Luke 6
Two Sabbath controversies open the chapter — the grainfield plucking and the withered-hand healing — culminating in Jesus' most sweeping authority claim: the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. The overnight prayer before the appointment of the twelve apostles communicates the weight of the decision and the Spirit-dependence that characterizes all of Jesus' major actions in Luke. The Sermon on the Plain, delivered from a level place to a crowd from Galilee to Tyre and Sidon, opens with Luke's version of the Beatitudes — addressed in the second person directly to the disciples — and the unique Woes, which mirror the Beatitudes' reversals. The sermon's ethical core is the radical love of enemies: do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, lend without expecting repayment, because your Father is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. The credit questions expose the inadequacy of reciprocal love. The sermon's final sequence — judge-not, plank-and-speck, tree-and-fruit, Lord-Lord, two builders — establishes the hearing-and-doing criterion that will become the chapter's lasting contribution to Christian ethics: the house on rock is the person who not only hears but does.
Luke 6:1
One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands and eating the kernels — the grainfield Sabbath controversy opens chapter 6's sequence of controversies and teachings. Rubbing the heads of grain in their hands is Luke's detail: the rubbing separates the grain from the husk — the action that could be categorized as threshing, one of the Sabbath's prohibited labors.
Luke 6:2
Some of the Pharisees asked, why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? — the question is directed to Jesus rather than the disciples, holding him responsible for his followers' Sabbath behavior. Unlawful (ouk exestin, not permitted) refers to the scribal interpretation that categorizes the disciples' action as prohibited Sabbath labor.
Luke 6:3
Jesus answered them, have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? — the appeal to the David precedent is the response to the Sabbath challenge. Have you never read positions the questioners as failing to understand their own Scripture. The David story (1 Samuel 21:1–6) is the precedent for necessity overriding ritual restriction.
Luke 6:4
He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions — the specific precedent: David ate the bread of the Presence, which was restricted to priests, when he was in genuine need. The precedent establishes that necessity can override ritual restriction — the law is not abolished but its purpose (human flourishing) determines its application.
Luke 6:5
Then Jesus said to them, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath — the authority claim is the chapter's most sweeping: the Son of Man is Lord (kyrios) of the Sabbath. Not merely a teacher who interprets the Sabbath but the Lord who gave it — the one who made the Sabbath for humanity has the authority to determine its application. The claim is simultaneously humanizing (the Sabbath exists for human flourishing) and divine (the Son of Man rules what God created).