Chapter 26 - The Lord of the Sabbath (12:1-14)

26 The Lord of the Sabbath (12:1-14)

At that time Jesus went on the Sabbath through the grainfields, and His disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Behold, Your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath.” But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did, when he became hungry, he and his companions; how he entered the house of God, and they ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those with him, but for the priests alone? Or have you not read in the Law, that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath, and are innocent? But I say to you, that something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire compassion, and not a sacrifice,’ you would hot have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

And departing from there, He went into their synagogue. And behold, there was a man with a withered hand. And they questioned Him, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”—in order that they might accuse Him. And He said to them, “What man shall there be among you, who shall have one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it, and lift it out? Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep! So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand!” And he stretched it out, and it was restored to normal, like the other. But the Pharisees went out, and counseled together against Him, as to how they might destroy Him. (12:1-14)

The events recorded in Matthew 12 mark a major turning point in Jesus’ ministry, focusing on the rejection of the Messiah by His own people. Verses 1-21 depict the mounting unbelief of Israel crystalizing into conscious rejection, and verses 22-50 depict the blasphemy that follows the rejection. After the King was presented and attested, He was then rejected and blasphemed before finally being put to death on the cross.

Herod’s wicked plan to destroy the prophesied King of the Jews by killing all the male babies in Judah was the first evidence that the Messiah would not be accepted. When His forerunner, John the Baptist, confronted the Pharisees and Sadducees by calling them a generation of vipers and warning them to flee from the wrath to come, the rejection became still more evident. From the beginning of Jesus’ own ministry the Jewish leaders were skeptical of Him, and that skepticism rapidly escalated into criticism, open hostility, and direct opposition.

As Jesus increasingly attacked the man-made religion of rabbinical tradition, the leaders of that religion increasingly attacked Him. They accused Him of blasphemy (9:3) and of fellowshipping with tax-collectors and sinners (v. 11). They even accused Him of being demon possessed (v. 34). The more directly Jesus confronted the Jewish leaders with their internal sinfulness and their external emptiness, the more they hardened their antagonism to Him. Criticism and indifference grew into sharp rebuke and then into furious rage.

One of the primary causes for opposition centered on observance of the Sabbath, the problem with which the present text (12:1-14) deals. It deals with the incident that prompted the opposition, then Jesus’ indictment, instruction, and illustration, and finally the insurrection against Him.

THE INCIDENT

At that time Jesus went on the Sabbath through the grainfields, and His disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat. (12:1)

Sabbath observance was the heart of the Jewish legalistic system, and when Jesus violated the traditions as to how that day should be honored, He struck a raw nerve.

Both the English Sabbath and the Greek sabbaton transliterate the Hebrew shabbt, which has the basic meaning of ceasing, rest, and inactivity. At the end of creation “God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made” (Gen. 2:3). In honor of that day, the Lord declared it to be a special time of rest and remembrance for His people and incorporated its observance into the requirements of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:9-11).

But that law is the only one of the Ten Commandments that is nonmoral and purely ceremonial; and it was unique to the Old Covenant and to Israel. The other nine commandments, on the other hand, pertain to moral and spiritual absolutes and are repeated and expanded upon many places in the New Testament. But Sabbath observance is never recommended to Christians, much less given as a command in the New Testament.

When Jesus began His ministry, the Old Covenant was still in effect and all of its requirements were binding on Jews, the special people of that covenant. Jesus observed every demand and met every condition of Scripture, because it was His own Word, which He came to fulfill and not destroy (Matt. 5:17). But for several hundred years the various schools of rabbis had added regulation after regulation, going far beyond the teaching of Scripture and in many instances actually contradicting it (see Matt. 15:6, 9). In no area were those additions more extensive and extreme than in regard to Sabbath observance.

Keeping the Sabbath was still a binding ceremonial obligation for Israel, but most Jews had little idea of the original purpose of the Sabbath or of how God intended it to be honored. Instead of being a day of rest it had become a day of incredible burden. Because of the thousands of man-made restrictions regarding it, the Sabbath was more tiresome than the six days devoted to one’s occupation. It was harder to “rest” than to earn a living.

Jewish tradition had even caused the Sabbath to be dangerous. The apocryphal book of 1 Maccabees (2:31-38) tells of an incident during the time of Judas Maccabaeus when a group of Jews refused to defend themselves on the Sabbath against the Greek army led by Antiochus Epiphanes. As the soldiers of Antiochus attacked, the Jews “answered them not, neither cast they a stone at them, nor stopped the places where they lay hid; but said: ‘Let us die in our innocency: heaven and earth shall testify for us, that ye put us to death wrongfully.’ So they rose up against them in battle on the Sabbath, and they slew them with their wives and children and cattle, to the number of a thousand people.”

