"Is it permitted to do a good deed on the Sabbath - or an evil one? To preserve life — or to destroy it?” Jesus' question may astonish us a little — surely it is never permitted to do an evil deed? To understand Jesus' challenge to the Pharisees and so to derive some spiritual profit from it for our own lives of faith, we must try to understand a little of Hebrew thought patterns. In a world which was much more simple than ours, deliberately to refuse to do a good deed which one was quite capable of doing was the equivalent of doing the opposite evil deed. The Pharisees believed that Jesus could, and so probably would work a miracle and heal the man’s arm — a very good deed. But to do so, in the mind of the Pharisees, was to violate the Sabbath and so do something evil.

Jesus’ stance was the opposite: not to heal the man on the Sabbath was not simply omitting to do something good; it was actually to do something evil. Hence he was accusing the Pharisees of expecting him to do something evil on the Sabbath. At the Last Judgement, Jesus condemns those who deliberately refuse to help others or care for them.