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The Sabbath, the law, and love, parts 1 and 2

Lynne Baab • Tuesday January 27 2026

The Sabbath, the law, and love, parts 1 and 2

Overall theme for the next few months: God’s law is love

Lesson 2, parts 1 and 2: The Sabbath, the law, and love

Passage: (Luke 14:1-6)

Key verse: Jesus asked the lawyers and Pharisees, “Is it lawful to cure people on the Sabbath, or not?” But they were silent. So Jesus took him and healed him, and sent him away. Luke 14:3-4

2. Stepping into the Word

Imagine that you want to be healthier, so you decide to try to eat more vegetables. You wonder how to approach this commitment. Should you count the vegetables you eat? Should you make a list of different kinds of vegetables and try to eat one vegetable off each list every day? Or should you keep more vegetables on hand and simply try to eat more of them?

Many actions and commitments that are life-giving involve decisions about how much structure to impose. God gave the Sabbath to the people of Israel as a gift. The specific instructions in the Old Testament for the Sabbath day — prohibitions of work in many forms — were designed to promote feasting, joy, freedom, warm family life, and well-being for all people and animals. The directive not to light a fire on the Sabbath helped women and servants get a day of rest because everyone ate cold food that had been prepared ahead of time.

By the time Jesus was born and began his ministry, Jewish rabbis had created strict regulations for the Sabbath. Some of their motivation was undoubtedly good; they wanted instructions about the Sabbath to be clear. Jewish religious leaders paid attention to the behavior of everyday people on the Sabbath, and they watched Jesus closely, because of his many followers and because he sometimes sounded like he wanted to overturn the rigid structures that had become a central part of Jewish life. Jesus deliberately violated some of the rules established by the rabbis, then used those instances as an opportunity for teaching about God’s central priorities.

God wants human beings to experience the joy and wonder of being loved by the generous God who created us. God wants us to show that love to others. Sometimes structure in the form of rules or regulations helps make that happen, and other times the structure gets in the way.

Loving God, help us learn from Jesus about what really matters. Help us create structures for ourselves and our families that promote the kind of well-being that you desire. Help us rest in your love.

2. Restoring human life to God’s intention

In addition to the man with dropsy, Jesus heals four other times on the Sabbath day: the man with the withered hand (Matthew 12:9-14, Mark 3:1-6, and Luke 6:6-11), the woman bowed down with infirmity (Luke 13:10-17), the man who had been infirm for 38 years (John 5:1-18), and the man born blind (John 9:1-41). These four other healings involve situations that had endured for many years or the person’s entire lifetime. In contrast, the man with dropsy could have experienced the problem for a short or long time.

Dropsy is an old term that refers to swelling of the soft tissue. Today, we would specify the cause of the swelling, such as congestive heart failure, bacterial infections, parasitic infections, or liver dysfunction. Jesus cares enough to heal the man with unspecified swelling, and Jesus uses the healing as an opportunity for teaching about the purpose of the Sabbath.

Jesus performs the healing on the way to dinner at the home of a Jewish leader. He is accompanied by other leaders, who are “watching him closely” (Luke 14:1), presumably to see if they can catch him in a violation of Jewish law so they can arrest him.

Jesus would have been aware that before he was born, the rabbis who interpreted the Torah had delineated 39 forms of work that were prohibited on the Sabbath day, including sowing, plowing, reaping, threshing, winnowing, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking, spinning, weaving, hunting, slaughtering, building, hammering, and transporting. Healing is not on the list. Alongside the prohibition of these specific forms of work was the rabbis’ command to protect and preserve life, even if it violated one of the forbidden forms of work.

When Jesus asks his question of the Pharisees, “Is it lawful to cure people on the sabbath, or not?” (v. 3), he is evoking the tension between the forbidden Sabbath actions and the command to save life. Healing could be viewed as work, but healing was also clearly related to saving and enhancing life. The Jewish leaders are unable to address Jesus’ question. Jesus presses this point when he says, “If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day?” (v. 5).  

In all of his Sabbath healings, and the teaching before and after the healings, Jesus shifts the focus away from what is prohibited to what enhances human life and restores it to what God intended.

What are some structures that help you remain aware of God’s love for you? In what settings are you tempted to create or embrace rules for the sake of the rules rather than to experience God’s love?

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Next week: The Sabbath, the law, and love, parts 3 and 4. Illustration by Dave Baab: cherry blossoms in the Quad, University of Washington.

For the second half of 2025, my blog posts focused on the theme of journey. Here are the ten posts that got the most views:

This lesson appeared in the Fall 2023 edition of The Present Word adult Bible study curriculum published by the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Used with permission. 

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