Wherever a principle exists, you will find situations where keeping the principle requires breaking the rules. Rules are generated from principles, but they can never adequately replace the principles they were emitted from. Where contradictions between rules and principles exist, the spirit of the law requires you to violate the letter of the law.
Knowing when a rule violates a principle requires you to understand the principles a rule comes from. Never break a rule whose purpose you do not confidently understand. Your lack of understanding for why a rule exists is not the same as or an adequate substitution for understanding the principle it is based on! Until you understand a rule well enough that you would gladly bear the consequences of breaking it, you shouldn’t do so.
Keeping principles is always more important than keeping rules.1 On several occasions, Jesus broke rules from the law of Moses in order to keep the principles of the law of Moses. For example, the Lord taught that the purpose of the Sabbath was more important than the rules given to govern it. When confronted by the Jews because his disciples had broken the law of Moses by harvesting and eating grain from the field they walked through while preaching, he replied: “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.” (Mark 2:27-28) The principle of the sabbath wasn’t that man should not work that day, but that on it he should exclusively pursue God’s work. The eating of the grain furthered God‘s work as it allowed the Lord and his disciples to continue their preaching and walking.
How could Jesus break God’s rules and still not sin?2 To be “perfect” isn’t to live all of the rules all of the time, but to always live the intent for which they are given. Jesus only ever broke the rules in the law of Moses when it was required to keep the principles in the law of Moses.3 Whenever there was a conflict, Jesus lived the higher law—the law that more accurately described how the Father would live in his place.
Sin consists of doing less than the best you know.1118 It is a sin to live a lower commandment when you know of a higher one, as higher commandments will always bring greater good. No commandment can excuse you for doing less than the greatest good that you know of. This is why Jesus spoke against the priest who refused to help the beaten man left for dead in order to preserve his ceremonial worthiness in the parable of the Good Samaritan (see Luke 10). The Lord used the commandments to help identify the best course of action, but never used them to excuse himself for doing less than what was best.
Footnotes
- 1. All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. (1 Corinthians 6:12) All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. (1 Corinthians 10:23) ...Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind....I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean. (Romans 14:5, 14) ↩
- 2. A much clearer way of stating this is that Jesus always did what was best for the world according to his understanding of the options available and the cost and benefit of each. He always acted out of a pure motive of love for all, even as his understanding of what was best grew. ↩
- 3. For example, when he refused to stone the woman taken in adultery, as required by the law. ↩