Why Was Jesus Raised on Sunday?
By Dr. Nicholas J. Schaser
The Christian tradition of Sunday worship came about, in part, because Jesus was raised from the dead on this day of the week. But why did God decide to raise the Son on a Sunday? Was it to signal a theological shift from Saturday to Sunday? Was it to provide the new religion of Christianity with an alternative time for church attendance? Well, no. There is more than one answer to this question, but any rationale is rooted in the Scriptures of Israel. By raising Jesus from the dead on the first day of the week, God reaffirms the covenant between the Lord and the Jewish people.
The day before Jesus’ resurrection was the Sabbath—the Jewish day of rest. When Yeshua died “it was the day of preparation, and the Sabbath was dawning” (Luke 23:54). After the burial, the women who had followed Jesus from the Galilee wait before bringing spices to the tomb: “on the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment” (23:56). In noting that the women rested on the Sabbath, Luke implies that Jesus (and God) did the same. Resurrection is a divine work that had to wait until after the day of rest.
The commandment that the women observed, which is repeated in different ways throughout the Torah, was to be an outward expression of God’s covenant with the people of Israel: “Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths,” says God to Israel, “for this is a sign (אות; ‘ot) between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, make you holy (מקדשכם; meqadishkhem)” (Exodus 13:31). In the Bible, a “sign” is a public, visible marker that others can see and comprehend (e.g., Gen 1:14; 4:15; 9:12; 17:11; Exod 3:12; 4:8-9). In the case of Sabbath, God says that this day of collective rest “is a sign (אות) between me and the children of Israel forever” (Exodus 31:17). This sign was a marker of Jewish identity that could be seen by all the other nations among whom Israel lived; by it, the chosen people were made “holy” (קדש; qadosh) or “separate” from Gentiles.
When Jesus rests in the ground on the Sabbath, his earthly life ends the same way it had begun: with the fulfillment of a Jewish identity marker. Just as the Sabbath is said to be a “sign” (אות) between God and Israel, so is circumcision. The Lord tells Abraham, “This is my covenant that you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be a sign (אות) between me and you” (Genesis 17:10-11). The ritual of circumcision was to take place when an infant was “eight days old” (Gen 17:12; cf. Leviticus 12:3), and Luke says of Yeshua that “at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus” (Lk 2:21). The Messiah of Israel takes on a covenantal “sign” both at the beginning and end of his life, which reminds Gospel readers that Jesus’ resurrection is a response to the divine promises made to his Jewish ancestors. As Paul puts it, Yeshua was “a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the ancestors, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15:8-9).
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