Why did Christ heal on Sabbath days?

[Enoch111]

The Bible has a record of Christ performing six healing miracles on Sabbath days.
1. Sabbath healing of an unclean spirit in Capernaum (Mk 1:21-27; Lk 4:31-37)
2. Sabbath healing of a woman crippled for 18 years (Lk 13:10-17)
3. Sabbath healing of a man with a withered hand (Mt 12:9-14; Mk 3:1-6; Lk 6:6-11)
4. Sabbath healing of an infirm man at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-15)
5. Sabbath healing of a blind man outside the temple (John 9:1-12)
6. Sabbath healing of a man with dropsy (Lk 14:1-6)

There may have been others, but this is what is recorded in the Gospels. So the question arises "Why did Christ heal on Sabbath days which made the Jewish religious leaders angry enough to plot His death?"

The answer lies in that very significant statement of Christ that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. God instituted the day of Sabbath rest to give mankind one day out of seven when all ordinary labor should cease. So that men would not only rest but remember the Creator and worship Him.

However, the rabbis of Israel had made Sabbath-keeping burdensome, as they had all of the laws of Moses. And they had simply refused to acknowledge the fact that while the Sabbath was indeed for rest, good works were not forbidden. Indeed the priests labored on Sabbath days in the temple, and any kind of emergency would require action on those days.

Christ was teaching the Jews and Christians several lessons:
1. To heal on Sabbath days was the will of God.
2. To do right on Sabbath days was the will of God.
3. To idolize the Sabbath days was not the will of God.
4. Sabbaths were shadows of the eternal rest which Christ gives to those who believe in Him.
5. After Christ's resurrection on the first day of the week, Christian rest and worship would also be on that day as noted in Scripture.
6. The Sabbath was given to Israel, not the Church. But the principles of hallowing the Sabbath would apply to the Christian Sabbath.
7. For the longest time Sunday would be called the Christian Sabbath (and still is by many).

 

[atpollard]

"Why did Christ heal on Sabbath days which made the Jewish religious leaders angry enough to plot His death?"

He was looking ahead to one day piss off the SDA form of Christian Legalism.

 

[Desire Of All Nations]

I was with you right up until you trotted out the classic Romanist talking point that the Sabbath was a "shadow of the rest Christ gives". That is dishonest a claim as a summer day is long, not to mention ignorant of what the Scriptures teach, especially because Paul never said such a thing.

The Sabbath is a type of the rest the world will receive from Satan in the Millennium. God commanded that the first 6 days be reserved for man to do all of his work because it is a type of man being allowed to live his own way under Satan's influence for the first 6 millennia apart from God. The Sabbath is a type of the peace man will experience under God's rule and living God's way in the 7th millennium, hence why He commanded that this day alone be kept entirely holy forever.

Christ was not resurrected on Sunday, despite what Romanist tradition says. The Bible clearly shows the women went to His tomb on Sunday and was told that He was already gone. Nowhere in the Bible does it explicitly state that Christ was resurrected on Sunday. Between Dan. 9:27 saying the Messiah would die on a Wednesday, Christ Himself saying He would be dead for a full 72 hour period, and the fact that He died in the late afternoon hours of Wednesday, no rational or honest person can mathematically arrive at Sunday morning.

Even if Christ was resurrected on Sunday(and i have already concretely proven that He wasn't), there isn't a single passage that says the commanded day of rest and worship changed from the Sabbath to Sunday. That is a favorite claim used by Romanists, but that doesn't make it true. Plenty of Roman Catholic Church clergymen have already authenticated the fact that the Bible never authorized such a change and that it was only done on the supposed authority of their church(Dan 7:25), so there is no biblical basis for such an obvious lie.

Not only does Acts shows ethnic Gentiles keeping the Sabbath, but Romans, the Corinthian letters, and John's epistles show it as well. You defeated your own argument by claiming the Sabbath was only for Israel while simultaneously posting Christ saying the Sabbath was made for all humanity. So which is it, was the Sabbath made for all of man at creation, or was it created for the Israelites when they were in the desert? You can't have it both ways, because the latter would mean Christ lied, and i'm not inclined to believe He did.

Furthermore, it makes no logical sense to claim the Sabbath was only for Israel when God never said such a thing and Him pointing back to the events of Gen. 1 and 2 as the foundation of the command shows the Israelites weren't even the first human beings that kept it. Considering Gal. 6:16 says the Church is NT Israel, the Sabbath command itself stating the foreigners among OT Israel were equally responsible for keeping the Sabbath, and Gal. 3:28 saying there are no differences between the Jew and non-Jew in Christ, a person would have to be ignorant or a liar to claim the Sabbath was only for OT Israel.

Just because a lot of people call Sunday the Christian Sabbath doesn't mean it is true or that God sees it that way. Society also say homosexuality, fornication, cross dressing, adultery, and co-habitating before marriage is perfectly ok. Does that mean it is true? No! The obvious problem with these kinds of Romanist arguments is that they are always conveniently devoid of what God has to say, which only goes to prove their religions are based on human reasoning run amok and not the Bible. Man does not possess the authority to determine what the truth is, and you would be wise to remember that.

The thing that really encapsulates how absurd Romanists' logic is concerning the Sabbath is the fact that they refer to Sunday as the Christian Sabbath while simultaneously arguing that no Sabbath should be kept at all. If all Sabbaths were truly abolished by the New Covenant, then there are no logical grounds for observing Sunday as sacred. And the superbly hypocritical part is that Sunday keepers don't even keep all of Sunday devoid of secular activity or conversation! The question that literally no Sunday keeper have ever logically or rationally answered is how can Sunday ever be called a true Sabbath on those grounds?

 

[DPMartin]

look guys the seventh day God rested, and here the Lord their God tells via Ezekiel what the sabbath is for them:

Eze 20:10 Wherefore I caused them to go forth out of the land of Egypt, and brought them into the wilderness.
Eze 20:11 And I gave them my statutes, and shewed them my judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in them.
Eze 20:12 Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD that sanctify them.

there, that is the reason for the sabbath, the reason the Lord God says it is, therefore the undisputed truth of the matter.

in todays world one might take into consideration that the three main religions that claim the Creator and Judge. one's important day of the week is the sixth day (Islam) the day of the week Jesus died and Adam died (though i can't prove that at this time) they are all about death to the world that isn't like them and they believe they have the right to execute that judgement. Israel's day we know is the seventh day for the reason the Lord said in Ezekiel to sanctify them unto Him. one might note also Israel has no history of trying to concur the world around it, it mainly did what the Lord told them in what land shall be theirs and left it at that. no designs to kill those not like them. now the eighth day Sunday, i say eighth because that was the eighth day of that Passover, and the circumcised are to be circumcised on the eighth. is important to those who see Jesus as the only begotten Beloved Son of God resurrected on that day.

 

[Enoch111]

Furthermore, it makes no logical sense to claim the Sabbath was only for Israel when God never said such a thing...

Of course He did, so pay close attention: And remember that thou wast a servant [Heb ebed = slave or servant] in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day. (Deut 5:15) Here God specifically tells Israel the reason why they were commanded to observe the Sabbath.

And Paul very specifically calls the Sabbath a shadow, the reality being Christ: Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath [days]: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. (Col 2:16,17) "Days" is in italics. The Greek simply has "of the sabbath". All holy days and ceremonial observances were shadows.

To deny that Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week is to deny that He fulfilled the Feast of First Fruits in His resurrection. That was observed on the "morrow after the sabbath". And He is called "the First Fruits of them that slept".

So you too are going by your traditions rather than by what is actually in Scripture.