In his Antiquities, the Jewish historian Josephus reports that it was also because Jews would not defend themselves on the Sabbath that the Roman general Pompey was able to capture Jerusalem. As was the custom in ancient Roman warfare, Pompey began building a high mound from which his troops could bombard the city. Aware that the Jews defending Jerusalem would not oppose him then, the general did all construction work on the Sabbath. “Had it not been for that practice, from the days of our forefathers, to rest on the seventh day,” Josephus wrote, “this bank could never have been perfected, by reason of the opposition the Jews would have made; for though our Law gave us leave then to defend ourselves against those that begin to fight with us and assault us (this was a concession), yet it does not permit us to meddle with our enemies while they do anything else.”

One section alone of the Talmud, the major compilation of Jewish tradition, has twenty-four chapters listing Sabbath laws. One law specified that the basic limit for travel was 3,000 feet from one’s house; but various exceptions were provided. If you had placed some food within 3,000 feet of your house, you could go there to eat it; and because the food was considered an extension of the house, you could then go another 3,000 feet beyond the food. If a rope were placed across an adjoining street or alley, the building on the other side, as well as the alley between, could be considered part of your house.

Certain objects could be lifted up and put down only from and to certain places. Other things could be lifted up from a public place and set down in a private one, and vice versa. Still others could be picked up in a wide place and put down in a legally free place—but rabbis could not agree about the meanings of wide and free.

Under Sabbath regulations, a Jew could not carry a load heavier than a dried fig; but if an object weighed half that amount he could carry it twice. Eating restrictions were among the most detailed and extensive. You could eat nothing larger than an olive; and even if you tasted half an olive, found it to be rotten and spit it out, that half was considered to have been eaten as far as the allowance was concerned.

Throwing an object into the air with one hand and catching it with the other was prohibited. If the Sabbath overtook you as you reached for some food, the food was to be dropped before drawing your arm back, lest you be guilty of carrying a burden.

Tailors did not carry a needle with them on the Sabbath for fear they might be tempted to mend a garment and thereby perform work. Nothing could be bought or sold, and clothing could not be dyed or washed. A letter could not be dispatched, even if by the hand of a Gentile. No fire could be lit or extinguished—including fire for a lamp—although a fire already lit could be used within certain limits. For that reason, some orthodox Jews today use automatic timers to turn on lights in their homes well before the Sabbath begins. Otherwise they might forget to turn them on in time and have to spend the night in the dark.

Baths could not be taken for fear some of the water might spill onto the floor and “wash” it. Chairs could not be moved because dragging them might make a furrow in the ground, and a woman was not to look in a mirror lest she see a gray hair and be tempted to pull it out. You could carry ink enough to draw only two letters of the alphabet, and false teeth could not be worn because they exceeded the weight limit for burdens.

According to those hair-splitting regulations, a Jew could not pull off even a handful of grain to eat on the Sabbath unless he were starving—which, of course, is often a difficult thing to determine and would be cause for considerable differences of opinion. If a person became ill on the Sabbath, only enough treatment could be given to keep him alive. Treatment to make him improve was declared to be work, and therefore forbidden. To determine just how much food, medicine, or bandaging would be necessary to keep a person alive—and no more—was itself an impossible burden.

Among the many other forbidden Sabbath activities were: sewing, plowing, reaping, grinding, baking, threshing, binding sheaves, winnowing, sifting, dying, shearing, spinning, kneading, separating or weaving two threads, tying or untying a knot, and sewing two stitches.

The Sabbath was anything but a time of rest. It had become a time of oppressive frustration and anxiety. The people were sick to death of this system that had been imposed on them by ungodly, worldly legalists, and they were indeed “weary and heavy-laden” (Matt. 11:28).

At that time (cf. 11:25) does not necessarily indicate that the events about to be described occurred directly after those just mentioned, but rather that they occurred in the same general period of time (from kairos, season).

That Jesus went on the Sabbath through the grainfields with His disciples was itself a violation of Jewish tradition, though not of Scripture. And the fact that they became hungry shows that they were not in the fields for the purpose of finding something to eat. They were simply passing through. Because they would have eaten only ripened grain, the time was probably late March or early April (when grain normally ripened in the Jordan valley) and therefore near Passover.

