January 22, 2026 - “The First Day of the Week”
Jesus was crucified on Friday, the sixth day—the day humanity was created (Gen 1:26-31). He rested in a tomb in a garden on the Sabbath, echoing God’s rest on the seventh day of creation (Gen 2:2-3). Then, “on the first day of the week,” he rose from the dead (John 20:1).
These days may seem like just historical details, but they point to a bigger reality.
Twice in John 20, John tells us it was “the first day of the week” (vv. 1, 19). But in Greek, the phrase is striking: τῇ μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων—literally, “the first of the sabbaths.” Greek has its own perfectly good word for “week” (ἑβδομάς), but John intentionally chooses the Hebrew-rooted word “sabbath” instead.
Why? Because John wants us to see that something monumental has happened. The first week of the old creation has come to its end. God created the world, humanity sinned, God became human, God died, and God rested on the Sabbath in a tomb. The whole arc of the first creation points to this moment.
But when Jesus rises, he rises on the first day. A new week begins—the first week of the new creation. And what did God do on the first day of the first week of creation? He spoke into the darkness and said, “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3).
On the first day of this new week, God spoke into the darkness of death itself and said, “Let there be light.” And the Light of the world rose from the dead (John 8:12).
The Sabbath was always meant to point forward to the day when God’s rest—his completed work of creation and redemption—would fill the earth. The resurrection is that future arriving in our present. Jesus’ rising on the first day doesn’t leave the Sabbath behind; it fulfills it. The true Sabbath rest isn’t about stopping work one day a week. It’s about entering the rest that comes from living in the life of the risen Christ (Heb 4:9-10).
The resurrection isn’t just an event that happened on a specific day in history. It occurred on the first day of the new creation—a creation in which God is remaking everything by the same power that raised Jesus from the dead (2 Cor 5:17; Rom 8:11). We are living in that first week now, moving toward the true Sabbath rest that God always intended and making his Sabbath rest known here and now.