath law did He startle and shock even His disciples, but gently He allowed a new character and significance of the day to grow up out of incidents and events, as He allowed almost all the important acts and ordinances of His kingdom to develop out of the circumstances that gave them birth. The First Day The gospel did not start out as a rigid system of theology laying down cardinal principles and enacting written laws like the Mosaic economy, but it grew out of living facts so that every institution and ordinance of Christianity has behind it an incident rather than a proclamation. Even the Lord’s Supper grew out of the farewell meeting of Christ with His disciples. The very assemblies of Christianity evolved themselves out of the simple gatherings of the apostles. The government of the Christian Church was not laid down in any textbook or manual of laws, but evolved gradually out of the history of the early Church. So it was with the Sabbath and its important changes. He wanted it to spring spontaneously in their hearts as the new memorial of something dearer than even the deliverance from Egypt, or the first creation. So keeping ever before their minds the great fact of His coming resurrection as the central point of the Christian faith and hope, He ordered that glorious event to come, not on the Jewish Sabbath, which was not fitted to signalize it, for it marked rather the end of things than the beginning of a new series of glorious events which ran through eternal ages. Having thus struck the new keynote, He prolonged it by arranging His meetings with them after His resurrection on the same day. Again and again He marked it by coming back to them on the first day until they quickly took the hint and in a far sweeter way than if it had been a rigid commandment, and as often as it returned it found them waiting for His coming until it came to be to them the memorial day of faith and love. Doubtless it was then that the name was attached to it, which we find afterwards repeated by John from the lonely isle of Patmos, “the Lord’s Day” (Revelation 1:10). So identified was the hallowed day with the resurrection of Christ that in the early Church the customary salutation on the first day morning always was, “The Lord has risen indeed.” Thus two beautiful ordinances were linked together as comparison pictures: the Lord’s Supper, representing Calvary, and the Lord’s Day, representing the resurrection. Established thus by such beautiful and repeated precedents, it is not strange that we find the early Church after His ascension still coming together on the same day. For a time their continuous Pentecostal blessing swept all days into one great tidal wave of blessing, but when things settled down to their normal condition, they began to assemble on this day for religious worship, fellowship and especially the observance of the Lord’s Supper. And so we find in the 20th chapter of Acts, verse seven, like a glint of sunshine on a stormy sea, the picture of one of these meetings. In a chain of evidence one fact is as good as a thousand. It shows what the habit of the disciples was. The sea captain often traverses the whole Atlantic with just one observation from the heavens, and this single beam of light is enough to illumine the whole practice of the early Church. Here they had come together, not by special summons, because Paul was there, but to break bread according to their usual custom to keep the Lord’s Supper. It was their stated time of worship, and Paul himself had waited through the week for this very day to come; and when it came it was so precious that he just spent the whole day and half the whole night with them in teaching and preaching; and before the time was over God had honored that wondrous New Testament Sabbath with the opening of the gates of death and the bringing back of a soul from the world of spirits. So likewise our present text is just such another glimpse of the light revealing the usual practice of the Church. The apostle tells us here (1 Corinthians 16:1-2) that it was not an accidental thing that they should thus observe the first day, but he had given order to this effect to the churches of Galatia and he repeated the order to them. It had now become a New Testament institution, and as he founded the first churches and established their order this was the order that was settled. They were to come together on this day and mark it by their offerings for the work of the gospel. One other glimpse of the light shines through the dimness (Revelation 1:10), where we find the Apostle John going apart on this same day and the Holy Spirit recognizing it, and the Lord Jesus making a personal visit from the heavens and giving to his aged servant the apocalyptic vision of the coming ages and the kingdom of glory. Do we want more light? Does not love know how to take a hint? Is not the Sabbath sweeter to Christ as the quick response of our spontaneous love than as a mere matter of rigid ordinance? It would seem as if Jesus wanted it to spring up with this sort of freedom from all the associations fitted to make it so dear. And if His sweet example and the example of the early Church and all the sacred associations of the day are not enough for this spontaneous observance, the heart of love must be cold and dull indeed. But, further, we know that our Lord gave to His disciples a great many commandments which have not come to us in categorical form. The Apostle John and other apostles tell us that during the 40 days He spoke to them in detail all things concerning the kingdom