Home > Jesus is God in Mark's Gospel
Mark recounts a Sabbath incident in which Jesus’ disciples ate grain from a field. Although the Pharisees claimed this amounted to forbidden work, the law allowed people to pick grain by hand from the unharvested edges of fields, as long as no tool was used. See Deuteronomy 23:25. It is important to include some of what is said in Matthew and Luke
Mark 2:23–28 - One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath."
Matthew 12:7 - And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.
Luke 11:42 - But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.
The chapter concludes with a direct confrontation regarding the Sabbath, the most sacred sign of the Mosaic Covenant. Jesus does not argue about the definition of "reaping"; instead, He shifts the argument to the nature of authority. The Sabbath was instituted by God at creation (Genesis 2). By declaring, "The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath," Jesus is claiming authority over a divine institution. this passage is the "checkmate" against the idea that Jesus was merely a human prophet. In the Jewish worldview, the Sabbath was not a social construct; it was a divine institution rooted in the very act of Creation.
Jesus cites David eating the showbread (1 Samuel 21). If David (the Type) had the right to bypass ritual law in necessity, how much more does the "Greater David" (the Antitype/Son of God) have the right to define the purpose of the Sabbath? David and his men ate the "Bread of the Presence" (Showbread), which was legally reserved for the priests alone. If David, the anointed king, had the authority to bypass ritual law for the sake of necessity, how much more does the Greater David (Jesus) have the authority to interpret the Sabbath?
Jesus states that the Sabbath was created for the benefit of humanity, not humanity as a slave to the day. Only the one who designed the Sabbath (Genesis 2:2–3) has the right to declare its true purpose. Jesus is stripping away the "hedges" the Pharisees built around the Law to reveal the original intent of the Lawgiver. A mere man cannot be "Lord" of a divine day. You can be a servant of the Sabbath, a keeper of the Sabbath, or a teacher of the Sabbath—but you can only be Lord of the Sabbath if you are the one who spoke it into existence.