How to Obey the Law by Breaking It (Luke 6:1-5)

“On a Sabbath, He passed through the grainfields. His disciples were picking heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. But some of the Pharisees said, ‘Why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?’

Jesus answered them, ‘Haven’t you read what David and those who were with him did when he was hungry – how he entered the house of God, and took and ate the sacred bread, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat? He even gave some to those who were with him.’ Then He told them, ‘The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.’”

Sometimes you think you know Jesus, and then he does or says something totally unexpected. For me, this passage was one of those moments.

Of course, I have no problem with what Jesus and his disciples were doing. I’m like, “Wow, way to overreact Pharisees. They’re just picking and eating grain.” But then comes Jesus’ response. I expect him to say something about how he and his disciples aren’t really breaking the Sabbath, and how it is instead the Pharisees’ own misguided understanding of the Sabbath that is the problem here. And that is kind of what he does, but the example he uses is unsettling.

He references the story from 1 Samuel 21, when David and his men are on the run from Saul. They’re hungry. Starving? Probably not. But when you’re on the run from the king of the land, food can be scarce. So David goes to the temple and asks the priest for some bread. The only bread available is the bread from the Table of Showbread, so the priest gives this to David. Sounds reasonable, right?

Except: it is unlawful for any but the priests to eat this bread! David and his men are breaking the law. The priest who gives the bread to them is breaking the law. When this story is told in the Old Testament, it is morally ambiguous at best. Yet here Jesus is using it to defend his disciples’ actions!

I realized that this unsettled me because I misunderstood the nature of the law and our relation to it. I thought the goal was to avoid breaking the law. But it’s not. The goal is to obey the law… and sometimes that means breaking it.

In Matthew’s version of this story, Jesus cites a second example in his disciples’ defense. He says, “Or haven’t you read in the Law that on Sabbath days the priests in the temple violate the Sabbath and are innocent?” (Matthew 12:5)

Again, this makes sense to me, but the way Jesus says it has the wheels in my head spinning. You can break the law and still be innocent? Jesus doesn’t say that the priests working on the Sabbath don’t break the Sabbath – but rather that they do and yet, somehow, are still obeying the law. This has profound implications. It means there are sometimes things in life more important than avoiding breaking the law. Like feeding hungry people. Like serving others in ministry. And that you may have to break the letter of the law in order to fulfill the spirit of the law.

Then it hits me: the point of the law is not the law; the point of the law is people. It is designed to show us how to love God and love one another. Our purpose is not to serve the law. The law exists to serve us – to guide us towards the true path of love and ultimately to Jesus himself.

In fact, that is what Jesus seems to be saying: “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27-28). The Sabbath, like the rest of the law, was given to us by God, not so we would serve it, but so it would serve us – preserving and enriching our life. The law lays the foundation of God’s character: love. If, in striving to keep the letter of the law, we act in an unloving way, we are no longer really keeping the law.

Think about it: you can technically be a member of those of “keep the commandments of God” and yet actually be living contrary to the law of God. While at the same time there could be those who, to human eyes, break a commandment and yet are actually living out the law of God. This was certainly the case between the Pharisees and Jesus.

Although I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time now, I’m still not sure I’ve wrapped my mind around all the implications. I don’t have all the practical applications figured out. But I know this: it is not enough to simply go through the motions. I want to know Jesus, the Lawgiver, so that I can truly live in accordance with what he desires for me.