June 26

Mark 2:27‑28
 
“And He said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the sabbath” — Mark 2:27, 2827And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: 28Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath. (Mark 2:27‑28).
IT was God who, in the goodness of His heart, designated one day in seven as a season of rest for His people. But the advocates of both license and legality perverted this expression of His loving-kindness to their own spiritual undoing. In the name of liberty the Sabbath was used by the openly ungodly as a day of careless pleasure-seeking or of personal gain (Neh. 13:1515In those days saw I in Judah some treading wine presses on the sabbath, and bringing in sheaves, and lading asses; as also wine, grapes, and figs, and all manner of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the sabbath day: and I testified against them in the day wherein they sold victuals. (Nehemiah 13:15)). On the other hand, the self-righteous hedged the holy day about with numberless regulations of their own devising that made the observance of it far more of a burden than a rest. These traditions of the elders, which were fiercely contended for and which made the Word of God of none effect, were looked upon as the very quintessence of orthodoxy. He who dared to set them to one side was branded as a dangerous heretic.
It was inevitable that Jesus must come into conflict with the religious leaders on this question, and in the portion now before us we have two such instances. In each case it was grace clashing with legality. Grace is warm, compassionate, interested more in men than in ordinances, however good and precious in themselves. Legality is cold, exacting, and far more concerned about punctilious obedience to its demands than about the needs of men and their deliverance from bondage and sin.
The same two principles are in active opposition still, and will ever be until we come to the unity of the faith when our Lord returns and gathers all His own around Himself, to enter into that eternal Sabbath-keeping which remains for the people of God (Heb. 4:99There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. (Hebrews 4:9); see marg. reading).
“No curse of law, in Thee was sov’reign grace,
And now what glory In Thine unveiled face!
Thou didst attract the wretched and the weak,
Thy joy the wand’rers and the lost to seek.”
— G. W. Frazer.