of God, and commanded them to teach the Church to observe these things. John also tells us that if all the things which Jesus said and did were written, the world could not contain the books that should be written. Doubtless, therefore, in these intervening days He gave them specific directions about the Sabbath, as well as the government of the Church, and many other things respecting which we have no specific word from His lips. But we have the example of the apostles, we have the pattern they set, we have the things they did, and we know they must have had the authority of His Word for all these things, so that their acts come to us with the authority of His commands. Other Considerations It is interesting to add one or two supplementary considerations in connection with the change of the day, which is, at the present time, being made the subject of much needless discussion and distraction among simple-minded Christians. The first day of the week was really the day most signally honored in the Old Testament. Circumcision occurred on the eighth day, which was the first day of the second week. It was intended thus to be a special type of the new creation, and the new life which Christ was to bring. The great day of the Jewish feasts was usually the eighth day, which, of course, was the first day of the second series. The Jubilee happened on the year after the series of sevens, after seven Sabbatic periods of years, making 49; then came the 50th year which was the first of the new series, which was the gladdest, grandest day in all their cycles, typifying thus the new beginning which Christ was to bring in the coming ages. Furthermore, it is a fact that the first day Adam ever spent on earth was really the Sabbath. He was created on earth just at the end of the sixth day, and as the days began at six in the evening he must have been immediately ushered into the Sabbath. The first sun that ever rose upon him was a Sabbath sun; and really the first day was the Sabbath day. It may not be important to observe that according to the laws of longitude there is a difference of an entire day in the circuit of the globe. Were you to travel from here by way of England to China and back to San Francisco you have gained an entire day, and when you got back to San Francisco it would be Sunday for you while the people in the United States would still be keeping Saturday. What are you going to do in such a case? Suppose you have a Sabbath law compelling the keeping of the Sabbath day, here is one section of the world keeping the first day and another the seventh. This alone is sufficient to show that the whole question of numerical days is impossible. It is the principle of one day in seven that God requires, and it is the association of that day now, not with the law of Moses, nor even the creation of the universe, but the glorious new creation and resurrection of our Savior from the dead. One other consideration will suffice. The very idea of the Old Testament was work first, and then rest as its recompense. It was therefore proper that their Sabbath should come at the end of the week. But the very idea of Christianity is rest first and then work. We work not for life, but from life. We have entered into His rest and ceased from our works, and then we go to work with a new zeal, liberty and power. To go back to the old principle would be the reversing of the wheels of the dispensations and the denying of the very essential principles of the gospel of grace. Three Thoughts In connection there are three thoughts that may well be fastened on our hearts as we leave this subject.

1. Let the Sabbath be to us, more than it has been, the memorial of the resurrection, and let it ever lift us to a high and heavenly plane of our life in the risen and ascended One.
2. Let it be to us God’s memorial and message of the rest of faith. Let it remind us that the true Sabbath is one of the heart, the everlasting rest of the Christ who is within us through the ceasing from our own works and entering into His, and thus finding the rest that remains for the people of God.
3. Let the Sabbath claim our loving observance and our watchful regard, not merely through the sanctions of a law, but from the impulse of the deepest love. There are some things God asks of us, not merely because they are commanded, but because they are our instinctive delight. He did not tell Mary to pour out the treasures of her alabaster vase. He would not have praised her so much if He had been obliged to tell her. What He loved in her was that she had instinct enough to think for herself of this graceful expression of her faith and love. The very spontaneousness of it was its charm. So He wants us to keep the Sabbath sacred and holy, not because we would be stoned if we do not do so, but because it is like a wife’s honor, a mother’s name, a thing too sacred to be dragged on earth’s common places. It is like the best room in the family. You don’t use it to put your workbench in it and your kitchen pots. You don’t wash the dishes there, and put away the ash barrels and garbage cans; but you keep it for the family reunion, for the visit of cherished friends, for the sanctuary of the household and the heart. This is the place of the Sabbath. Let us keep it clean. Let us keep it sacred. Let us keep it sweet. Not because we have to, but because we love to and it brings to us the memorial of a cloudless evening and the remembrance of an Easter dawn, and the blessed hope of that sweet morn whose dawn shall break on a deathless, sinless, tearless world.