What did Jesus mean when he said: “The Son of man is lord of the Sabbath”? Jesus was a Jew and could not have meant that he and his disciples could break the Law when it suited them. He was saying that he and they kept the spirit of the Law, as distinct from the Pharisees, who were obsessed with the letter of the Law.
When he permitted his disciples to pluck and eat grain while passing through a field on the Sabbath, or when he healed the sick on that holy day, he was no more breaking the law of Moses than does a farmer caring for his cattle by watering and feeding it on that day.
“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” he told those who were offended at his freedom. “Love is the fulfilling of the Law,” writes Paul the apostle. There’s no law against love because a good law is merely a boundary that keeps the good in and the bad out.
German’s many autobahns have no maximum speed limit because they are so built that they allow vehicles to move at a speed that off-autobahn cannot. In the event of an accident, however, the onus is on the drivers to prove that they drove with weather and road conditions in mind.
Paul has a similar approach in Romans 14:23: “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” (Much like a driver who ignores his conscience and speeds recklessly on an autobahn.
One of the greatest liberties in life — the greatest perhaps — is the freedom to walk in the spirit of Grace freely rather than to tread in the letter of the Law. Every day is a holy Sabbath for those who walk by Grace in the Law of Love — “against which” Paul writes of the latter, “there is no law.” The onus is on us, however, to not to offend those of our brothers and sisters in Christ who are yet to walk in the freedom of the Spirit rather than in the letter of the Law.
The Law is insensitive because human behaviour requires that it be so, but the Love of God in us enables us to walk this world with sensitivity.