Who Makes the Rules?
Rules are part of life. Whether we’re driving, working, paying our taxes, or conducting business, there are rules to follow. A world without rules would be chaotic and dangerous. In a world suffocating in sin, rules are one of God’s mercies to us.
The Bible, of course, is full of God’s rules for our lives. It’s much more than a rule book, indeed, to understand it merely as a rule book is to miss it’s point entirely because the Bible, before it’s anything else, is the revelation of God and of how we can know him.
Nonetheless, the Bible is full of rules for our lives. Lots of the rules are crystal clear in their meaning and application. Rules like “do not lie or steal or commit adultery.” Some rules are less clear in their meaning and application. Rules like “do not take the Lord’s name in vain or honor your father and mother or keep the Sabbath day holy.” Do these rules mean that we shouldn’t use curse words, should always say “yes ma’am” or “yes sir” to our parents, or shouldn’t do anything but go to church on Sunday?
Then there are thousands of things not addressed by the Bible at all! Things like who we should marry, where we should go to school or live, what job we should take, what car to buy, how many kids we should have, or what age we should retire. The vast majority of decisions we’ll make in life, both big and small, can’t be decided by a clear command of Scripture. This is one reason we should live in Proverbs, pray for wisdom every day, and seek godly counsel.
Ignoring First Principles
For thousands of years, worshippers of God have struggled with wanting guidance from God but not finding specific answers to their questions in the Bible. In fact, one reason the Pharisees had risen to prominence in Jesus’ time was because Israel needed help knowing exactly how to honor and obey God while they lived under foreign domination.
The trouble is that the commands of Scripture sometimes get swallowed up by the commands of men. This happened with the Pharisees (Lk. 11:42). The clear commands of God govern our lives, nothing else.
This dynamic of elevating human tradition over divine revelation is what’s at play in Jesus’ encounters with the Pharisees and scribes in this section of Luke. These guys are starting to oppose Jesus more and more. They’ve confused their traditions with God’s commands and are therefore furious when an obscure Rabbi shows up and starts pointing this out publicly.
In Luke 6:1-11, Jesus shows them (and us) that human need is greater than religious rules, that grace is better than law. We’ll see Jesus defend hungry disciples in verses 1-5 and help a needy man in verses 6-11. In this section, Jesus shows us that he’s Lord of the Rules.
Jesus Defends Hungry Disciples
First, in verses 1-5, Jesus defends his hungry disciples. The Pharisees are upset that Jesus’ disciples are snacking on the Sabbath.
To understand this encounter, we need to understand how massively important the Sabbath was (and still is) to Jews. The fourth of the Ten Commandments was, “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy” (Ex. 20:8-11). It’s the only one of the Ten Commandments instituted by God at creation (Gen. 2:2-3). Its purpose was to keep Israel in a right relationship with God and with God’s creation by honoring family, workers, foreigners, and even animals one day a week.
As a sign of the covenant (Ex. 30:13), the Sabbath also set the Jews apart from the surrounding nations who worked seven days a week. Like circumcision, it was an important identity marker for Jews who lived around and under other nations. Observing the Sabbath defined and determined whether one was a faithful Jew or not.
Even though the Sabbath command is the longest of the Ten Commandments, it didn’t come with many specific details about how to observe the Sabbath. So through the years, Jewish teachers came up with thirty-nine classes of work that were forbidden, things like sowing, reaping, threshing, baking, tying, kindling a fire, and carrying something from one location to another. These regulations were meant to keep Israel from assimilating into the Gentile culture around them. They were meant to help people obey God’s law.
The problem, of course, is that even the thirty-nine areas of work needed further interpretation. What counted as carrying an object? What if my fire goes out and its winter? What if my donkey comes untied, can I tie him up again? The Jews had to work hard to not work on the Sabbath.
David Did It, So Can I
This is why the Pharisees are surveilling Jesus’ Sabbath day activities. They claim that what his disciples are doing is “not lawful to do on the Sabbath” (v. 2). They’re likely equating their plucking, rubbing, and eating the “heads of grain” with reaping and threshing, therefore they’re breaking the rabbinic traditions that had grown up around the Sabbath, not the Sabbath law itself.
Rather than arguing with the Pharisees about their definition of work, Jesus makes a point using a story from Scripture. He brings up a story from 1 Samuel 21, when David was on the run from Saul and comes to the tabernacle (“house of God”) and asks the priest for bread. The only bread there was the bread of the Presence which only priests could eat, but in hunger and desperation David takes it for he and his men (1 Sam. 21:1-6).
Jesus brings up a story from outside the Law that doesn’t formally settle the legal question because what David did concerned a different law. What David did isn’t a straightforward precedent for what Jesus’ disciples did, but Jesus’ argument isn’t on that level.
Jesus cites David’s action, not simply as a case where a law is set aside without condemnation, but in order to point out why the law was set aside and who did it.
