In Luke 13:10-17 Jesus is in the synagogue teaching about who God is from scriptures and there is a woman there who Luke 13:11 says, “had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all.” 

But “when Jesus saw her he called her forward and said to her, “woman you are set free from your infirmity,” then he put his hands on her and immediately she straightened up and praised God (Luke 13:11-13).” 

Jesus was exemplifying that God is a God who sees our situations. God is a living God and this God who sees has the ability to speak into a situation and change it. 

Luke 13:11 says that Jesus saw her and then spoke freedom from the spirit that had bound her. Through his word he made contact with the situation and Luke 13:13 says that she was healed immediately by his word. 

Jesus gave a tangible expression of the new covenant that God established through his word through Jesus. That Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s word to reconcile and heal all types of conditions that keep people from knowing God and having access to forgiveness and righteousness (blamelessness) before God.  

Jesus was showing that he had come with the authority given from God to fulfill the law that had been given to Moses. The law that was given showed people how to know and please God and the law of Moses said that it was against the law to do work on the Sabbath and therefore against God and made the offender punishable before God. 

When the synagogue leaders saw Jesus speak, touch and heal they were not able to see who Jesus was. That he was the fulfillment of God to do what the law could not do. That Jesus’ word removes guilt and reconnects back to God everyone who believes in Jesus. They could not see that Jesus was the new covenant that God had chosen to bring forgiveness, righteousness and healing to all.

Because the synagogue leaders were not able to see who Jesus was, they spoke from what they knew that the law required. Luke 13:14 says the synagogue leaders said to everyone, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

They were saying what was written in the law and what the law required, they could not understand what Jesus was saying or doing and were blind to the new covenant he was offering. Jesus was offering the grace of God. Jesus was offering healing that the law could not offer. Even the synagogue leaders confessed that those who had come to the temple for healing could not be healed because of what the law required. 

Jesus was teaching, through his example, that he represented a higher authority and said that whoever comes to me I will do work, through the new covenant God has established through me, that the temple and the law cannot do. 

Jesus rebuked the synagogue leaders and exposed their hypocrisy. Jesus said to them “Each of you, on the Sabbath unties your ox or donkey from the stall and leads it out to give it water (Luke 13:15). “Shouldn’t this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years be set free on the Sabbath (that is the day of rest) from what bound her (Luke 13:16)”? 

Jesus was saying, even you do work for those under your care on a day that the law says you cannot. None of you is so cruel to leave the helpless under your care without mercy. If this is how you treat your animals how much more should the God of mercy and grace offer grace, on the Sabbath. 

Jesus was teaching that God is a God of mercy, and it is in his character to give rest and freedom from what binds people on any day especially on his day of rest. He was not only teaching about Sabbath law but about the day and new covenant law that God was establishing through him, a day of reconciliation that had come through Jesus. 

In Hosea 2:1 God prophesied through Hosea that the day of reconciliation would come and on that day God would call people who had not been called his, “my people” and who the law said were not under God’s grace, “my loved one” (Hosea 2:1) and that law that God had promised would bring mercy, forgiveness and grace through Jesus to everyone who believes. Jesus was teaching that that day, full of authority, had come.  

Romans 13:4 teaches that “the one in authority is God’s servant for your good.”

“Which of you will listen to this or pay close attention in time to come?” (Isaiah 42:23)