EXTRACT: The traditions were very important to the Jews, but the strict rules allowed little space for the principles of the Kingdom of God, such as compassion and mercy. The Sabbath Day was made to be a day of rest, but became an intolerable burden, falsely depicting God as a tyrant.
One Sabbath day Jesus deliberately and publicly broke the Jewish traditions by healing one of the many desperately sick people around the pool of Bethesda, and by telling the man to pick up his pallet and go home. Jesus was seeking confrontation to condemn the traditions. Therefore, since man did not know who Jesus was, Jesus later introduced Himself to him.
But Jesus did more than condemn the traditions; He gave a new meaning to the fourth commandment. The fourth commandment forbids work and demands rest, but Jesus taught that the seventh day is the preferred day to focus our thoughts and energy on bringing joy to people by physical, psychological, and spiritual healing, while we rest from ordinary work.
Summary
John 5 records Christ’s miracle healing of a paralytic man on the Sabbath day. This man had been ill for 38 years. He was lying with a multitude of the sick, blind, lame, and withered next to the pool known as Bethesda, hoping for a supernatural cure.
The man did not ask to be healed. He did not even know who Jesus was. Jesus also did not require this suffering man to exercise faith. Jesus simply told the man to get up, pick up the mat on which he was lying, and walk. The man immediately became well, picked up his pallet and began to walk.
But it was the Sabbath day and the Jewish religious police was quick to spot him. They said to him “It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet” (John 5:10). As if to say that a man, that is able to heal so completely, should know what is allowed on the Sabbath day, the man responded, “He who made me well was the one who said to me, Pick up your pallet and walk”.
The Jews asked him who the Healer was, but he did not know. Jesus had slipped away into the crowd. But later the same day Jesus found him in the temple and spoke to him. Jesus might have remained anonymous, but He was seeking confrontation with the religious rulers.
The man then told the Pharisees who the Man was who cured him, probably expecting the religious leaders to be overjoyed, just like he himself was, to meet this miracle Worker. But this news made the religious leaders more committed than ever to persecute Jesus. Not only did Christ heal the sick on the Sabbath; He also told the man to carry his mat.
While the Law of Moses is silent on healing on the Sabbath day, simply prohibiting work on the Sabbath day, the “traditions of the elders”, which was their fence around the Law of Moses, had an extremely strict and detailed definition of work, even prohibiting non-emergency healing on the Sabbath day. According to these “traditions” Christ clearly contravened the Sabbath commandment.
The traditions were extremely important in Jewish society, but by adding this multitude of very strict rules to the Law of Moses, the Jews allowed very little room for compassion and consequently perverted the Sabbath day. What was supposed to be a day of rest from the toil of human existence, became an intolerable burden to which the people were slaves, falsely representing God as a tyrant.
Healing was an integral part of His ministry, but to heal on the Sabbath day was so important to Jesus that He was willing to risk His life and mission for it.
One reason for His Sabbath day healing miracles was to condemn the Jewish traditions and the entire Jewish system that rested upon those traditions. But the more important reason for Christ’s deliberate contraventions of the traditions was to give a new meaning to the Sabbath day. Similar to the way in which He replaced the commandment against adultery with a commandment against looking at a woman with lust in the heart, and similar to the way in which He replaced the commandment against murder with a commandment against anger, He gave a much higher / deeper meaning to the Sabbath day.
The fourth commandment forbids work and demands rest. Jesus accepted the principle that the seventh day is set aside for special use (sanctified – Gen 2:3), but He not only declared that it is allowed to do good to people and animals in need on the Sabbath day; He also declared that the Sabbath day is the preferred day for doing good to others, which includes restoring people to health. In this way, He gave a new meaning to the Sabbath day. He shifted the focus:
From the fourth commandment to the original purpose of the seventh day, namely to be a blessing to mankind (Gen 2:3).
From rest to the purpose of the rest, namely to restore man to health.
