Healing On The Sabbath

More than one part of the gospel accounts of the miracles of Jesus involve him healing someone on the Sabbath as irate Pharisees observe.  These passages are very relevant to the issue of what it is to "work" on the Sabbath and distinguish permissible activities from immoral ones on the Sabbath, for, as I will address, both Mosaic Law and Jesus make it clear that not all activity on the Sabbath is actually what constitutes working in the sense condemned by verses like Exodus 35:2.  They are also relevant to whether Jesus did indeed sin during his time on Earth by the actual standards of the moral revelation he supposedly lived out without any error--violating the Sabbath is very blatantly a sin on Biblical ethics, and so what exactly is and is not permissible on the Sabbath is what dictates if in this case Jesus did or did not sin according to the events of the gospel accounts.  The early verses of John 5 detail one of these stories where Jesus heals on the Sabbath and draws controversy for it.

What he first appeals to is that God, as he puts it, is in a sense working on each Sabbath.  When Jesus says in John 5:17 that "'My Father is always at work to this very day, and I, too, am working," he is not referring to unecessary physical labor for pay from an employer, but seemingly to the kind of attention and action necessary for God to sustain his creation's very existence.  John 5:18 right after this almost might seem like the text says Jesus truly was violating the Sabbath while supporting his actions, but there are multiple aspects of this chapter and others in the Bible which clarify or from which it logically follows that Jesus never violated the Sabbath at all.  Even in John 5, as soon after John 5:17 as verse 19, Jesus says he is only imitating the "Father," appealing to the fact that God's moral nature is what grounds and dictates morality, so doing as God does is not sinful, and thus the way that God "works" on the Sabbath does not violate it.  If Jesus only engages in the same kind of work, then there is no sin even when this is done on the Sabbath, and the same would be true of any other person as well.

In Matthew 12:9-14, before Jesus heals a man with a shriveled hand, Pharisees ask Jesus if healing on the Sabbath is morally permissible, to which Jesus very unambiguously clarifies that it is not violation of the Sabbath to help one's animal, with humans only being more deserving of help than any non-human animals.  Earlier in Matthew 12, Jesus also lists several examples of people performing activities on the Sabbath that are not actual violations of the command to not work on this day of rest, despite each one of them involving activity of some kind.  One of these is the temple priests routinely offering sacrifices on the Sabbath, a practice prescribed specifically in Numbers 28:9-10.  These Sabbath offerings clearly are exempt from the command to do no work on the Sabbath, and Jesus also gives a separate example in John 7:23 of how circumcising a baby on the Sabbath is not a disqualified form of work.  Mosaic Law itself and Jesus openly clarify several reasons why the command to not work on the Sabbath does not mean what many Christians and non-Christians think.  Even if they did not provide such exceptions, some of them would follow by logical necessity from core Christian ideas and still not conflict with the Sabbath obligation.

Jesus is not contradicting Mosaic Law in the slightest way when he heals on the Sabbath or overtly encourages certain activities on it.  As a capital sin (a sin meriting execution by other humans), breaking the Sabbath is no minor thing in Christian morality, but it is not as if Yahweh ever meant for humans to do nothing on the Sabbath.  After all, no one could think, walk, eat, pray, read Scripture, or enjoy conversation with friends on the Sabbath if this was the case, yet some of these things are literally impossible to avoid unless one is unconscious the whole time (in the case of thinking at a minimum)!  None of these things are what is prohibited, nor is performing physical or mental tasks necessary to protect oneself or, as Jesus states, animals or fellow people.  Unnecessary work to spite God or in spite of clear chances to prepare before the Sabbath (like picking up sticks when one could have done so ahead of time to prepare, as Numbers 15:32-36 explores in a story) or engaging in physical labor for pay would be the only things that the Sabbath command universally applies to.

Again, it is not as if all activity on the Sabbath constitutes the prohibited forms of work; thinking (which is mental work and yet without thought, and thoughts more specifically aligned with reason as opposed to subjective preferences and perceptions, a person could not even understand the issue or remember to not work on the Sabbath!), self-defense, helping others, or prayer would all by necessity not fall under the condemned categories of work on the Sabbath, following logically from some other tenet of Christianity, the actual nature of the command to not work on the Sabbath, and even the Biblically-sanctioned examples of very significant exceptions to this entire obligation to rest.  The Sabbath is not about lacking the mental activity necessary to even appreciate rest in the first place or avoiding all physical activity to the point of forfeiting one's safety or overlooking the danger or pain other beings are in.  It is simply about setting aside a day to abstain from all uneccesary work for pay, physical labor in particular (and where applicable, physical labor that should have been done in advance of the Sabbath as in the story of Numbers 15:32-36), and directly pursuing spiritual and physical rejuvenation.