Was the Sabbath Day Changed to Sunday? (1 Corinthians 16:2)

1 Corinthians 16:2 ESV On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come.

First Corinthians 16:2 is often used to prove that the Sabbath day has been changed to Sunday. It is argued that the Corinthian Christians must have held their weekly holy assemblies or “church services” on Sundays, since the Apostle Paul instructed them to collect alms on the first day of every week.

However, the text does not actually mention a collection of alms during a church service. Rather, Paul instructed the Corinthian Christians to “put something aside and store it up” (ESV). The Greek expression for “aside” here is par heautō, which means “beside himself”, or “by him” (KJV). This means that the “putting aside and storing” of alms here did not happen in church, but at home. The passage does not mention when the alms would be collected, let alone when the Corinthian Christians were holding their weekly holy assemblies.

Why did Paul instruct the Corinthian Christians to set aside and store up their alms on the first day of every week? Probably because it was the beginning of the week! It would be the best time for each person to decide how much of his resources that he should set aside as alms, and make sure that he and his family have enough for the time to come.

This makes perfect sense if the Corinthian Christians were indeed holding their holy assemblies on the seventh day of each week, when each person would bring his alms to be collected in church. Then, the next day would be the first day of a new week, when each person would “put something aside and store it up”—to be collected during the holy assembly on the seventh day of that week.