From the negative prohibition against any form of work to the work that is required on the seventh day, namely works to restore people to holistic physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual health.
Since this shifts the focus away from the rest required by the fourth commandment, we should accept Christ’s Sabbath deeds and statements as new truth for the Christian; as a founding statement for Christianity. Thus the Sabbath day also becomes a work day, but a different type of work. The Sabbath becomes a day on which we focus our thoughts and energy on bringing joy to people by healing; not only by physical healing but also by psychological and spiritual healing, while we rest from the work that is required on the other days of the week.
The Story
John 5 records Christ’s miracle healing of a paralytic man (v7) on the Sabbath day (John 5:9). The story is as follows (with comments in brackets):
Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews.
In Jerusalem, there was a pool called Bethesda, with five porches. In these porches lay a multitude of the sick, blind, lame, and withered, waiting for the moving of the waters. (They had the superstitious belief that the person, who gets into the pool first, after it was “supernaturally” stirred, will be healed.)
One of the men there was ill for 38 years (John 5:5). When Jesus saw him, He knew that this man had been in that condition for a long time. Jesus said to him:
“Do you wish to get well?” (John 5:6)
The man answered that he has nobody to put him into the pool when the water is stirred. Jesus then said to him:
“Get up, pick up your pallet and walk” (John 5:8).
(The man did not ask to be healed. He did not even know who Jesus was. Jesus also did not require this suffering man to exercise faith in Him. He simply told him to get up, pick up his pallet—his sleeping mat—and walk.)
The man became well immediately, picked up his pallet and began to walk. (But it was the Sabbath day and the Jewish religious police were quick to spot him carrying his mat.) When the Jews saw this man carrying his pallet, they said to him:
“It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet” (John 5:10).
But he answered them,
“He who made me well was the one who said to me, Pick up your pallet and walk”.
(As if to say, a man that is able to heal me so completely, after lying on my mat for 38 years, should know what is allowed and what is not allowed on the Sabbath day. If he tells me to carry my mat, then I will do it.)
The Jews asked him who this man was, but he did not know. Jesus had slipped away into the crowd (John 5:13). (After his healing the man probably was bewildered, not believing what his body is doing; too excited to pay attention even to his Healer.)
Later the same day Jesus found him in the temple and said to him,
“Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.” (John 5:14)
The man then told the Pharisees who the Man was who cured him (John 5:15). (The healed man was naturally overjoyed by his deliverance. Probably ignorant of the enmity toward Jesus, he assumed that everybody, particularly the religious leaders, will want to meet this miracle Worker.)
“For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath” (John 5:16).
(Note the plural “doing these things” (v16). The Jews could identify two contraventions of the Sabbath Law in this incident. Firstly the man carried his sleeping mat (John 5:10) and secondly Jesus healed the sick (compare Luke 13:14). Jesus was ‘guilty’ of both, because He told the man to carry his mat.)
(The Jews apparently then questioned Jesus, because, according to the next verse,) He answered them,
“My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working” (John 5:17).
Discussion
Jesus did not contravene the Law of Moses; He contravened the Traditions.
But did Jesus contravene the fourth commandment? The Law of Moses is silent on healing on the Sabbath day, simply prohibiting work on the Sabbath day. But still, the Jewish authorities had no doubt that healing is not allowed on the Sabbath day(Luke 4:40; 13:14; Mark 3:2). It is therefore concluded that it was the regulations, known as the “the traditions of the elders”, that prohibited healing on the Sabbath day.
The Traditions were a fence around the law.
Because it was, according to the voluminous Talmud, intended as a fence around the law, the “traditions of the elders” had an extremely strict definition of work. For example, if the Law of Moses determines that the Sabbath starts at sunset, the traditions might require Jews to stop their work an hour before sunset. And anything that even remotely looked like work was defined as work; a Jew was not even allowed to light a candle on the Sabbath. In this way, they hoped to protect themselves from breaking the law. They knew that a contravention of the traditions is not necessarily a contravention of the Law of Moses, but the traditions were nevertheless applied as law.
