The Lord’s Day

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 25, 1909

In the difficult and somewhat discouraging effort to find a New Testament basis for the observance of Sunday as the sabbath, some advocates of Sunday sacredness seem to be forced to adopt far-fetched arguments which evidently had their origin in the vivid imagination of some versatile thinker. One such argument has recently been brought to our attention. It is used in connection with the well-known text, “I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day.” Rev. 1:10. The claim is made that the word here translated “Lord’s” is a new word, not previously employed in the Greek Scriptures, but especially coined to designate that “the Lord’s day” is a new institution. It may be well therefore to give some consideration to this effort to find some Scriptural proof for the change of the Sabbath.

The word translated “Lord’s” in this text is kuriake, the feminine form and dative case of the adjective kuriakos. This adjective kuriakos is derived from the masculine form of the adjective kurios, which with the article prefixed is used as a noun. This noun is defined by Robinson in his Greek lexicon of the New Testament as meaning “lord, master, owner.” It is frequently used in the New Testament, generally referring to Christ, and in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament it is employed to render the Hebrew word Jehovah. With the meaning “master,” or “owner,” it is used in such passages as Matt. 21:40, “The lord [owner] therefore of the vineyard;” Matt. 15:27, in the plural, “their masters’ table;” Luke 19:33, “the owners thereof.” In the same way, the same word is used in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament in such passages as Ex. 21:28, “the owner of the ox;” verse 29, “his owner;” verse 34, “the owner of the pit.”

The same word is used in Mark 2:28, “The Son of man is lord [owner] even of the Sabbath.” As Christ, the Son of God, the eternal Word, was the agent in creation (John 1:1-3), although then manifested as the Son of man, he could with all propriety declare himself to be lord or owner of the Sabbath which was instituted by him at creation as a memorial of the creative work. Even those who advocate a change in the Sabbath at the time of the resurrection will admit that in this statement Christ referred to the original Sabbath, the seventh day of the week.

What now could be more appropriate than that the day of which Christ declared himself to be the lord and owner should be called “the Lord’s day,” using to express this lordship and ownership, in the adjective form, the same word which is used as a noun in Mark 2:28?

It appears therefore that there is absolutely no sound basis for the assertion that a new word was coined in order to convey the idea that an entirely new institution had been established, inasmuch as the word used is simply another form of a very familiar word constantly employed throughout the Scriptures. Furthermore, the idea that there is one day which belongs to the Lord in a special sense, and which he has designated as his own, is by no means new, dating back to the very origin of the Sabbath. It should also be noted that the emphasis in the expression used in Mark 2:28 is not to be placed upon this well-established principle of the ownership of the day, but upon the other thought that the lordship, or ownership, of the Sabbath was then vested in the Son of man, who was God manifest in the flesh.

The assertion that the expression “the Lord’s day” was in common use at the time when The Revelation was written, as designating the first day of the week, is entirely unwarranted in the light of the fact that the apostle John wrote his Gospel after he wrote The Revelation, and that in the Gospel he calls the day following the Sabbath “the first day of the week,” and in no instance refers to it as the Lord’s day. If the expression “the Lord’s day” was in general use at that time as the proper designation for a new sabbath, which, as is claimed, was established by our Lord’s resurrection and recognized by his disciples as taking the place of the original Sabbath, we should certainly expect that the latest written book of the New Testament would employ this phrase, and certainly so, if the same writer had previously used this expression in referring to the same day.

If the use of a term in the New Testament Scriptures not previously used in the Greek Scriptures is evidence that a new institution had been established, or a new experience had been realized, we shall be driven to some strange conclusions. For example: the Greek word thraskeia, signifying “religion,” is used in the New Testament, but is not found in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Was religion therefore a new

idea, or a new experience, in New Testament times? So also the Greek word pro-orizein, “to predestinate,” is employed in Rom. 8:30, but is not found in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Are we therefore to understand that predestination was entirely a new idea introduced into the Christian economy by the apostle Paul? These illustrations are sufficient—although there are many others—to show that the mere fact that a certain Greek word is used for the first time in New Testament writings does not prove that a new institution or a new idea has arisen.

Those who accept the teaching of the Scriptures as a whole, and in their obvious meaning, are not compelled to resort to any such groundless arguments in order to establish the plainly revealed truth that the seventh-day Sabbath is of continued obligation, and that the real Lord’s day is the day of which the Son of man declared himself to be the lord.