David used the holy bread because he and his men were hungry. David set aside the law to preserve human life. Strict observance of the rules gave way to human need. Necessity trumped restriction.
But that alone wasn’t sufficient reason for breaking the law. Jesus’ words in verse 5 tell us that it’s more about who has the authority to override the law. David could do it because he was the Lord’s anointed king. Therefore, Jesus, as the Son of David, and indeed as David’s Lord (20:41-44), had the authority to override the law in order to meet a human need.
Jesus is arguing from the lesser to the greater, saying that if David could sidestep the law to preserve life, then how much more so could Jesus, the Davidic Messiah, do the same?
Jesus has the authority to redefine Sabbath conventions (v. 5). The “Son of Man,” a title from Daniel used to describe one who’d come with authority and power (7:13-14), has authority to forgive sins (Lk. 5:24) and authority to define what can and cannot be done on the Sabbath.
Verse 5 is an amazing statement. God instituted the Sabbath and yet Jesus says he’s Lord of the Sabbath, meaning he has the authority to declare what’s right or wrong on the Sabbath. God gave the Sabbath command yet Jesus says he’s the one with the right to enforce it.
Jesus is Lord of the Rules
To put the matter succinctly, Jesus is Lord of the Rules. Every rule and regulation and family tradition and church practice and cultural trend is subject to the lordship of Jesus Christ.
One of the ways we promote the lordship of Christ is by preserving the freedom of the conscience. Jesus rules through his word, not through the scaffolding of traditions and opinions and preferences that builds up over time around his word.
For example, the Sabbath command should be honored because it’s a clear command of God. How it should be honored is a disputable matter that brothers and sisters in Christ may disagree on. The key is to honor Jesus’s lordship by honoring the command to worship and rest once a week, remembering that other believers may come to different conclusions than you do about how best to do that.
As Andy Naselli and J. D. Crowley say in their book Conscience, “It is a serious sin to try to bind someone else’s conscience with rules that God does not clearly command.”[1] For example, they say, “The kingdom of God is not a matter of schooling choices, political parties, musical styles, and so on. Once again, we’re not suggesting that third-level matters are unimportant. We have some strong opinions on them. But they are not what the kingdom of God is about. The most important thing is not what we eat or drink. Schismatically dividing over these less important matters does not make ‘for peace and for mutual upbuilding’ (Rom. 14:19).”[2]
By remaining faithful to the clear commands of Scripture and by being flexible in disputable matters, the church grows in unity around what matters most and the sufficiency of the gospel is preserved for the next generation. May it be so among us.
Jesus Helps a Needy Man
The next episode, in verses 6-11, is another illustration of Jesus elevating human need over religious rules. In these verses, Jesus helps a needy man.
Again the scene is set “on another Sabbath” (v. 6). Jesus is teaching in the synagogue and a man with a “withered” (or “shriveled”) hand is there.
The scribes and Pharisees are “watching him,” scrutinizing every action because they’re desperate to find “a reason to accuse him” (v. 7). But Jesus wasn’t born the day before. He knows what they’re up to (v. 8). He’s fully aware of their motives and so he calls the man up front in order to publicly confront them.
Two Questions
Verse 9 says that Jesus goes on the offensive with two very pointed questions. The first question about doing good or evil refers to the handicapped man. Jesus frames the issue of his healing on the Sabbath in moral terms. For Jesus, “human need poses a moral imperative.”[3] When good needs to be done, there can’t be a neutral response; to do nothing in the face of human need is to contribute to evil. To Jesus, it wasn’t just good to heal on the Sabbath, it was right. Responding to injustice with action is what God’s people do; indeed, it’s a litmus test for who are God’s people.
Then he asks them a second question, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath…to save life or to destroy it?” (v. 9) This question refers to the religious authorities, not the disabled man. He’s calling out their fierce antagonism toward him. If he heals on the Sabbath, then will they think that he’s further violating the Sabbath and therefore worthy of death? Indeed, they will (v. 11).
They don’t respond to Jesus’ questions. Their silence is self-incriminating. And Jesus is not happy. Mark’s account says, “He looked around at them in anger and (was) deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts” (3:5). Because these men would rather keep religious rules than help someone in need, Jesus is angry. Their hard hearts break his heart.
Both of Jesus’ questions link his fate to that of the man with the shriveled hand. Jesus’ response to him will determine the Pharisees response to Jesus. But one of the reasons I love Jesus is that he doesn’t decide what to do based on what others may do as a result. He does what’s right even though he knows it’s going to cost him. As one commentator says, “He does not equivocate or weigh his response in light of foreseeable consequences.”[4] Jesus cares more about justice and mercy than he does about making misguided men happy.