The Traditions were extremely important in Jewish society.
We generally have very little appreciation of how detailed and complex “the traditions of the elders” were, or how important it was in the Jewish society. Paul, describing his previous life, wrote “I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions” (Gal 1:14).
The Traditions perverted the Sabbath Day.
But by adding this multitude of very strict rules to the Law of Moses, the Jews allowed very little space for compassion and, consequently, perverted the Sabbath. What was supposed to be a day of rest from the toil of human existence became an intolerable burden to which the people were slaves. This falsely represented God as a tyrant. Because the traditions made people to serve the Sabbath, Jesus objected by saying, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).
Jesus was seeking confrontation with the religious rulers.
We see this in the following:
Jesus could have healed the sick man on any other day of the week, but He healed him deliberately on the Sabbath.
After He cured him Jesus might have warned the man not to carry his bed, but Jesus deliberately told him to carry away his bed.
The man did not know who healed him, because “Jesus had slipped away” (John 5:13). Jesus might have remained anonymous, but instead Jesus afterward “found him in the temple” (John 5:14) and spoke with him, apparently with the purpose that the man may inform the Pharisees “that it was Jesus who had made him well” (John 5:15).
Jesus did not explain in John 5 why healing is allowed on the Sabbath Day, except to say it is the Father’s will.
Healing was an integral part of His ministry, but why was it so important to heal on the Sabbath that He was willing to risk His life and mission for it? He did not do it simply out of compassion, for there were many other sick people at Bethesda whom He did not heal. The people whom He healed also were not medical emergencies; they were all sick for many years. Why did He not delay healing to another day?
In healing the man’s withered hand, He said “it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matt 12:12). In healing the crippled woman, He said “this woman … whom Satan has bound for eighteen long years, should she not have been released from this bond on the Sabbath day?” (Luke 13:16) But we find no such explanation in John 5.
John 5, after the healing, does include a long debate between Christ and the Pharisees (John 5:17-47), but does not explain why He healed. It seems as if one reason for performing this miracle, deliberately acting contrary to the traditions of the elders, was to create the opportunity to explain to them some higher-order principles, such as resurrection from death, judgment, eternal life and honoring the Son “even as they honor the Father” (John 5:23). He later says, “I say these things so that you may be saved” (John 5:34).
His justification of the healing is limited to saying:
“My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working” (5:17)
“the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.” (John 5:19)
Notice that the words “working”, “do”, “doing” and “does” link these statements to the work of healing which He performed on the Sabbath. These statements seem to simply say that these Sabbath healings are the right and proper things to do, according to the Father’s will, without explaining why.
He later added:
“If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath so that the Law of Moses will not be broken, are you angry with Me because I made an entire man well on the Sabbath?” (John 2:23).
This seems to say that circumcision is a form of healing, and that healing is allowed on the Sabbath, but still does not explain why healing is allowed on the Sabbath.
By healing on the Sabbath, and by His Sabbath declarations, Jesus gave a new meaning to the Sabbath.
Healing was an integral part of His ministry, but to heal on the Sabbath was so important to Jesus that He was willing to risk His life and mission for it. One reason for His Sabbath healing miracles was to condemn the Jewish traditions and the entire Jewish system that rested upon those traditions. But perhaps the most important reason for His Sabbath healing miracles was to give a new meaning to the Sabbath:
The Sabbath commandment simply forbids work and requires rest. The religious leaders applied this literally, and we probably would have done the same, because that is the emphasis in the commandment. It would be difficult to justify non-emergency work on the basis of the Law of Moses alone. Even Christian Sabbath-keepers today would find it difficult to justify work related to non-emergency healing on the Sabbath.
But Jesus came and taught that “it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matt 12:12). He went further and said the Sabbath is the most appropriate day for releasing people from the bonds of Satan—which includes physical illnesses (Luke 13:16). He declared this as the Father’s will (John 5:17, 19).
