The Lord's Day
This is an exchange I had with a friend and sister in Christ last week which I thought would be helpful for anyone else who might have this question.
Her Question:
Thanks Daniel, When I actually get a moment to sit and write out some thoughts and questions I will but for now, one that is on my mind is in reference to "The Lord's Day" (not a Greek question). When those in the church refer to this they mean (and I did too until I started looking into scripture for a reference for it) The first day of the week; or Sunday if you will. However, when looking up scripture for it, I find that all I have found so far refers to The Day of the Lord or The Lord's Day as a day of reckoning or judgment between God and man. See: II Thess.2:2,3; Joel 2:1, 2:11, 3:14; and Amos 5:18; and Malachi 4:5. I'm sure there are more references but I cannot find any that refer to The Lord's Day as being the day we meet together each week. It is bothering me because I think we are using it from tradition as scriptural reference and I hear it used all the time in the pulpit…I understand what is implied, that we as Christians meet upon the first day of the week for worship and communion with God just as the disciples met with Christ and one another upon the first day of the week; however....where is the scriptural text that says that is "The Lord's Day"? If you could be of help in this area, I'd greatly appreciate it. Talk with you soon…
My Response:
Hey, great question. The "Lord's Day" is a term John used in Rev. 1:10. I believe - along with many scholars that Revelation was written in about 95ad. The term was used to describe Sunday in other Christian, non-scriptural, texts. For example, Ignatius, an elder in Antioch made reference to the "Lord's Day" rather than "the Sabbath" being the day that we celebrate (c. 115ad) Another widely circulated early Christian document, the Didache (c. 120ad) instructs that Christians should meet every first day of the week called the "Lord's Day." The helpfulness of these references is that they assist us in understanding what John meant in Revelation 1 with this reference. There would not have been a need for John to clarify what he meant by the reference if it was something that his whole audience would have already understood. Therefore, when we look at use of the term in the early church, we find early Christians using this term for Sunday. It also makes sense. This is the Day Christ rose from the dead, the day the apostles established as the day we remember the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ through the "Lord's Supper" the day Christians from earliest times met to worship and the day money was (is) set aside for the Lord's work. It has been called "The Lord's Day" ever since the first century and the reference is used at least (only) once in Scripture to designate Sunday.In the Old Testament prophets, the reference to "The Day of the Lord" referred to the time period when all things would be made new, when the messiah would come. I think the clearest reference is found in comparing Joel 2:28-32 with Acts 2:17-21. Peter is saying that this "day of the Lord" has now come. The way people would know that the time had come would be the presence of the working of the Holy Spirit.The construction in Greek between the "the Day of the Lord"(Acts 2:20) and "the Lord's Day" (Rev. 1:10) is actually different. The way they are translated helps to clarify the difference.Still another term is used in the New Testament to refer to a different "Day of the Lord" which is the judgment to come. Every time you find the "Day of the Lord" translated at least in the NIV, the term for "Day" comes before the term for "Lord" and is in what is referred to as the "genitive" case. The genitive shows possession. However, in Rev. 1:10 it is actually in the "dative." The dative shows "personal interest." In this case it is used as the "dative of possession" which puts emphasis on the possessor rather than the genitive which puts emphasis on what is possessed. Therefore, the "Day of the Lord" references emphasize the day. The "Lord's Day" emphasizes the Lord. This is appropriate, since it is upon this day that the Lord is our focus.
