"The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath: so that the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."—Mark 2:27, 28, R. V.
There was nothing for which the religious leaders of Christ's day, the Pharisees, were such sticklers as the Sabbath.
Everything must give way to the demands of the Sabbath law and their interpretation of it. Sabbath keeping was more important to their minds than love or mercy or the needs of man. (Matt. 12:7,8.) Whatever a man might be or do that was good, if he did not keep the Sabbath according to their idea of it, he deserved to die and be damned. Sabbath keeping was the sum of all righteousness and Sabbath breaking was the sum of all wickedness. They pronounced Jesus Christ, the Son of God Himself, to be worthy of death because He did not keep the Sabbath in their way. (John 5:18.)
The most constant conflict that Jesus had with the Jews was on the subject of Sabbath keeping. In bringing one of these conflicts to a close, He uttered the words of our text and declared the great underlying principles of the question.