John 7:19-25 : “Didn’t Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keeps the law? Why do you seek to kill me?” The multitude answered, “You have a demon! Who seeks to kill you?” Jesus answered them, “I did one work, and you all marvel because of it. Moses has given you circumcision (not that it is of Moses, but of the fathers), and on the Sabbath you circumcise a boy. If a boy receives circumcision on the Sabbath, that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me, because I made a man completely healthy on the Sabbath? Don’t judge according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” Therefore some of them of Jerusalem said, “Isn’t this he whom they seek to kill?”
One of the biggest travesties that I see today is the application of laws to people who are not doing the evil that the law was intended to stop. In many of these instances, a law is used out of context in order to attack a personal or ideological enemy. This is exactly what those who came against Jesus did. A righteous judge must determine if the accused actually did what the law was attempting to disallow at the time of its creation.
One such concept is “The separation of church and state.” This concept, when it was inferred in the United States Bill of Rights was intended to keep the state from ruling people through the Christian Church like England or Italy. In other words, they were not to support or form a state sanctioned Christian denomination. This did not mean to support the idea that we were not a Christian nation. It certainly said nothing about equality between religions. It definitely did not disallow the use of the name of God, Jesus, or the Ten Commandments in government buildings! How in the world did they get etched into the stone of our government buildings if they were not intended by our laws?
This is a similar problem with healing on the Sabbath. It was well known that the work of traveling to the temple and having your son circumcised on the Sabbath was not only not a violation of the Sabbath, but a requirement of the law. Jesus exposes to them that if this work to purify a child was permitted that certainly the making of a man clean from a disease is permitted!
As sinful, foolish people, we are so inconsistent in our judgments. We can only judge righteously when we allow God to rule in our lives. Look at what these crowds were saying. First they accused Jesus of demon possession when He accused them of wanting kill Him, then, moments later it is revealed that they were surprised that no one took Him away since they wanted to kill Him. This is an absolute inconsistency. How is it that we find this so easy to do? The people were clearly mad because Jesus accused them of not following the law of Moses. We, as humans, are self-righteous and don’t want to be accused of anything even if it is true. We are so self-righteous in this way that we allow justice to be perverted in order to maintain our pride, even if it means death to the innocent. How is this not like the creation of legalized abortion in a country where “all are created equal?”