See you Sunday! Daniel
Her Question:
Thanks Daniel, When I actually get a moment to sit and write out some thoughts and questions I will but for now, one that is on my mind is in reference to "The Lord's Day" (not a Greek question). When those in the church refer to this they mean (and I did too until I started looking into scripture for a reference for it) The first day of the week; or Sunday if you will. However, when looking up scripture for it, I find that all I have found so far refers to The Day of the Lord or The Lord's Day as a day of reckoning or judgment between God and man. See: II Thess.2:2,3; Joel 2:1, 2:11, 3:14; and Amos 5:18; and Malachi 4:5. I'm sure there are more references but I cannot find any that refer to The Lord's Day as being the day we meet together each week. It is bothering me because I think we are using it from tradition as scriptural reference and I hear it used all the time in the pulpit…I understand what is implied, that we as Christians meet upon the first day of the week for worship and communion with God just as the disciples met with Christ and one another upon the first day of the week; however....where is the scriptural text that says that is "The Lord's Day"? If you could be of help in this area, I'd greatly appreciate it. Talk with you soon…
My Response:
Hey, great question. The "Lord's Day" is a term John used in Rev. 1:10. I believe - along with many scholars that Revelation was written in about 95ad. The term was used to describe Sunday in other Christian, non-scriptural, texts. For example, Ignatius, an elder in Antioch made reference to the "Lord's Day" rather than "the Sabbath" being the day that we celebrate (c. 115ad) Another widely circulated early Christian document, the Didache (c. 120ad) instructs that Christians should meet every first day of the week called the "Lord's Day." The helpfulness of these references is that they assist us in understanding what John meant in Revelation 1 with this reference. There would not have been a need for John to clarify what he meant by the reference if it was something that his whole audience would have already understood. Therefore, when we look at use of the term in the early church, we find early Christians using this term for Sunday. It also makes sense. This is the Day Christ rose from the dead, the day the apostles established as the day we remember the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ through the "Lord's Supper" the day Christians from earliest times met to worship and the day money was (is) set aside for the Lord's work. It has been called "The Lord's Day" ever since the first century and the reference is used at least (only) once in Scripture to designate Sunday.In the Old Testament prophets, the reference to "The Day of the Lord" referred to the time period when all things would be made new, when the messiah would come. I think the clearest reference is found in comparing Joel 2:28-32 with Acts 2:17-21. Peter is saying that this "day of the Lord" has now come. The way people would know that the time had come would be the presence of the working of the Holy Spirit.The construction in Greek between the "the Day of the Lord"(Acts 2:20) and "the Lord's Day" (Rev. 1:10) is actually different. The way they are translated helps to clarify the difference.Still another term is used in the New Testament to refer to a different "Day of the Lord" which is the judgment to come. Every time you find the "Day of the Lord" translated at least in the NIV, the term for "Day" comes before the term for "Lord" and is in what is referred to as the "genitive" case. The genitive shows possession. However, in Rev. 1:10 it is actually in the "dative." The dative shows "personal interest." In this case it is used as the "dative of possession" which puts emphasis on the possessor rather than the genitive which puts emphasis on what is possessed. Therefore, the "Day of the Lord" references emphasize the day. The "Lord's Day" emphasizes the Lord. This is appropriate, since it is upon this day that the Lord is our focus.
See you Sunday! Daniel
posted by Daniel Cherry at 6:07 AM
2 Comments:
"The Lord's Day" Revelation 1:10*
John’s unique use in the New Testament (1:10) of the dative expression, in the Lord ’s Day, appears to be influenced by the Old Testament prophets’ repeated use of the similar expression in that day" translated a dative "in the Septuigent (LXX), when they were referring to the eschatological day of the Lord. This observation seems to have been overlooked by those who insist that John’s use of this phrase refers to Sunday (Thomas, Osborne). John would have been quite familiar with the dative construction of "in that day" from the Septuigent and could have quite easiliy used the dative "in the Lord's day" instead. This expression is never used in the Bible to designate Sunday, the Sabbath, or a day of the week meant for worship (unless, as Mounce, p. 76, and others argue, this is the meaning here). Thomas (vol. 1, p. 91) suggests that this is possibly "the first use of this name for Sunday." But all the writers of the New Testament who made any reference to Sunday, including Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul, designated Sunday exclusively with the phrase "first day of the week" (cf. Mt. 28:1, Mk. 16:2, 9; Lk. 24:1, John 20:1, 19; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2). New Testament writers as a rule, and John specifically (John 20:1, 19), did not use the Greeek "ev' to introduce a day of the week as we find here!
Thomas (ibid.) says the Lord's Day is used "a short time after the writing of the Apocalypse" to designate Sunday. But, a check of his sources raises questions about this conclusion. The Didache (14:1) has the word for Lord, but does not have the word day, the expression under discussion does not appear. Ignatius' Epistle to the Magnesians, in a similar style, simply has the word Lord, but not day. The Gospel of Peter (Evangelia Petri) likewise makes no mention of day. Melito of Sardis (165-175 AD) is claimed by Eusebius to have written a paper entitled, The Lord's Day, but again the word for day does not actually appear in the title, and the contents of the book have not survived for our examination. And the time when Melito wrote, between 165-175 AD, is certainly not "a short time" after John wrote the book of Revelation.
Later in church history (as in our day) Christians would refer to Sunday, or the day set aside for worship, as "the Lord's day." However, "the day of the Lord," "that day," and "the day" are used throughout the Bible to designate the eschatological day of the Lord, the event when the Lord Jesus comes again. John is saying that the Revelation he received pertained to the time concerning the events surrounding the coming of the Lord Jesus. The observation (Thomas, op. cit.) that John uses the dative of Lord (adjectival, "Lord's day") contributes nothing to his argument that the meaning is Sunday. The genitive is the customary case for adjectives; the dative for adverbs (Wallace, p.76). Peter, using the genitive as John uses the dative, writes (2 Peter 3:12), "God's Day," [literal word order] an adjectival use of God in the genitive with the noun day. This is especially noteworthy in that Peter uses this construction as a synonymous way of stating "the day of the Lord," which he had referenced in the same passage (2 Peter 3:10). Walvoord says, "The adjectival form can be explained on the ground that in the Old Testament there was no adjectival form for "Lord," and therefore the noun had to be used" (p.42). Nothing from history, or from the way John uses the Greek language, compels us to conclude that by "Lord's day," he meant anything different than "day of the Lord." Kittel observes, "A genitive tou kuriou might have been used instead of the adjective." The attempts to import the later future meaning of this phrase, "Sunday," into the present context is an example of the exegetical fallacy (Carson, p. 32) described as "semantic anachronism." The reader should refer to Carson's discussion of murtus. (Rev. 2:13).
