NOTES for Mat 12:9-13
9 And when he was departed thence, he went into their synagogue: |
10 And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? that they might accuse him. |
11 And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? |
12 How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days. |
13 Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other. |
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The essence of the conflict between law and grace, between Christ and the legalists, is reflected as in a drop of water in this healing. The legalists question Christ in order to accuse Him. Strictly speaking, the question is what matters more: observance of the prescriptions of the law, whose absolute and literal God-givenness none of the legalists doubts, or mercy and pity for a suffering person. It is a conflict of ideas: on one side, to use a Slavonic word, the "God-written" law, which the Jews perceive as the only expression of the Creator's will; on the other side: "I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings" (Hos. 6:6). The problem is not whether the law may be reinterpreted and supplemented: the Jews allow themselves to do this all the time. The question is whether we allow God to have a will bound by nothing. Do we give Him the right to show mercy? Christ often repeats to us that with the judgment with which we judge, we too will be judged. The legalists, however, want God to limit His mercy within the framework of the law known to them.
In response, Christ does exactly what He once did with the prophet Jonah. He invites the legalists to see the situation from His point of view. To Jonah, who was offended at God because He took pity on the repentant Ninevites, God gave a plant, and Jonah was ready to lose his life out of grief for it. By this He foretold that He Himself would give His life out of pity for us (Jon. 4:6-11). To the legalists of the Capernaum synagogue, He offers a question about a sheep, because the superiority of a human being over cattle is in part like the superiority of the Almighty over the human being himself. So if you pity a creature that is perishing without your help, then, to paraphrase Jon. 4:11, "Should I not pity the suffering person?" As throughout the Bible, we see here a great revelation that the motive for God's actions in the world is compassion for us. Incidentally, by His answer Jesus also justified the lawfulness of His action: it is lawful to do good on the Sabbaths. The commandment said: on all days do your works. But good is God's work, and it may be done always.
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Readings for 8 July 2025
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