[Jesus] entered again into a synagogue; and a man was there whose hand was withered. They were watching Him to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. He said to the man with the withered hand, “Get up and come forward!” And He said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?” But they kept silent. After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately began conspiring with the Herodians against Him, as to how they might destroy Him.
A glance at the context, and at a parallel passage, reveals who “they” are: Pharisees and scribes (see Mk 2:24 and Luke 6:6-11). They know He is popular and are growing suspicious of His abilities and teachings. They hope to catch Him in an act of violating the Sabbath in a public space (see also Mk 1:21-28, 39; 2:18-20, 23-28).
Jesus is grieved and angered by this faithless scrutiny. He's not about to change His behavior (stop obeying His Father) in order to win their approval. Instead, He demands they please Him.
Comparing the parallel passages—Matthew 12:9-14 and Luke 6:6-11—we see that Mark’s account is the only one mentioning Jesus’ feelings. (It should also be considered as a companion to His healing of the bent woman on the Sabbath.)
What does it take to make God angry? In Exodus 34:6 and many other places, the Bible says God is “slow to anger.” Having had several encounters with critics, He hasn’t leapt into anger, and won’t lash out at them with His full wrathful powers, but He is not happy.
What would have made Jesus happy as he looked around the room?
- Maybe if the scribes and Pharisees had truly cared about the man, rather than using him as bait to trap Jesus.
- Maybe if they’d asked Jesus to help the man.
- Maybe if they would’ve approached Him humbly, as students, and admitted they found it difficult to reconcile a desire to help someone while keeping Sabbath law.
The bottom line is, it would have been so much better if they’d answered His question and agreed it should always be good to do good, no matter what day it is.
Luke’s account mentions how the scribes and Pharisees were “filled with rage” when Jesus healed the man right in front of them. As we might say today, the vibe in that room must have been extremely tense.
What did He see when He looked into their hearts? He saw that they could not applaud the prospect of Him helping this man on what they considered a holy day. Instead, they were perversely hoping He would do something that they could use to convince people that He was evil. Rather than doing good, they had plans to do evil. They were plotting how to kill Him on a holy day.
How do we reconcile the law against working on the Sabbath with Jesus’ many miracles on that day of the week? Is there any contradiction?
Law-breaking
One question I’d like to ask the Pharisees is, just how much work was being done when Jesus spoke to the man, or when the man merely stretched out his hand? Did they think God stopped speaking altogether after Creation was complete, or ceased doing miracles?
The passages concerning Sabbath are Exodus 16:22-30, 20:8-11, 23:12, 31:12-17, 34:21, 35:2-3; Leviticus 19:3,30, 23:3; Deuteronomy 5:12-15. In Mark 2:27-28, Jesus had claimed to know more about the Sabbath’s origins and purposes than they did, because He’d been there at Creation, because He is God.
Ultimately, we have to acknowledge that, as the Son of God, Jesus had every right to do as He pleased (or as pleased the Father) any day of the week, and to explain it as He did. In His explanation, doing good for others is not the same as everyday labor in which we work for ourselves.
In Mark 3:4 and Luke 6:9, Jesus posed a question in the form of a parallelism:
“Is it lawful [on the Sabbath] to do good or to do harm,
to save a life or to kill?”
He used what are called antithetical parallels—
He took the comparisons to their extreme opposites because He knew murder—the greatest evil—was in their hearts. Conversely, He took doing good to its farthest extreme—saving a life. Of course, there are many actions on the spectrum between killing and saving lives… all actions that harm are unlawful and disreputable, while actions that do good are lawful and commendable.
We don’t often find ourselves facing life or death choices. Nor are most of us concerned about Sabbath-breaking. The questions we’re more often faced with are whether an action helps or harms. Should I speak to this person or ignore her? Can I offer encouragement or make a smart, careless remark that will sting? Should I put myself out to make a meal, or pretend I don’t see a need?
Put so starkly, it’s not hard to see which behaviors are pleasing to God.
In the situation before Jesus on that day, healing a hand could be equated to saving a life, because it helped the man feed himself and perform other basic tasks. With a second functional hand, he could work to provide for his family and no longer have to rely on the goodness of neighbors.
So if we’re concerned whether something keeps or breaks the Sabbath, it’s useful to ask, “Does this action promote or destroy life?” Such a question applies any day of the week. Promoting life is always good, while destroying or detracting from it in any way is always bad.
With these words, Jesus indicted the scribes and Pharisees for what was in their hearts that very minute—the plot to end the life of the wholly innocent Son of God, the One who came to save their lives for eternity.
Mark’s is the only gospel that notes they conspired with the Herodians, a political party aligned with King Herod, who had killed John the Baptist. The Pharisees were willing to overlook that murder in order to carry out the murder of Jesus.
What does God say about believers joining with unbelievers in projects that will harm or destroy innocent people? Helpful passages are 1 Corinthians 5:9-11, 2 Cor. 6:14-16, Ephesians 5:11, 2 Thessalonians 3:6. Which is worse as a Sabbath activity: exerting oneself physically to help a person while possibly endangering one’s standing with God, or unequivocally compromising oneself spiritually by conspiring to kill?
