This past Wednesday night in the YouthRoom was awesome! We continued along in Mark’s gospel to chapter 2. We looked at the first 12 verses where Jesus heals a paralytic.
What an incredible passage!
As Jesus’ fame grew and grew, the people searched for him continually. They found him at home and came to his house. The house was so crowded that when 4 men came carrying a paralytic they could not get him to Jesus. They didn’t give up though. They decided to let him down through the roof to get him to Jesus.
Picture this…Jesus is at home. So many people come that the entire place is crowded. The door is overflowing and you cannot even get through it or even to it. The Bible says Jesus was preaching the word to them. While Jesus is preaching to this huge crowd of people, the roof busts open and down comes a paralytic being carried by four men who are believers in Jesus. Obviously, this going to be a huge interruption or distraction to Jesus’s preaching. You can picture all the people being astonished, shocked and staring.
Then Jesus says to the paralytic “Son, your sins are forgiven.” This is amazing!
The scribes in all their pride and sin, question in their hearts, and say that Jesus is blaspheming. Only God can forgive sins.
Jesus knew that they were questioning him. So he asks them a question…”which is easier…to say to the paralytic ‘your sins are forgiven’ or ‘rise, take up your bed, and walk.'” You see, it is a much easier thing to heal someone physically and temporarily rather than eternally. For Jesus, it is easier to make a man walk than it is to save him from sin, death, and hell.
Then Christ proves himself even more and says…”But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins”…and then he tells the paralytic to rise, take his bed, and go home.
ok, picture this again, the helpless man who cannot walk lies there on the ground while Jesus’ preaching is interrupted, hundreds of people stand there watching, and the scribes and Jesus have a little debate. After this small debate, Jesus shows his authority, and the paralytic gets up glorifying God. The scribes are absolutely humiliated, the people rejoice, stand amazed, and glorify God, and the paralytic walks off so humbled.
Everyone’s response…”we never saw anything like this!”
Here’s what got me. In verse 5, the Bible says “When Jesus saw their faith” he told the paralytic, “your sins are forgiven.”
By no means does this passage teach us that someone can be saved apart from their own faith. The whole Bible teaches us that. But it does remind us and teach us that God so uses people as the means to leading other people to Christ.
To which we asked the question “whose sins are forgiven because of your faith?”
Who sees your faith and says “we never saw anything like this?”