Roads as we know them today were few, and much travel was done on wide paths that went from town to town and passed through many pastures and grain-fields. As travelers walked along, they passed within an arm’s length of the crops on either side. Inns were rare even in small towns and villages and were nonexistent between them. If a traveler did not take enough food with him or found his trip extended for some reason, he had to live off the land. The Lord recognized such need in a provision of the Mosaic law: “When you enter your neighbor’s vineyard, then you may eat grapes until you are fully satisfied, but you shall not put any in your basket. When you enter your neighbor’s standing grain, then you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not wield a sickle in your neighbor’s standing grain” (Deut. 23:24-25).

The disciples were not reaping on the Sabbath, which was forbidden by Mosaic law (Ex. 34:21), but simply satisfying their hunger according to the provision of Deuteronomy 23. Rabbinic tradition, however, had ridiculously interpreted the rubbing of grain together in the hands (which the disciples were doing; see Luke 6:1) as a form of threshing; and they regarded blowing away the chaff as a form of winnowing. The Talmud said, “If a person rolls wheat to remove the husks, it is sifting. If he rubs the heads of wheat, it is threshing. If he cleans off the side adherences, it is sifting. If he bruises the ears, it is grinding. And if he throws it up in his hand, it is winnowing.”

The disciples had left everything to follow Jesus and had no source of income other than occasional gifts from their families and fellow believers. When they became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat, they were perfectly within their scriptural and social rights. They lived by faith, and the divine law of the land provided for just such sustenance. Jesus did nothing to discourage the disciples and probably joined them in eating the grain.

THE INDICTMENT

But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Behold, Your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath.” (12:2)

One wonders what the Pharisees were doing out in the grainfields themselves or what the vantage point was from which they saw Jesus and His disciples. It may be that certain exceptions were made for these self-appointed guardians of tradition, just as policemen have the right to temporarily break certain laws while performing their duty.

The charge that Jesus’ disciples were doing what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath was itself sinful, because it put human tradition on a par with God’s own Word. Rabbinic tradition was not legitimate Jewish law, but many centuries of observance had given it that status in the minds of most Jews, especially the legalistic scribes and Pharisees. God’s Word was honored in name and was the supposed basis for the traditions. But Scripture was not studied and obeyed directly; it was rather used as a means to justify the traditions, many of which actually contradicted and “invalidated the word of God” (Matt. 15:6).

The Pharisees indicted the Lord and His disciples for disobeying their distorted, man-made traditions, thus perverting God’s intention for the Sabbath, which was to provide man with a special day of rest, not a painful day of burdens.

THE INSTRUCTION

But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did, when he became hungry, he and his companions; how he entered the house of God, and they ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those with him, but for the priests alone? Or have you not read in the Law, that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath, and are innocent? But I say to you, that something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire compassion, and not a sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” (12:3-8)

Have you not read what David did . . . ? was deep-cutting sarcasm, because the account of David to which Jesus referred was, of course, from Scripture, about which the Pharisees considered themselves the supreme experts and custodians. They must have winced in anger as Jesus said to them, in effect, “Don’t you teachers of Scripture know what it says?”

In responding to the Pharisees’ false charge, Jesus instructed them about God’s purposes for the Sabbath, particularly about three things it was not designed to do.

Like the other nine Commandments, the one to observe the Sabbath was given to promote love toward God and love toward one’s fellow man. The first three pertain to showing love of God through reverence, faithfulness, and holiness. The other seven pertain to love of other people through personal purity, unselfishness, truthfulness, and contentment and through respect for their possessions, rights, and well-being.

The scribes and Pharisees, however, knew nothing of love—for God or for men. They were legalistic functionaries, trapped in their own system of endless, futile traditions. Instead of fulfilling the law by loving their neighbors as themselves (Lev. 19:18; cf. Rom. 13:8-10), they attempted to fulfill it through loveless and lifeless traditions.

Jesus here reaffirms that the Sabbath was given for God’s glory and for man’s welfare. It was never intended to restrict the expression of love through deeds of necessity, service to God, or acts of mercy.

THE SABBATH DOES NOT RESTRICT DEEDS OF NECESSITY

David was the supreme hero of Judaism, loved and honored even above the patriarchs and prophets. He was the great king, poet, and warrior. Jesus reminded the Pharisees of a familiar story about David and his companions as they fled for their lives south of Gibeah to escape the jealous and vengeful Saul. When they came to Nob, where the Tabernacle was then located, they asked for food. Ahimelech the priest gave them the consecrated bread of the Presence, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those with him, but for the priests alone, because there was “no ordinary bread on hand” in the Tabernacle (1 Sam. 21:4).

