But a comparison of Matt., xii., 6-8, with Mark, ii., 28, will suggest to us something more than a mere assault upon the statutes of the Pharisees. In the first passage he begins with his opponents upon their own ground. "You yourselves admit that the priests who serve the Temple on the Sabbath must break the literal Sabbatical law in view of the higher duties of the Temple service." Then he continues, "But I say unto you, there is something here greater than the Temple."
[137] In these, as in many of Christ's words, there is more than meets the ear.
[138] When we remember the sanctity of the Temple in Jewish eyes, as the seat of the Shekinah, as the only place where God could ever be worshipped, we can conceive the weight of Christ's declaration that his manifestation was something greater than the Temple, and was to introduce a revelation of the glory of God, and a mode of Divine worship to which the Temple-service was entirely subordinate. We may infer Christ's conclusion to have been, "If the priests have been freed from the literal observance of the Sabbath law because of their relation to the Temple, heretofore the highest seat of worship, how much more must my disciples be freed from the letter of that law by their relation to that which is greater than the Temple! (Their intercourse with Him was something greater than Temple-worship.) They have plucked the corn on the Sabbath, it is true, but they have done it that they might not be disturbed in their communion with the Son of Man, and in reliance upon his authority. They are free from guilt, then, for the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." He thus laid the foundation for that true, spiritual worship to which the Temple-service was to give way.
Of the same character were those words of Jesus which taught a Stephen that Christ would destroy the Temple and remove its ritual-worship. (Acts, vi., 14.) Whether he learned this from the words recorded in John, ii., 19, or from some others, we leave for the present undecided. The doctrine of Paul in regard to the relation between the Law and the Gospel was only an extension of the truth first uttered by Stephen. This doctrine could not have originated in Paul, without a point of departure for it in the instructions of Christ himself; still less, if those instructions had been in direct contradiction to it.
Christ's declaration, "My yoke is easy and my burden light" (Matt., xi., 30), was designed, indeed, primarily, to contrast his manner of teaching and leading men with that of the Pharisees; but it certainly meant far more. It contrasted his plan of salvation with legalism generally, of which Pharisaism was only the apex. Paul's doctrine on the subject is nothing but a developement of the intimation contained in these words. [139]