Logic-breaking
The rendition of this episode as recorded in Matthew 12:9-14, as well as related passages in Luke 13:10-17 and 14:1-6, offers logical permission for helping people on the Sabbath. No one considered it wrong to rescue an animal from a pit on the Lord’s day, or on that day to lead a beast from its stall to food and water. Neither should anyone be troubled by anyone helping a person on a holy day.
A logical syllogism would go something like this:
- If a human being is made in God’s image and infinitely more valuable than any animal, and
- if no one has a problem expending effort for hungry or afflicted animals on the Sabbath, isn’t it
- safe to conclude it’s never wrong to exert effort to help a member of the human race, no matter which day of the week it is?
Jesus definitely had logic on His side, but His angry opponents were not prepared to change their minds. Their real problem was hardness of heart.
When the man’s hand was healed, honest people would conclude that something beyond human effort was involved. They would ask, “Is this of God?” And if so, they would fall down before Jesus in worship . Instead, they concluded He was working for Satan (Mk 3:22).
Love-breaking
A closer look at the words “anger,” “grief,” “heart,” and “hardness” reveal the depths of Jesus’ love for the man with a withered hand, as well as His frustration with His opponents’ hearts.
►The Greek word for anger is orge, which describes agitation of the soul or any violent emotion, such as wrath or indignation. Jesus took the crippled man’s plight to heart, and was offended by the others’ lack of concern. He experienced this raw emotion fully, but did not lash out, as noted earlier. He rebuked the offenders and used the occasion to instruct onlookers.
►The Greek word for grief is sullupeo, “to afflict with grief together; to grieve with, to be sorrowful with, to sympathize in grief.” Jesus was drawn into the man’s plight, rather than being repulsed by him. He wanted to do something to help, and wished others felt the same. As He looked around the room, He saw no other heart moved to empathy. He would go it alone, risking an angry backlash in the process.
►The Greek for hardness of heart is a combination of two words: kardia and porosis. Kardia refers to both the physical organ at the center of a body’s blood circulation, and also to the center of a person’s spiritual life. Mark 12:33 says we must love God with all our kardia.
Human hearts were created to be soft toward others, and pliable in God’s hands, but they've become hardened by sin. The hearts of the scribes and Pharisees were so hard that, not only did they not care about the man, but they also wanted to kill the only one who could really help him! All because it was the wrong day!
If they’d had soft hearts, they might have saved him a good seat in the synagogue, and ensured he had a place to go for lunch that day. Knowing Jesus’ reputation for healing, they could have asked, “Would you please heal him? He really needs the kind of help you’ve given others.”
Because of His heart of love, Jesus overcame obstacles in order to help the man. No one asked for help, but that didn’t stop Him. He took the initiative, and didn’t let hatred in the room deter Him. He accepted the consequences of displeasing enemies for the reward of pleasing His Father.
Christians are not bound by Sabbath ordinances, yet we can learn from both Old and New Testament warnings about hard hearts:
- Deuteronomy 15:7-11 pairs hardness of heart with closed hands and hostile eyes.
- 1 John 3:17 relates open hearts with offering practical help to Christian brothers and sisters.
The open-hearted principle can be applied in myriad situations, including to abortion when a baby is found to be disabled. Parents need to know we won’t close our hearts to them, that we will stand beside them to avoid breaking God’s law by killing their children.
Applications beyond disability
The principle also applies to women considering abortion because they’ve been caught breaking God’s law concerning sexual sin. Should their guiltiness prevent us from helping them? Even though they may not be our sisters in Christ, we should be motivated to help them avoid an even graver sin to save the lives of babies.
Although the Bible does not specifically mention abortion, we can apply irrefutable logic to the problem.
- God views all human life as special (Genesis 1:27; Psalm 8:4-6; Proverbs 14:31, 17:5; James 3:8-10),
- God treats preborn children as individual members of the human family (Gen 16:11, 25:23-24; Judges 13:4-5; Job 31:15; Ps 22:9-10, 139:13-16; Jeremiah 1:5; Lk 1:15,41; Galatians 1:15-16),
- and God hates the shedding of innocent human blood (Gen 4:8-10, 6:11-13, 9:5-6; Ex 20:13, 23:7; Dt 27:25; Ps 9:12, 11:5; Prov 21:7, 28:17; Jer 22:3; Amos 1:13; Romans 13:9-10; 1 Peter 4:15; 1 Jn 3:11-15; Revelation 22:15),
- therefore, it can be safely concluded that God hates the killing of any preborn human being.
Love and abortion
It’s easy to be angry about abortion, but man’s anger does not achieve the righteousness of God (James 1:19-20). Neither do we want to be paralyzed by grief over abortion. We should be moved by the plight of unborn babies and their families. Like Jesus, we need to channel our strong emotions into compassionate positive action for the unborn and their parents… and not forget to also love those who promote abortion.
Showing love to people “crippled” by abortion serves as a powerful force for saving lives. There is virtually no limit to the ways we can soften our hearts toward women who’ve had abortions, people who work to legalize abortion, and people who facilitate abortions.
Previous: Attitudes toward people with disabilities
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Image: Jesus Heals the Man with a Withered Hand, a medieval illuminated manuscript by Ilyas Basim Khuri Bazzi Rahib, circa 1300-1400; at the Walters Art Museum, https://picryl.com/media/ilyas-basim-khuri-bazzi-rahib-jesus-heals-the-man-with-a-withered-hand-walters-a197d.
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