And He said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." Mark 2:27
I was in the midst of a conversation the other day about how the pharisees had been tasked with making a fence around the Torah. There needed to be a way to understand various aspects, for instance, what does it mean to not work on the Sabbath? While this is understandable, what they ended up with is not.
Within their fence the amount of steps you could take were limited. Helping someone was restricted. Feeding yourself from the fallen grain was restricted. They made a fence alright, the kind you could only get through by the tiny gate of perfection.
What Jesus does is remind us that the law that did exist, existed for us, not the other way around. What Jesus did was to take the unneeded slats off the fence and allow more people access to the other side.
The question that we in the church need to ask ourselves is, are we like Jesus, opening the possibilities of entry, or like the pharisees, working hard to keep people out?
+ Who in the church, in your opinion, has acted like Jesus? like the pharisees?
+ What rules keep people out? are they Jesus' rules? or our rules?
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