Jesus taught theology, not religion. A Christian university renamed its theology department to "religion" to seem more academic. When Jesus called himself Lord of the Sabbath, he was rejecting the Pharisees' legalistic rules, which enraged them enough to plot his death.
Chapters
Jesus clearly puts Sabbath in the religion department, not in the theology department. What I mean by that is, uh, it's tied up in a story by R.C. Sproul, um, Sproul, who he tells the story of once when he went to a Christian university. And as he was being given a tour, he'd been asked to come and talk about what is a Christian university, and because they were looking at getting a new president. And so as he was walking the halls of this place, he saw the theology department, but it said religion department. Above it. And he stopped and he asked the guy there, "Religion department? I thought this said theology." "Oh yeah, yeah, we changed that a couple years ago." And he said, "Why?" He got up to speak to all of the people in the university. He asked them, "Why? Why was it changed?" And one guy said, "I guess just so that we fit in." R.C. Sproul's answer was that we're not supposed to be teaching religion if we're teaching about Jesus, because Jesus didn't come to teach religion. Jesus came to show us God. Jesus came to teach theology. And Christianity is meant to be a study of God, not a study of a religion, of how to— how we live our lives within a particular frame or reference of worship. In this passage, Jesus clearly shows that Sabbath is a Son of Man topic. It's religion. How you keep the Sabbath defines you, not God. God does what God does, Sabbath or not. What you do on Sabbath is between you and God. This answer got Jesus killed. Jesus' interpretation and illustration of what he meant by "the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath" made the Pharisees so angry that they began plotting to kill Jesus. When you tell legalists your religion is bad theology, they don't like it, and they may try to kill you, starting with your reputation.