In the view of the Jewish leaders, Christ’s statements contradicted the Law of Moses, but that was due to their extremely narrow and strict interpretation of the Law. Christians need to assume that these statements are consistent with the Sabbath Commandment because Jesus never acted contrary to the Law of Moses.
By arguing with the Pharisees what is allowed on the Sabbath, implying that certain things are not allowed on the Sabbath, He confirmed the principle that the seventh day is set aside for special use (sanctified – Gen 2:3).
To be able to adopt the meaning which Christ attached to the Sabbath, we have to interpret the Sabbath not only in terms of the fourth commandment but also in terms of its original purpose, namely that it was created to be a blessing to mankind (Gen 2:3). As Jesus confirmed, “the Sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27).
Then the requirement for rest in the fourth commandment is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Then we interpret the “rest” in the Sabbath Commandment as to cease the work of everyday life, to focus the mind and energy on bringing joy to people by restoring ourselves and other people to holistic physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual health.
Understood in this way “it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” and anything that we can do to restore ourselves and other people to health, holistically defined, is not only allowed but completely consistent with the purpose of the Sabbath. In fact, to neglect to do on the Sabbath anything that we can do to restore people to health would be inconsistent with the Sabbath principle.
But the principle in the previous paragraph applies to all days of the week. We should go beyond this and accept the Sabbath as the preferred day for healing. Thus the Sabbath also becomes a work day, but a different type of work. The Sabbath becomes a day on which we work for the mentally, physically, and spiritually sick, blind, lame, and withered, to heal them. Then our lives will become divided into two parts; for six days we work for ourselves, but on the seventh day we work for the physical, psychological and spiritual health of others.
Understood in this way we accept Christ’s statement, that healing on the Sabbath is the Father’s will, as new truth for the Christian; as a founding statement for Christianity. Jesus gave a new meaning to the Sabbath which cannot be derived simply from the Law of Moses.
What Jesus did to the Sabbath is the same as what He did to the entire Law of Moses; He replaced it with The Law of Christ. The Law of Moses was God’s eternal law for mankind but adapted to the condition, abilities, and situation of the enslaved and corrupt little nation of Israel. It, therefore, for example, prohibited adultery. But Christ again revealed the eternal principles on which the Law of Moses was based, replacing the law against adultery with the law that “everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery” (Matt 5:28). All moral principles of the Law of Moses are retained in the Law of Christ, but the Law of Christ raised the standards to the Father’s perfection. We should therefore not be surprised to find that Christ replaced the fourth commandment with a much higher law, without lowering the standards.
ARTICLES IN THE SERIES ON THE SABBATH
THE SABBATH IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
– Blessed and Sanctified at Creation
– The Evolution theory makes the Bible null and void.
– The Sabbath before the time of Moses
– In the Ten Commandments
– In the Traditions of the Elders
CHRIST’S SABBATH HEALING MIRACLES
– A demon-possessed man and Simon’s mother-in-law
– The man with the withered hand
(The rulers wanted Jesus to heal on the sabbath.)
– The crippled woman
– The paralytic man at Bethesda
– The man that was born blind
CHRIST’S TEACHINGS ON THE SABBATH
– The Sabbath was made for man.
(The disciples picked grain on the Sabbath.)
– Jesus deliberately contravened the Sabbath.
– The Real Reason they killed Jesus
– His miracles gave Him the opportunity to teach.
– What did Jesus teach about the Sabbath?
– Jesus taught a different Sabbath.
– Jesus replaced the Law of Moses with the Law of Christ.
SABBATH IN THE NEW TESTAMENT LETTERS
– The Sabbath is not repeated in the New Testament.
– Romans 14:5-6 – Each must be fully convinced in his own mind.
ARTICLE SERIES
Sabbath – List of articles
Jesus is not God, but He is God.
Daniel 9 – Overview of the four major interpretations
Seven Seal of Revelation – Verse by verse summary
General Table of Contents