The bread of the Presence was baked weekly, and each Sabbath twelve fresh loaves (representing the twelve tribes) replaced the previous ones, which could be eaten only by the priests. On that particular occasion, however, an exception was made on behalf of David and his men, who were weak from hunger. God was not offended by that act, and He did not discipline either Ahimelech or David. The Lord was willing for a ceremonial regulation to be violated when doing so was necessary to meet the needs of His beloved people.

If God makes allowances for His own law to be broken under certain circumstances for the welfare of His people, Jesus said, He surely permits purposeless and foolish man-made traditions to be broken for that purpose.

THE SABBATH DOES NOT RESTRICT SERVICE TO GOD

Or have you not read in the Law, that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath, and are innocent? But I say to you, that something greater than the temple is here. (12:5-6)

Jesus did not have to explain what He meant by saying that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath. The Pharisees had often read in the Law that priests not only were allowed but required to do many things on the Sabbath that otherwise would have violated God’s Law of rest, not to mention rabbinic tradition.

In the performance of their duties in the Tabernacle and then the temple, the ministering priests had to light the altar fires, kill the sacrificial animals, and then lift up the carcasses and place them on the altar. Sacrifices on the Sabbath were, in fact, double sacrifices, requiring twice the work of the normal daily sacrifice (Num. 28:9-10; cf. Lev 24:8-9).

The most legalistic Pharisee considered the priests who ministered in the temple as innocent of breaking the Sabbath, despite the fact that they worked twice as hard as they did on other days. Similarly, even the most legalistic Christian does not consider preaching, teaching Sunday school, leading a youth group, or any other such work as profaning the Lord’s Day, despite the fact that those activities require a great deal of effort.

Jesus embarrassed and angered the Pharisees by pointing out the inconsistency of their legalistic thinking. But their anger turned to rage when Jesus then said, But I say to you, that something greater than the temple is here. Even if the Pharisees did not immediately understand that Jesus was referring to Himself, they were horrified—because nothing, other than God Himself, was greater than the temple. In our day it is difficult even for Jews, much less Gentiles, to grasp how highly the Jews of Jesus’ day revered the Temple.

Because of His previous claims to deity (see, e.g., 9:2-6; 11:3-5, 25-27), the Pharisees probably realized Jesus was referring to Himself as being greater than the temple and therefore claiming to be God. A few moments later He removed all doubt in their minds about what He meant (12:8).

The Lord’s immediate purpose, however, was not to prove His deity but to point out that, in light of that deity, He had the right to abrogate Sabbath regulations as He saw fit—immeasurably more than David had the right to violate the Tabernacle laws or the priests had to violate the Sabbath laws in serving in the Temple.

THE SABBATH DOES NOT RESTRICT ACTS OF MERCY

But if you had known what this means, “I desire compassion, and not a sacrifice,” you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. (12:7-8)

Jesus’ third point regarding the Sabbath was that its observance was never meant to restrict acts of mercy, as the Pharisees would have known had they understood and honored Scripture as they claimed.

If they had known what the Lord meant when He said, I desire compassion, and not a sacrifice, they would not have condemned the innocent for supposed Sabbath breaking. That one truth alone—a quotation of but one half of one verse from the book of Hosea (6:6a)—would have been sufficient to teach the Pharisees, and any sincere Jew, what God’s primary desire was for His people.

Sacrifice here represents the entire Mosaic system of ritual and ceremony, which was always of secondary and temporary importance in God’s plan. Sacrifice was never more than symbolic, a means pointing to God’s gracious and future provision of what no man, and certainly no animal, could provide.

Observing the Sabbath was a kind of sacrifice, a symbolic service to the Lord in obedience to His command. It was a reminder of God’s completion of creation and a shadow of the perfect rest His redeemed people look forward to in salvation and in heaven.

Even under the Old Covenant that required it, Sabbath observance was not a substitute for the heart righteousness and compassion that characterize God’s faithful children. God is merciful, and He commands His people to be merciful.

God sometimes sets aside His laws for the sake of mercy. If He did not, none of us would be saved—or even born—because Adam and Eve would have been destroyed the moment they sinned. Not only that, but God has always shown mercy in enforcing the temporal penalties for breaking His laws.

