Lord

The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath (2:28)

I glibly read this as Jesus claiming authority over the sabbath day of rest, which of course it is, and miss the importance its relation to the verse before. Jesus states that 'the sabbath came out of human beings (ανθρωπον) not human beings out of the sabbath so the son of human beings is Lord also of the sabbath'. Thus hidden in a rather subtle play on words is a deeper claim, to be the source of the sabbath, to be its creator, to be God.

At school, a rather smart friend of mine tried to undermine my faith by telling me that Jesus never claimed to be God. I was flummoxed for a while, but, in my own typical fashion, the unanswered question sat in the back of my mind for years. Later it helped me to read the Gospels with great care, and I discovered to my great encouragement that Jesus claimed to be God everywhere: the forgiver of all sins (God), the calmer of chaotic waters (God), the great I Am (God) and here, Lord of the Sabbath (God). He just required people to think about it for more than five minutes. I also learned something else. Often people reject Jesus out of hand without making any effort to find out about him. Even more often, when they do, they are at first surprised and then captivated by the one who walked this earth just like us, yet without sin.



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