It is clear that, from the beginning, God intended one day of each week to be kept holy unto Him, for the purposes of remembering His redemption and contemplating His sovereign goodness. The Sabbath – now the Lord’s Day – is a “sign” between God and His people, one that He intends should continue through every generation of His children.

What does the Lord’s Day “sign”? The Lord Himself tells us: He intends to “sanctify” His people, to make us holy. He wants us to know that this is His purpose for us. In our busy lives, with all the distractions and enticements the world has to offer, we can all too easily lose sight of God’s sanctifying purpose for us, that we should be increasingly remade into the image of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 3.12-18). In His grace, God set the Lord’s Day aside, one day in each week, for us to meditate on Him, His grace and might, and His sanctifying purpose for our lives.

Honoring this day as God intends can make all the difference in how we live during the other six. The low regard into which the Lord’s Day has fallen in our day – mornings for God, the rest for me – helps to explain why there is so little manifest holiness in the Body of Christ when we are dispersed throughout the world during the remaining six days of the week.

As God is working to sanctify us, His people (Phil. 2.13), so we must work to sanctify the Lord’s Day. It is a holy day for us, just as we are a holy people for the Lord. The Lord sets us aside unto Himself in Jesus Christ; then, for the rest of our lives, He works within us to make us willing and able to do His pleasure. He works to sanctify us.

Similarly, we must, in our minds and plans, set the Lord’s Day aside as holy. Then we must work diligently to remember and guard the Lord’s Day, and to fill it with sanctifying works of worship, meditation, and prayer. As we do we are reminded of how the Lord, in the rest we have in Jesus, is working to sanctify us day by day. It’s good to be reminded of this, and the Lord’s Day can “sign” this great work to us, reminding us of it and preparing us for it, week after week.

T. M. Moore

The Law of God is the soil which, fertilized by the rest of God’s Word and watered by His Spirit, brings forth the fruit of Christian life. If you’d like to understand this process better, and how to make best use of the Law in your walk with and work for the Lord, order the book, The Ground for Christian Ethics, from our online store.

Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.