2:27
People often object to the idea of obeying God, or believing in God, because they think it reduces their freedom. They want to do their own thing without restriction, especially what they might consider to be out of date restrictions. There are (at least) two things wrong with this. One is that if we sin then we are slaves to sin, so any so-called freedom is completely illusory. The second is that in Christ we actually have more freedom and more authority than we could ever imagine. The Pharisees had turned the Sabbath into something of a nightmare, a day thwart with difficulty, for it was so easy to slip up and break the “law” (ie the bits the Pharisees had added on). We see this same pattern today. Governments are forever introducing new laws and it is ever more easy to break them. Just consider the case with offending people. The only way to avoid offending people today is to say nothing. With the Sabbath, the truth was that God had made the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath. It was a gift from God, but the Pharisees had utterly corrupted it.
2:28
Jesus then adds that as He is the “Son of Man” He is Lord of the Sabbath. Jesus is the man par excellence. He is fully human and fully God. So He certainly has the right to do whatever He wishes on the Sabbath. See how Jesus is not backing away at all in the face of opposition from the Pharisees. Quite the opposite, if anything He raises the stakes, and we will see other Sabbath confrontations in the following chapter.
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