Jesus is reported in the Gospels as violating the commandment of keeping the sabbath holy and to be careless of the cleanliness codes. With respect to each of these legal rubrics, Jesus pointed to what he took to be a more fundamental reality about the purity of one's heart.
Jesus recognized that a rote obedience to particular legal formalities could betray not an exemplary righteousness, but a prideful desire toward self-righteousness that isolated one from dependence on God. Not only might such an attitude divert one's attention from God as one's savior, but has the danger of leading one into a community-destroying judgmentalism or the arrogance of a competition to be the "most holy."
Jesus said of the cleanliness codes that what makes a difference is what is inside one, not what goes into someone from the outside. He said of the sabbath laws that it was more important to do good and heal on the sabbath than to restrict oneself arbitrarily from activities that would help one's neighbor. Jesus points beyond the laws and codes mark the boundaries of community life by regulating behavior to the point of having rules at all. That is, Jesus wants his followers to understand that rules are to help us live well together, not to be instruments of competition, judgment, or arbitrary restriction.
The rules are not sacred in and of themselves, they are means to a community of witnesses to God's enduring and gracious love. When Jesus claims that the sabbath was created for the good of persons, not persons for the good of the sabbath, he was making just this point.
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