So did the Catholic Church, did they change the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday?
I'm gonna say no, and I'm gonna say no because we don't understand Sunday to be the Sabbath.
The Sabbath is the seventh day. In the Old Testament it was part of the covenant and
part of God's commandment to observe the seventh day as a way of acknowledging the goodness of
God's original creation and God's saving act of bringing Israel out of bondage in Egypt
and establishing Israel as his new covenant people, as the beginning of the process of
bringing about a new creation. So that's what the Sabbath meant. In the New Testament, when Jesus
dies and rises again on the third day, he comes back to life, he's resurrected, transformed by
God the Father on Sunday, then what was the way of acknowledging God by honoring a certain day
related to God's actions, would have been the Sabbath, gets transformed into the first day—you
know, it's the first day of the week—the first day of the new creation. So Christians don't
worship together on the seventh day, which is the day of completion for the old creation;
rather, because of Jesus' resurrection, when God is done in raising Jesus from the dead on the
first day of the week, Christians celebrate the new creation, the beginning of the new
creation—which is what Jesus' resurrection is all about—and we look forward to the completion
of that new creation at the end of history when we will have the "super-Sabbath," the
final Sabbath entering the fullness of the rest that God intends for His creation. So Christians,
because of what Jesus has done through the Resurrection, look at the Lord's day no longer
as the Sabbath of the Old Testament, the seventh day of the week, Saturday, but rather they look
at the Lord's day as the beginning of the new creation, the first day of the week, which is
Sunday. Now how was that for you, Dakota?Does that make sense to you? It kinda confuses me, because,
like you said, Jesus was risen on the first day of the week, which is Sunday,
and the seventh day of the week in Saturday. So one of God's commandments, the fourth commandment:
"Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy." So why are we worshiping on Sunday instead of Saturday?
Well, that commandment we have to interpret—as we do everything in the Old Testament,
as we do everything in the Bible, we understand that commandment and we understand the rest
of the Bible in light of Christ. Christ is the interpretive norm, the standard, that Christians
have for understanding the Old Testament. So just as the other commandments, the other things in the
Old Testament, are understood as pointing to Christ—and some of those things, like
circumcision, some of the dietary requirements of the Old Testament, the Mosaic covenant, were
things that had to do with that covenant and God's purpose in calling Israel as a people to prepare
for the coming of Jesus. Just as we now interpret those things in light of Christ, and some of those
things aren't practiced or aren't practiced the way they were in the Old Testament—so circumcision
is no longer a sign of the covenant, that's been transformed into baptism, so the commandments
in the Old Testament that had to do with circumcision, even though they were given by God,
even though they're part of his covenant, even though they were his commandments;
when we understand them in the light of Christ, that they were pointing to
Christ in the New Covenant, when the New Covenant comes, those commandments don't apply in the same
way as they did. Similarly, with respect to the Sabbath that pointed to the old creation and
God's establishment of the people of Israel, well, when the new creation begins, and the new people,
the Church, is formed, we interpret that commandment in light of God's bigger purpose.