The Lord’s desire is not to condemn men for sin but to save them from it. He only condemns those who will not have His mercy (cf. 2 Pet. 3:9). And if righteous, holy God is supremely characterized by love and mercy—even to the extent of graciously setting aside the penalty for breaking some of His own laws for man’s benefit—how much more are His still-sinful children obligated to reflect His compassion?

Because the Sabbath was the Lord’s special day under the Old Covenant, a faithful Jew should have been especially concerned to follow his Lord’s example of compassion on that day. But because the Pharisees and most other Jews were far from God, they were also far from understanding His nature and His will. Jesus’ instruction about God’s purpose for the Sabbath further indicted the Pharisees’ unbelief and hardness of heart. They were the true violators of the Sabbath, because they “invalidated the word of God for the sake of [their] tradition” (Matt. 15:6). Those who condemned the innocent stood condemned themselves. They did not refuse to do acts of mercy because of devotion to God’s law but because of lack of compassion.

To substantiate His authority for saying what He had just said, Jesus added, For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. That statement must have rendered the Pharisees speechless. What He had implied by “something greater than the temple” (12:6), He now made unambiguous. Jesus stood before them and claimed He was greater than God’s Temple and greater than God’s Sabbath. He was God, the Son of Man, the divine Messiah whom the Temple honored and the Sabbath served.

Because the Lord of the Sabbath had come, the shadow of His Sabbath rest was no longer needed or valid. The New Testament does not require Sabbath observance, but rather allows freedom as to whether or not any day is honored above others. The only requirement is that, whatever position is taken, it is taken for the purpose of glorifying the Lord (Rom. 14:5-6); and no believer has the right to impose his views in this regard on anyone else (Gal. 4:9-10; Col. 2:16).

From the days of the early church (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2), Christians have set aside Sunday, the first day of the week, as a special day of worship, fellowship, and giving offerings, because that is the day our Lord was raised from the dead. But the Lord’s Day is not the “Christian Sabbath,” as it was considered to be for many centuries and still is in some groups today.

THE ILLUSTRATION

Without waiting for a response from the Pharisees, Jesus immediately went to their synagogue, into their very lair as it were, and gave them a living illustration of the true meaning of Sabbath observance and of His authority over both man and the Sabbath.

Although what happened in the synagogue was planned by Jesus for the purposes just mentioned, when the Pharisees saw a man with a withered hand there, they thought they had the perfect trap for Jesus. Completely unaffected by Jesus’ reminder from Scripture that God desires “compassion, and not a sacrifice” (v. 7), they questioned Him, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” Their only purpose in listening to anything Jesus said or in watching anything He did was that they might accuse Him. They were not looking for the truth but for a way to dispose of this upstart young rabbi who dared to make a sacrilege of their revered traditions and blaspheme God with His claims.

The fact that they asked Jesus this question indicates they acknowledged His power to heal. Because His miraculous power was so indisputable, Jesus’ opponents tried to undercut the significance of it by such means as accusing Him of casting out demons by Satan’s power (Matt. 9:34; 12:24). His miracles made them all the more determined to destroy Him (Matt. 12:14). The same signs that convinced the humble of Jesus’ divinity and messiahship confirmed the proud in their unbelief and rejection.

The Pharisees chose the man with a withered hand to test Jesus because the man’s healing was not a life-or-death issue, which according to their tradition was the only justification for giving medical help on the Sabbath. They reasoned that, if Jesus were truly of God, He would respect that tradition and wait until the next day to heal the man.

The illustration of the sheep that falls into a pit on the Sabbath dealt with an economic justification for breaking the Sabbath that was probably provided for in the traditions. The commentator William Hendriksen says, “It is safe to infer, perhaps, that the question asked by Jesus at the moment indicates to us that there was a particular legislation permitting this.” In any case, Jesus’ question was rhetorical, and the answer was obvious and assumed: Any Jew, including a Pharisee, would find some way to rescue his sheep in such a situation. If there were a regulation permitting him to do such a thing, he would certainly take advantage of it. If there were not, he would find some way of circumventing or bending the law in order to save his sheep. Either within the tradition or in spite of it, he would find a way to take hold of the sheep and lift it out. The Pharisees did not argue the point with Jesus, proving the assumed answer was correct.

The Lord therefore declared, Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep! No Pharisee would have contended that sheep were as valuable as men, who they knew were created in God’s image. But in practice, the Pharisees treated other men with less respect than they treated their animals, because in their hearts they did not respect, much less love, their fellow men, including their fellow Jews. They contemptuously subjugated human life and welfare to religious tradition.

