I. The Pharisees were a Class. They were not only Pharisees by name, but they were Pharisees by nature; that is, they were typical men; they were representative of a large fraction of the human race. One of the chief pharisaical characteristics was a love of form, of rule, of law, of custom; a love of the formalistic and the technical, as opposed to the spiritual and the natural. A Pharisee was a man and is a man who exaggerates the value of an ordinance, of a ceremony, of a ritualistic observance. A Pharisee was a man who loved and worshipped institutions as institutions, while he was thoughtless, perhaps, of the real spirit which they embodied. All men that exaggerate form, ceremony, ritualism; all men that live in the letter of the law while they ignore its spirit; all men that make the form of government, and that which is outward in institution, more valuable than the object of government, and that which vitalizes institutions, are Pharisees in blood and bone, by the ordainment of their nature. Such men are naturally tyrannical. Such men are naturally persecutors. Such men hinder beyond expression the true growth of the world.
II. Now Jesus, when He came to face these men, saw that He must teach them, and through them the world, a lesson. And the lesson which He taught them and the world was this: That man, in his rights, in his privileges, that are inalienable, is greater than any institution, nobler than any form of government, and more holy than any observance. There is no law that man cannot annul if it oppresses him; no government that he has not the Divine right to rebel against if it oppresses him; no custom or habit that he cannot tear in fragments and throw to the four winds, if it injuriously cramps his liberty, hinders his growth, or prevents his happiness. Christ declared that as a man He had rights which no ecclesiasticism could take from Him; had a liberty which no priestly council could rob Him of. He declared that the Sabbath was a day to be used; used, not according to the dictation of self-constituted guardians, but according to individual necessities, individual opportunities, and individual profit. In short, He placed the sovereignty of judgment in respect to it as an institution, and as an observance, in the hands of each individual man, saying, "Therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath."
W. H. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit,p. 430.
I. In this interview it is made clear: (1) That all critical inquiries are not to be condemned; (2) the question on the part of the Pharisees was not at all unnatural.
II. The perfect and inalienable supremacy of Jesus Christ is asserted in the last verse; He proclaims Himself Lord over time, over institutions, and over human affairs.
Parker, City Temple,1871, p. 60.
References: Mark 2:23-28. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. vi., p. 14; A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 88; H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man,p. 51.