3:4
Jesus then gets to the heart of the matter, and the heart of God’s purpose. “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm?” We will so distort the will of God. Some will do this in seeing God’s commands as harmful or restrictive, we see this mostly with respect to sexual morality, where God’s purpose of sex within marriage between one man and one woman, and nowhere else, is see as a restriction, rather than it being the life giving command that it actually is. But religious people, as here, can equally well distort God’s commands, turning something that is good and freedom giving into an absolute burden. At the root of these errors is often self-justification. The Pharisees wanted to prove themselves righteous. Whenever we seek to do this we will quickly descend into error.
3:5
Jesus was full of anger and grieved at the same time. He was full of anger because of the harm that the Pharisees did by their attitude, and associated actions. And He was grieved because of the goodness that was denied to the people, and because the Pharisees themselves were trapped by their own attitudes. When men are in rebellion against God they deny themselves the freedom and life that God gives. So Jesus told the man to stretch out his hand and he was immediately healed.
No comments:
Post a Comment