Matthew 12:12

How much then is. man better than. sheep?

If. sheep can be lifted out of its suffering on the Sabbath, why not much more. man?

Wherefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath day.

If the Sabbath day would preclude one from doing good, then it would be an evil. Christ assumes that if. man does not do good when he can, he does evil. To refuse to do good is to choose to do evil. There is doing in both cases. There is the outgoing of energy in volition; and thus, radically it is. question of doing right or wrong, and not merely of doing or not doing. There was the Sabbath law and the law of mercy, of which the latter was the higher, and they were not in conflict, for it was understood that the letter of the Sabbath law was to yield to the call of mercy.