One of the most obvious tragedies of Hinduism is its disregard for human welfare in the name of human welfare. A beggar is not given food because it would interfere with his karma and prevent him from suffering his way to the next highest level of existence. A fly is not killed because it is the reincarnation of some unfortunate human being of past ages. Rats are not killed for the same reason and are allowed to eat and contaminate food supplies without any interference. Cows are considered sacred and are given what food is available, while human beings are allowed to starve.

In a similar way the Pharisees despised other human beings, showing more compassion for a sheep than for a crippled man who was even a fellow Jew. Mark reports that Jesus then asked the Pharisees, “‘Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save a life or to kill?’ But they kept silent” (Mark 3:4). Had they approved doing good and saving a life, they would have contradicted tradition; and, on the other hand, they obviously would not have advocated doing evil or killing. They were trapped in the illogic of their heartless, unscriptural traditions. Their only outward recourse was to keep silent; but inwardly they “were filled with rage” (Luke 6:11).

The Lord therefore answered the question Himself: It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath—no doubt putting strong emphasis on is. At that point Jesus’ righteous anger confronted the Pharisees’ unrighteous anger. “And after looking around at them with anger” (Mark 3:5), Jesus said to the man, “Stretch out your hand!” And he stretched it out, and it was restored, like the other. Jesus not only approved doing good on the Sabbath but did good on the Sabbath. As Lord of the Sabbath He demonstrated that, if anything, the Sabbath was the supreme day for doing good.

THE INSURRECTION

But the Pharisees went out, and counseled together against Him, as to how they might destroy Him. (12:14)

Neither the power of Jesus’ argument nor the power of His miracles moved the Pharisees. They refused to be convinced. Jesus had indisputably connected the heart of God with benevolence, kindness, mercy, goodness, and compassion; and He had connected those virtues with Sabbath observance. But the Pharisees would have none of it, because they “loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). Their trust was in tradition and in their own works, and neither God’s Word nor God’s Son would change them.

Because they could not disprove the truth of what Jesus said or the power of what He did, the Pharisees went out, and counseled together against Him, as to how they might destroy Him. True to the nature of their spiritual father, the devil (John 8:44), the Pharisees sought to destroy what they could not subvert.

The Pharisees would have killed Jesus on the spot had not Rome restricted them from inflicting capital punishment and had they not been afraid of the many people who followed and admired Him. The Greek term from which counseled is translated includes the idea of carrying out a decision already made. Jesus’ enemies were already determined to destroy Him; the only remaining decision had to do with how.

From Mark we learn that the Pharisees were so determined to destroy Jesus at any cost that they enlisted the help of their usual archenemies, the Herodians (3:6)—the irreligious and worldly political party who supported Herod, the half-Jew Idumean king who had bought his title from Rome. The Herodians were the antithesis of the Pharisees in almost every way, and the fact that the Pharisees sought to join forces with them reveals how desperate they were to do away with Jesus. The religious legalists joined forces with the secular libertarians to destroy an enemy they considered to be even more dangerous than each other.

Despite their differences, those two groups had the same spiritual orientation. They both disregarded God’s Word in favor of their own ideas; they both rejected His Son; and their mutual unwitting allegiance was to Satan, the spiritual leader of the present world system (cf. John 8:44). Neither the Gentile world nor the Jewish nation recognized or received the divine Visitor who had made them and had come to redeem them (John 1:10-11).

As Donald Grey Barnhouse observed, “It is at this point in history that Israel’s clock stopped.” Because Israel, God’s chosen and specially blessed people, rejected her Messiah, God placed her on the shelf as a nation “until the fulness of the Gentiles has come in” (Rom. 11:25; cf. Acts 15:14-18).

Legalism is the implacable enemy of grace. Even the Mosaic law, demanding as it was, was a reflection of God’s grace, a means of guiding men toward Jesus Christ, the one true and only hope of coming to God. As Paul explains, the law was a “tutor to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24). If God’s own law was only a shadow, how much less spiritual substance does human tradition have? If even divine law cannot save, of how much less value is human tradition?

Just as trust in tradition and good works is a barrier to salvation, it is also a barrier to faithful living after salvation. “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” Paul asked Galatian believers who were being misled by the legalistic Judaizers (Gal. 3:3). “Does He then, who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?… Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’—in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (vv. 5, 13-14).