At first blush, with such a title, perhaps you’re speculating that what’s to follow is some mechanistic, insipid claims that the paralytic was paralyzed due to sin. Cause and effect. Said person did said sin, therefore said person was paralyzed. Nope! God is not some mechanistic puppet that we can somehow reverse engineer to understand why suffering enters our world, our story, our life. God’s ways are higher than our ways; no plan of God’s can be thwarted.
Rather, what follows is an excursus into the story of Jesus healing the paralytic and the exchange Jesus has with this broken man. All the synoptic Gospels record the story of the man paralyzed, brought to Jesus by his friends. The Gospel of Mark records that four men carry this man and due to the suffocating crowd, they choose to lower him through the roof of the house to Jesus.
Jesus sees their faith. Who’s faith does Jesus see? The four men? The four men and the paralytic? I don’t know. But speculate with me for a moment. What if the men who had faith were simply the four friends? No doubt they had heard that Jesus was working miracles and healing people.
And yet the prolific and pressing crowds prevented. Any good but reasonable friend could have taken a pass and said, “We’ll try again another time,” or “I guess it wasn’t meant to be.” But these friends are tenacious, persistent, obnoxious. They are willing to rip apart someone’s home to get their friend to Jesus. Clearly there was no accessibility to Jesus. But they found a way, made a way because of two burning convictions deep in their chests. First, Jesus has the power to heal; perhaps he is the Messiah we’ve longed for. And second, we love our friend so much we’re willing to be labeled fools and ridiculed as excessive and belligerent in order to bring our friend to Jesus.
Their faith is convicting and their love is compelling. May God so inspire us to be more reckless and zealous for the sake of our friends encountering Jesus the Messiah.
Yet what I’d like to land on in this brief reflection is Jesus’ statement after seeing the faith of these men. Jesus responds by saying to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven.” Perhaps we don’t recognize how shocking that is because we’ve grown up hearing the story and its old hat, so what’s the big deal? But again, the pharisees see the radical nature of this comment, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Jesus is clearly claiming to be divine.
But why is the first thing he says to the man, ‘Your sins are forgiven’? In Matthew’s account, Jesus says to the man, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” If Jesus encourages this paralytic to take heart and calls him son, then clearly the man was being tempted towards discouragement and despair. What if this man had grown cynical and bitter towards God. We don’t know how long he was a paralytic. But like Jesus’ disciples in John 9 when they see the man born blind and ask God who sinned that he was born this way, perhaps this man had asked the same question, or heard the accusations from those around him. “What did you do that you’re paralyzed?” That nagging siren had worn him out and he was beat up.
If we don’t answer that question with a humble surrender to the goodness of God in the midst of a broken world, and rather try to make God into some proverbial piñata, “If I do this, God will do this”, then when God doesn’t fulfill what we’ve deemed his end of the bargain, we’ll easily grow jaded, cynical, bitter, resentful.
What if this paralytic man had come to the end of his rope? What if that very day perhaps he had cursed God, like Job’s wife declared after unending tragedy, “Curse God and Die.” Perhaps the patience of this paralytic had run out and he cried out to God and as his hope deferred, his heart became sick. And yet, despite cursing God, and becoming bitter, sputtering dormant within, glows a faint flicker of hope, “Maybe God has heard my cries. But He’s also now heard my curses. Is there any hope now for me?”
Well he may not have faith, but his friends have faith and they love their friend enough to find a way to bring him to Jesus. They exhaust themselves for the sake of their friend, lower him into the presence of pure love and light. Jesus witnesses this dramatic demonstration of faith and care, and sees the man paralyzed. Jesus sees beyond his broken body and sees a wearied, worried, wrecked soul.
“Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” What a Balm of Gilead this must have been for a heartsick man.
My sins are forgiven?
My sins are forgiven.
My sins are forgiven!
The sinful paralytic is forgiven. His sin is no longer held to his account. The debt is paid; all is forgiven. His heart is restored, his burden is lifted.
MY SINS ARE FORGIVEN!
You know the rest of the story. To prove that Jesus is God and has authority to heal, he powerfully heals the man by speaking a word, ‘Rise, pick up your bed and go home.” This forgiven man obeys His savior. He believes and trusts His savior. He’s experienced the work of grace deep within. He’s felt the Physician’s healing touch bring new life within.
“Rise up and walk.”
“Yes sir!”
And the man trusts and obeys and he is healed, and a once sinful paralytic walks away a forgiven man.
All Glory Be to Christ!
The Rugged Beloved 