Daily Bible Reading 31st May 2026 // Luke 6:6-11
6 On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. 7 And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. 8 But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And he rose and stood there. 9 And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” 10 And after looking around at them all he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored. 11 But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.
As to the miracle itself, we may see in it, not only an evidence of Christ's Lordship over sickness and disease, authenticating His claim to Messiahship, but also a parable of grace, illustrating the operation of the power and mercy of God on the soul. When we lay this passage alongside Paul's words in Ephesians 2:1ff, with their graphic description of man dead in trespasses and sins being brought to newness of life by God's word of power in the gospel, we see the force of the comparison very clearly. To be a sinner means to be unable to help oneself, just as the man with the withered hand was unable to help himself; it means to be 'without strength' (Romans 5:6). It is this that is represented to us in the man's withered hand: it was paralysed, and no willpower of his could coerce it into movement. There was no life in it, and 'stretching forth his hand' was the one thing he could not do. Christ's command to him to do so is therefore a superb illustration of the sovereign grace of God in regeneration, in the giving of life. For when He spoke, the creative Word went forth. Christ's command was His enabling, and virtue, life-giving and prevailing, went forth with the word from His lips, and communicated itself to the man. The healing was in the word of the Lord, and in the spiritual miracle of regeneration the same thing happens:
He speaks, and, listening to His voice,
New life the dead receive.
Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. This is the word of power that meets men in the preaching of the gospel.