It is especially critical to note that at the outset John is giving us the time frame of the events and revelation he is about to show his readers. All that follows is to be found in the Lord's Day. Compromising this point has resulted in the mess we are in today with all the different sugestions for other time frames for the events portrayed in the Revelation given us by John. Please prayerfully consider re-thinking and changing your position since yours is different. Remember the warning at the end of the Revelation.
*Sorry the Greek did not come through. I had to edit the above discussion from my book, Total Eclipse: Christ Returns. I will also try again to include the footnotes. If you send me email I will fax you a hard copy of the original page with Greek copy and footnotes from my book.
samyster62@expressright.com or samy@christev.org
Steve
Steve,
I appreciate your study and your input on this issue. I still, however, must disagree with your conclusion.
First, You mention the dative in the LXX. However, it is still genitive when using the phrase “day of the Lord.” “In that day” is necessarily a dative phrase and would have no meaning in the genitive.
Second, The Greek New Testament 4th Rev. ed. offers no other possible reading for this phrase in Revelation 1:10. I don’t have a copy of Kittel at my immediate disposal, but if he suggests that there is another possible construction for this phrase, I don’t find it in the textual apparatus in Aland and Metzger’s (et. al.) “official” text. And they are normally pretty good to offer any meaningful textual variants.
Third, It does not make sense for John to be referring to his being “in the Spirit” in the general “day of the Lord,” because that “day” has already be ushered in. The very point of Luke’s recording of Peter’s discourse in Acts two was to indicate that “the day of the Lord” as per prophetic expectation (Joel 2) was at that present time beginning on the day of Pentecost. For John to say he was in the Spirit “in the day of the Lord” meaning an era of redemptive history, would therefore introduce a redundant and superfluous phrase into the text.
Fourth, the dative of possession here, again puts emphasis on the day. When he writes the apocalypse John is in his normal state of being and his vision is cast in the past tense. He is reporting what he had experienced in his vision on a particular day. The reference is to the day the vision was received, not what was in the vision itself (i.e. your suggestion the day of Christ’s second coming) The vision was received on the Lord’s day. His reference in 1:10 is not to some eschatological moment, but rather a previous day on which he had the vision.
Fifth, anachronisms? On your website way you have applied Revelation directly to today’s events, (i.e. Revelation 6 referring to the United States) indicates your approach to Revelation, the Futurist approach, which has been proven too malleable to put any stock in its reliability. [For those reading this blog, the Futurist view seeks to apply the events of Rev. 4-19 to the events of history Just before the end of the world. However, people who hold this view tend to base their interpretation upon the century in which they live. There have been, therefore endless possibilities of interpretations. I believe this is not a helpful approach to John’s book]. It seems like your interpretation of Rev. 1:10 is colored by your futurist approach to the book and introduces an entire interpretation based upon anachronisms.
I find an approach closer to the Preterist view to be more helpful. Shcolarship is much more substantial in showing how John (a first century author) wrote this book in the first century to a first century audience (the churches in Asia minor) in a way that they could understand. If Rev. 6 deals with the United States, then Revelation was an utterly useless book for those to whom it was directly written. Since Christ himself said that we would not know the “day or the hour” he would return, I am more concerned to keep my lamp trimmed and burning and help others do the same – to be constantly ready for the bridegroom.
It is not likely an anachronism to understand John using this phrase the way I have described (and in line with the most prominent conservative scholars today). Extent extra-biblical Christian literature from the first century outside the New Testament is scant at best. However the closest writings we do have access to refer to our day of worship as the day belonging to the “Lord.” That is the best we can do. “The Lord’s Day.”
In my original post I attempted to show how the phrase “the Lord’s Day” was okay for us to use today as a designation for the first day of the week. It was being used by early Christians and I believe, clearly was used by John in Revelation 1:10 to refer to the same.
Since general our approach to this precious book of scripture differs, I believe we will probably continue to disagree on its interpretation. So, while disagreeing, I want you to know that I respect the time and heart and devotion you have put into ministry and into understanding and teaching Revelation. I also appreciate our common goal to help people see the importance of worship and to find a home in Heaven with our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. May that continue to be our focus. May God bless you in Spirit and in Truth.
Respectfully,
Daniel
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