Mar 2:27 The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:

Since the sabbath is the day set aside for worship, we learn something about Christ view of public worship and worship in general. First, we worship God for our own good not because he needs worship. This entire section is about our human needs while we are temporarily separated from God during this life. One of those needs is the need to worship, to recognize that we are not alone, that we are part of something bigger.

God gave us the law, starting with the law of Moses, for our own good. Keeping the Sabbath is something that we need to do because we cannot be consumed by our worldly cares. We need to spend some serious time considering God and our place in the universe.

This rule about this one law of Moses can be extended to the entire ten commandments and from that to all human laws. If divine authority must be obeyed for our own good, so does legitimate human authority. The laws of human authority, like our religious tradition, are made for our own good and it is good to obey them because they are meant to do us good.

However, these laws are only justified when they are good for us. Law is not justified by itself, but by the way it serves humanity. If this is true for religious traditions, which come ultimately from God, it is even more true of human laws.

The logical entension of this idea is that the state as an instrument of law is not our master but our servant. It's laws are justified by their service to us. As God does not make laws for his own needs, the state does not make the law for its own needs. If God's laws are made to serve us, the state, as an artificial creation of mankind, is even more purely a servant and not a master.

From this thinking arises all modern government, especially the limits on government. If there is not God, then the state is the supreme power and all rights come from the state and all laws are meant to support the state. However, if God is the supreme power, all laws are designed to serve us as individuals. Our rights as individuals come from God not the state. Those who promote atheism do not understand how critical this distinction is.

Christ was the first to teach this idea. It is the heart of the good news, the universal rule, and the kingdom of heaven.


"Was made" is from gignomai (ginomai), which means "to become," "to come into being," "to be produced," and "to be."