Did Jesus Break the Sabbath? He Upheld It!
Did Jesus Violate the Sabbath?
The Scriptures declare that Jesus is the fulfillment of the law (Matthew 5:17; Romans 8:3-4). The law commands that the Sabbath day be kept. If Jesus broke the Sabbath, then He was not a spotless Lamb. His sacrifice would not have been accepted as a payment for sins. No one could benefit from a sinful Savior.
So, did Jesus break the Sabbath? No. Jesus upheld the Sabbath. During Jesus’s earthly ministry, the Pharisees (in an effort to earn righteousness) added much to the law of God. By addition they thereby distorted it. They made the law about earning righteousness rather than using the law to point the people to the One who could give them righteousness. Their view of the Sabbath is one of these instances. The Sabbath day was to be a holy day, a separate day. A day that pointed the people to God as they rested from work to worship Him. Jesus not only observed the Sabbath in this manner but is the fulfillment of the Sabbath for man as we cease our labor for righteousness and rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath!
With such an important question and its implications, it is important to dig deeper into this.
The Purpose of the Sabbath
Fortunately for us, we do not have to guess or speculate on the purpose of the Sabbath. God tells us. Scripture declares,
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11)
Moses assembled all the congregation of the people of Israel and said to them, “These are the things that the Lord has commanded you to do. Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day.” (Exodus 35:1-3)
“If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath,
from doing your pleasure on my holy day,
and call the Sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;
then you shall take delight in the Lord,
and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 58:13-14)
The Sabbath day of solemn rest is a holy day. A separate day. A day of sincere worship. A day where the people of God were to set aside everything and look to the God of their salvation in wonder and awe.
It was not to be a day for pursuing your own pleasure. A day where one rests and does what he or she desires.
I live in a privileged culture. A culture in which when people think of rest they think of pleasure. Things like sleeping in. Golfing. Fishing. Watching movies, sports, television. And so on and so forth.
God is nowhere in the picture! People delight in taking a break from God.
This is not the rest that God is speaking of. This is nothing like what God commanded His people to observe. The holy day of rest that God is speaking of is that of a day of delighting in the Lord. The Sabbath is about resting and delighting in God. Looking unto Him who called them out Egypt. Brought them into the Promised Land. Gives breath to their lungs. Strength to their bodies. Food for their bellies.
The Sabbath teaches God’s people to think worship. To think delight in the Lord. That’s what the Sabbath rest is really about.
This day was a different day. It was a day where the people would cease from their normal work. So that they could rest in the work that God has done and is still doing!
The book of Hebrews gives us more insight into the Sabbath. Shedding light onto its purpose. Both then and today,
Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said,
“As I swore in My wrath,
‘They shall not enter My rest,’”although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” And again in this passage he said,
“They shall not enter My rest.”
Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted,
“Today, if you hear His voice,
do not harden your hearts.”For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from His. (Hebrews 4:1-10, bold added)
This day of rest was to be entered into by His people through faith. It wasn’t a law to be observed to earn right standing before God but a holy day to take part of by faith. As they rested in God and Him alone.
The religious leaders in the time of Jesus perverted the Sabbath day. They added to it. Laying burdens on the people that they could not bear. Attempting to work their way into right standing rather than resting in the righteousness of God. The righteousness of the One who was standing in their midst, Jesus.
Their hearts were hardened by self-righteousness. They failed to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. They failed because it was work for them. Rather than rest. Don’t do this. Do that. This was legalism at its finest. In an attempt to honor God’s law they broke it and brought reproach upon the name of the Lord.
Today is the same. We are to rest in the finished work of God. In Christ. The Sabbath day is a shadow and picture of the rest that was fulfilled perfectly in Christ.
Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day—things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. (Colossians 2:16-17)
We are to cease from working to earn righteousness. Resting in the perfect righteousness of Christ. Not just one day a week. Forever. He is the eternal substance.
Jesus and the Sabbath
There are essentially two places in the Gospels where the question is raised: Did Jesus break the Sabbath? They are found in Matthew 12 and John 5. These passages will be discussed in context.
Matthew 12
At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was Your gracious will. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”
At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
He went on from there and entered their synagogue. And a man was there with a withered hand. And they asked Him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”—so that they might accuse Him. He said to them, “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And the man stretched it out, and it was restored, healthy like the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against Him, how to destroy Him. (Matthew 11:25—12:14, bold added)
As with any Scripture, we do not just want to rip a passage out of its context. Matthew wrote these things in such a way to teach his readers something. The intention of Matthew is most certainly NOT to call into question Jesus’s observance of the Sabbath. The thought that Jesus broke the Sabbath was not even in the mind of Matthew as he records this.
Matthew knew that Jesus was sinless and beyond reproach.
Matthew is making the same point that was made earlier about the purpose of the Sabbath. The purpose is NOT to adhere to a set of rules and regulations. Rather the purpose is to point the world to Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath. To point to the Messiah. The One who could save them from their sins. Give them righteousness. If they would only come to Him and enter into His rest!
For more on the significance of Jesus’s healings, see our article, Why Did Jesus Perform Miracles?
John 5
After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
Now that day was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” But he answered them, “The Man who healed me, that Man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the Man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. (John 5:1-18)
John, in his Gospel, was very concerned with making sure his readers knew that Jesus is the Son of God! John was inspired to call people to come to Christ, believe in Him, and follow Him until the end. This purpose is demonstrated here. Jesus, who healed a man on the Sabbath, was doing good. Pointing the person healed and the whole world who witnessed or reads the account to God, Whom should be their rest.
As stated in Matthew, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Jesus is not breaking the Sabbath. He is upholding it as He points the people back to its purpose. Resting in God, not in works. The religious leaders of the day imposed laws on the Sabbath that drew the people away from resting in God. That led them to foolishly trust in their own religious works and religious observance (including their “rest”). To trust in their own man-made traditions and interpretations.
This is exactly what the authors of Scripture are condemning.
The true purpose of these accounts is to point us to the One who can save us from our sin. The One who offers us rest. The One who worked and fulfilled all righteousness so that we can be set free from the curse of the law. Not pointing us to a system or to works of righteousness performed in our own strength.
The Sabbath is intended to point to the Son of God, Jesus, who came to earth clothed in human flesh. The Sabbath was the shadow. Jesus is the substance. Jesus came to redeem a people from every tribe, tongue, language, and peoples. He is working to accomplish this purpose. Which He did as He died under the wrath of God for the sins of His people. All so we could rest in Him.
For more on this purpose, see our articles:
Related Questions
What is the significance of the Sabbath? The Sabbath day is hugely significant. It was a day that God commanded to be set apart as holy. God’s people were to observe the Sabbath in sincerity as a day of rest from work, committed to worship of the one true God. The Sabbath rest points to, and is perfectly fulfilled in, the Messiah.
What does it mean to break the Sabbath? For the Israelites, to break the Sabbath day of rest was to commit a sin worthy of the death penalty. “Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death” (Exodus 35:2, bold added). Violating the Sabbath means death.