David T. Koyzis
The Gospels record seven instances of Jesus healing someone on the sabbath day.
The three Synoptic Gospels tell of his healing a man with a withered hand (Matt 12:9–13; Mark 3:1–6; Luke 6:6–11). All three again relate the very brief story of his healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law of her fever (Matt 8:14–15; Mark 1:29–31; Luke 4:38–39). Two Gospels tell of Jesus casting an “unclean spirit,” or demon, out of a man (Mark 1:21–28; Luke 4:31–37). Luke alone relates the stories of Jesus curing a woman with “a spirit of infirmity” (13:10–17) and a man with dropsy (14:1–6). Finally, the Gospel of John relates two occasions when Jesus healed on the sabbath: the sick man at the pool of Bethzatha (5:1–18) and the man who had been born blind (9:1–41).
Each of these occasions saw Jesus incurring the wrath of the Jewish religious leaders because he had apparently violated the Torah’s prohibition against working on the seventh day (Exod 20:8–11; Deut 5:12–15). As the indignant ruler of one of the synagogues put it, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be healed, and not on the sabbath day” (Luke 13:14). The story continues with Jesus’ response:
You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger, and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day? (13:15–16)
This reply put the people to shame, we are told, yet it only stiffened the resolve of the authorities to put an end to Jesus’ ministry.
How shall we interpret Jesus’ actions? Was he deliberately healing on the sabbath to make a point? And, if so, what was that point? Might Jesus have been underscoring the negative effects of legalism?
There is something to this. After all, Paul wrote, “One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind” (Rom 14:5). And, “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath” (Col 2:16). In his letters to the believers of Rome and Colossae, Paul appears to relativize the importance of sabbath-keeping, along with other observances to which the ancient Jews were accustomed.
The notion that Jesus was combating legalism is one that we are likely to find deeply attractive, given the dominant metanarrative of expressive individualism to which Charles Taylor and others have called our attention. Enforcing the letter of the law may conflict with the spirit of the law, an insight that we find as early as Plato, who for that reason preferred the rule of the virtuous to the rule of law. We need not go that far, of course, to recognize that the law needs to be tempered by mercy and the good judgement that often comes of long personal experience.
Nevertheless, we ought not to assume that the principle of sabbath rest has been abrogated. Indeed, its importance can scarcely be overemphasized for the larger biblical redemptive story. In Genesis 2:2–3 we read that God rested on the seventh day after he had made heaven and earth, including his human image, the capstone of creation.
As we make our way through the first five books of the Old Testament, we read that the whole life of Israel was to be lived in multiples of seven. Israel rested every seven days. The seventh year was to be one of sabbatical rest even for the land itself (Lev 25:2–6). After seven times seven years there was to be a year of jubilee, the fiftieth year in which debts would be cancelled and land returned to its original clan (Lev 25:8–17). Because Israel failed to keep this system of layered sabbaths, God exiled his people to Mesopotamia for, yes, seven decades! Within the larger context of a biblical worldview, it is evident that keeping sabbath is not just a matter of legalism.
Indeed, our anxiety over the presumed perils of legalism can distort not only biblical interpretation but even translation. For example, the 1984 edition of the New International Version renders Philippians 3:4–6 as follows:
If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. (Emphasis mine)
The 2011 update commendably corrects the emphasized phrase to “righteousness based on the law,” a more accurate translation of the Greek and truer to Paul’s understanding of the law’s place in the economy of God’s redemptive plan for humanity.
Jesus himself is often thought to have relaxed the precepts of the law, an impression some have inferred from his handling of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53–8:11). Nevertheless, throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus not loosening but actually tightening the standards of God’s law beyond mere performance to a changed heart—one that refrains not only from killing but from undue anger and insults against another person. Remember these words of Jesus:
Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:17–20)
This affirmation of the law suggests that Jesus has a larger purpose in healing on the sabbath. Here we do well to look at James W. Skillen’s remarkable book God’s Sabbath with Creation, which I reviewed shortly after it was published in 2019.
Skillen argues that sabbath rest is built into the very fabric of creation. This is considerably more than just an affirmation of the need for regular periods of rest in the midst of our work in God’s world. No, the creation itself is ordered in such a way that it points to its ultimate fulfilment in God’s coming sabbath when those who are in Christ will enter into his rest (Heb 4).
God has built into his creation an eschatological destiny to be accomplished at Christ’s return when he establishes his kingdom in a new heaven and new earth. This is when the biblical sixth day, referred to in Genesis 1:24–31, yields to the seventh day when God rests from his work and his elect enter with him into that rest. The entire redemptive story laid out in Scripture points to this as our ultimate hope. At that hour, in the fulness of God’s time, our work in his creation will find its fulfilment and commendation, much as the law itself will be fulfilled.
If we look at Jesus’ miracles in light of this sabbatarian reading of Scripture, they come to appear less like protests against legalism and more like an affirmation of the centrality of sabbath to the biblical story.
Just as we will be healed of our infirmities in that eschatological seventh day, so it turns out that the sabbath was, after all, the most fitting day for Jesus to heal during his time on this earth. Indeed, we can scarcely imagine a better day.
What Jesus’ opponents failed to grasp is that healing is intrinsic to the sabbath. We who daily groan in flesh subject to decay and dissolution come before God every seven days to be made whole. On a weekly basis we sinners confess our transgressions before the God who has forgiven us through Jesus Christ. We live our lives in this age in anticipation of being raised to new life on that still-to-come seventh day.
In this life in the meantime, when we gather to worship on each Lord’s day, we reenact liturgically the promise of redemption to which we look forward with hope, confident that healing will come with the sabbath.
David T. Koyzis is a Global Scholar with Global Scholars Canada. He holds the Ph.D. in Government and International Studies from the University of Notre Dame. He is author of Political Visions and Illusions (IVP Academic, 2019) and We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God (Pickwick, 2014).
Image: El Greco, Healing of the Man Born Blind