Lord’s Day
Lord's Day [kyriakē hēmera]. The expression appears in the NT only in Revelation 1:10 where John the Revelator uses it with reference to the time when he received his first vision on Patmos. The phrase occurs neither in the Septuagint nor early Christian writings coinciding with the time of the writing of Revelation.
In the history of interpretation of that phrase, several proposals have emerged. Most scholars hold that John used the phrase "the Lord's day" to state that his vision occurred on Sunday. Such a view is based on an assertion that the early Christian writers used the expression "the Lord's day" with reference to Sunday as the day of Jesus' resurrection. The evidence of this alleged early usage of the phrase is found in the two early second-century documents, Didache and the letter of Ignatius of Antioch To the Magnesians.
A closer look into these documents, however, rules out such an assertion. First, Didache does not have "on the Lord's day" but "according to the Lord's of the Lord" (14:1); the substantive "day" is supplied by the translators. However, the context shows that the phrase should rather mean "according to the Lord's teaching/commandment/way." The situation is similar with Ignatius' letter. In addressing the issue of "Judaizing"—Jewish practices—that caused disputes in the Christian communities, Ignatius admonishes, "no longer sabbatizing but living in accordance with the Lord's" (Magnesians 9.1). Similar to Didache, translators supply the word "day." However, several studies show that the context favors the word "life" rather than "day." Ignatius does not urge the readers to refrain from observing the Sabbath and live according to the Lord's day (namely, Sunday), but "in accordance with the Lord's life." The focus of his argument are not days of worship but to urge Christians not to follow Judaism but to observe the Sabbath in a spiritual manner.
The fact is that there is no reliable evidence that "the Lord's day" was used for Sunday before the late second-century. It appears for first time in the apocryphal work The Gospel of Peter, and then, in the writings of Clement of Alexandria (ca. 190). It appears that at some later time, Christians applied the familiar expression from Revelation to the first day of the week.
Some scholars suggest that "the Lord's day" in Revelation referred to the Easter Sunday, as an annual event. In their view, John had the vision of the resurrected Christ on that day of the celebration of the resurrection. While "the Lord's day" was used in the late second century to designate Easter Sunday in memory of Jesus' resurrection, there is no historical evidence that Easter was called "the Lord's day" in John's time.
Some others hold that "the Lord's day" refers to the Emperor's Day. In this view, early Christians used this expression in protest against the emperor worship. While in the first century, the adjective "Lord's" (kuriakos) was used with reference to the emperor, no historical evidence exists that Christians ever used "the Lord's day" or "Lord's" in Greek with reference to the Emperor's Day.
Another suggestion is that "the Lord's day" in Revelation 1:10 could refer to the eschatological Day of the Lord (1 Thess 5:2; 2 Pet 3:10). In Greek, the expressions "the Lord's day" and "the day of the Lord" do not make some substantive change in meaning. Thus, "the Lord's day" could be one of several designations for the day of Christ's coming alongside "the day of the Lord" (1 Thess 5:2; 2 Pet 3:10); "the day of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 1:8; 2 Cor 1:14); and "the great day of God" (Rev 16:14). Jesus calls the day of His coming "His day" (Luke 17:24). This variety of expressions shows that the expression "the Lord's day" could be another expression for Christ's coming.
On the basis of evidence, the interpretation of "the Lord's day" either as Sunday or Easter Sunday is problematic for an obvious reason that it is not based on biblical evidence but on the usage of the phrase long after the time of Revelation. Likewise, the Emperor's Day view does not rest on reliable evidence. However, both biblical and historical evidence point to "the Lord's day" as the seventh-day Sabbath. This is a generally accepted understanding of Seventh-day Adventists. In the Bible, the Sabbath is explicitly designated as "the Lord's." In the fourth commandment of the Decalogue, it is referred to as "the Sabbath to the Lord your God" (Exod 20:10). Throughout the OT, it is called "your Sabbath" (Neh 9:14) and "my Sabbath" (cf. Exod 31:13; Lev 26:2; Deut 5:14; Isa 56:4-6; Ezek 20:12-13). The Hebrew text of Isaiah 58:13 reads: "the holy [day] of the Lord" and "my holy day." All the three Synoptics quote Jesus' saying: "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath" (Matt 12:8; Mark 2:27-28; Luke 6:5).
This shows that the Christians in Asia could have easily understood that John received his vision on the seventh-day Sabbath. The fact that in the NT the title "Lord" is applied to Christ suggests the "Lord's day" in Revelation aptly referred to the Sabbath as the day that belonged to Christ. It is also significant that the NT contains neither explicit nor implicit reference to a change from the seventh-day Sabbath to Sunday. The patristic writings show that, at the time of the writing of Revelation, Christians in Asia Minor, were generally still observing the seventh-day Sabbath.
The biblical and historical evidence point to "the Lord's day" as the seventh-day Sabbath. On the other hand, it is plausible that John initiated the phrase "the Lord's day" with a double meaning to state that his encounter with the glorified Christ in vision on Patmos occurred on the seventh-day Sabbath in the context of the approaching eschatological day of the Lord and the events leading toward it. That made the Sabbath to him a foretaste of the eschatological rest he would enter together with the faithful of all ages. This would be in agreement with the eschatological significance of the Sabbath in Revelation as well as in the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish tradition.
