In Matthew 12:9-14 (NIV), we find this account of Jesus healing a man’s hand:
9Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”
11He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
13Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. 14But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.
It’s sadly ironic that the Pharisees were angered by a man being healed on the Sabbath, but apparently had no problem with plotting to kill somebody on the Sabbath. Comparing this with other passages in the Gospels, it’s clear that they understood the Sabbath as a duty they performed in service to God, while Jesus, in contrast, understood it as a benefit God had provided for humanity.
The Pharisees were so convinced they had properly interpreted God’s Law that they were unable to recognize when they were in the presence of the one who had authored that Law. And this same attitude that elevates a particular understanding of the Scriptures to the status of Scripture itself, is sadly rampant in evangelical Christianity today. There is a decided lack of acceptance of the possibility of having gotten even the slightest detail wrong. This is, oddly, in contrast with mainstream Protestantism, where there is too often an unwillingness to accept the possibility of having gotten it right! The middle way, trusting that, in the Church, God has preserved the true Gospel, while accepting that any particular individual or group might have misunderstood some of the details, requires both faith and humility; faith without pride and humility without compromise.