A Response of Faith
In verse 10, Jesus says to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” It’s unclear whether he was healed before or after he stretched out his hand. Either way, this man has a decision to make. People with deformities of any kind prefer to conceal them, not reveal them. What Jesus asks him to do is the last thing he wants to do but is the first thing he must do if he wants to be healed. He will only be healed if he exposes his infirmity to Jesus.
So in faith, he stretches out his hand and lo and behold, his fingers moved and he was “restored” (v. 10). Being healed by Jesus requires faith in Jesus. The paralytic had to believe that when he stood up his legs wouldn’t give way, and this man had to believe that when he stretched out his hand, his shriveled fingers would move. Because he trusted Jesus’ word, his hand moved again.
Crazy-Making Compassion
But unfortunately, the Pharisees and scribes were unmoved (v. 11). Jesus’ compassion was free to the man with the shriveled hand, but costly to himself. Matthew and Mark tell us that they begin discussing how to kill Jesus. The word for “fury” means “madness,” or “to take leave of one’s senses,” or “to be swept up in irrational anger.”[5]
Jesus violated man-made rules in order to do what’s right and now he’s the object of destructive rage. Why? The text doesn’t tell us exactly why, but this pattern isn’t uncommon.
Commenting on the horrific and tragic shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis this week, John Stonestreet pointed out that disconnecting from reality and disconnecting from God are connected (eg. Rom. 1), and that when this happens, it’s often accompanied by violence and irrational hatred.[6]
These religious leaders in Luke 6 are so disconnected from reality and disconnected from God that they can’t see the truth that’s right in front of them, namely, that Jesus hadn’t done anything wrong and instead was doing something very right. They couldn’t see past their traditions and expectations and see the real humans in real need right in front of them. Their fear of losing control of the people led them to rage against the one trying to show them a better way. Their fury was the result of a godless disconnect with reality, a fury that would eventually turn violent.
Two Big Takeaways
I want to close with two big takeaways from these two episodes. First, Jesus loved helping people. The Pharisees privileged the law; Jesus privileged hungry and hurting people. Yes, he came to keep and fulfill the law, God’s law, not man’s law. For Jesus, human need was greater than religious rules. Are there ways you overlook human needs in order to keep up religious appearances?
Second, the Pharisaical tendency to exalt man-made rules over God’s commands lives in all our hearts. One way to guard against this is to know your Bible really well, that way you know what God actually commands. Another way is to talk with others about things you’re wrestling with. Christian maturity won’t come by living in isolation. It will come through seeking godly counsel.
Another way is to look for what nineteenth century Anglican pastor J. C. Ryle called attaching excessive importance to trifles.[7] He said hypocrites are dominated by excessive concern over things not explicitly commanded or forbidden in Scripture. So we need to be on the lookout for how we elevate our preferences to the place of God’s commands, whether it be in politics, education, how we apply complementarian convictions, or think about different approaches to Christian counseling, or how we celebrate or don’t celebrate Halloween or talk about Santa Clause or think about global warming or playing video games or body piercings or wearing makeup or functional versus traditional medicine or dating versus courtship or drinking alcohol or listening to secular music or when married couples should start trying to have children and how many children married couples should have and on and on I could go.[8]
Just as God’s command to honor the Sabbath is clear, though all the specifics on how to do that aren’t, so it is with many of God’s commands. It’s a gift from God that we have the freedom to think and to apply God’s word for ourselves, with the help of his Spirit and his church. This freedom reveals God’s creativity in making a diverse people who reflect his multifaceted wisdom and glory through their differences on disputable matters.
Debating without Confessing
A final danger to guard against is the desire to debate ancillary issues without ever mentioning our sin. If we regularly talk about debatable issues but rarely confess our sins, then we may’ve missed the main reason Jesus came. Jesus came to save sinners.
Jesus, the Lord of the Rules, saw us in desperate need and, instead of giving us regulations, gave us grace by dying for us. We’re the true lawbreakers, but he kept the law and accepted the penalty of lawbreaking for us. Everyone who turns from their attempts to keep the law so God will accept them and looks to Christ alone as their only hope will quickly discover that the freedom of God’s grace is infinitely better than the tyranny of the law.
Yes, Jesus has commandments for his followers, first of which is to repent and believe. But our hearts aren’t won over by his moral demands but by his grace, not by his rules but by his wounds. Has his grace won your heart?
[1]Andrew David Naselli and J. D. Crowley, Conscience: What It Is, How to Train It, and Loving Those Who Differ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), 108.
[2]Ibid., 112.
[3]James R. Edwards, The Gospel according to Luke, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 181.
[4]Ibid., 182.
[5]Ibid.
[6]The World and Everything in It: August 29, 2025 | WORLD
[7]Mentioned in Dale Ralph Davis, Luke 1-13: The Year of the Lord’s Favor, Focus on the Bible (Fearn, Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus, 2021), 106.
[8]See Naselli and Crowley, 80-81, for a list of disputable matters.