Mark 2:1-12 -- The Healing Power of Forgiveness
Friend help friends live well. Real friends will do all they can to help.
We have had some wonderful friends who are helping Sarah our daughter establish her life where she has moved to. They have been taking her out driving to help her get experience. They are helping her move into her new home, helping her get a vehicle. Without our friends we would have no way to help Sarah do what she wants to do with the next step in her life. Friends help friends live well.
We help our friends move, find jobs. But other times we see our friend hurting and we want to help.
We see our friend in great need and our hearts, and schedules, and pockets are moved to help.
Here we have a man who was paralyzed and he had four friends who cared deeply about him. They know their friend is paralyzed – unable to move. They hear about this new teacher, prophet, healer in town. They want to help their friend so they do all they know to do, they pick him up and take him to where Jesus is. Only, once they get there the place is packed, no way to get in.
Now they must have really loved their friend, perhaps something had happened to him to make him paralyzed, they knew him before the accident, when he was a different person, but they have seen the bitterness well up in him over the time since he was unable to move freely.
I have a friend who was paralyzed from an accident, though he doesn’t say it, and might actually deny it, you can see the anger in his heart because of what has happened to him.
Sometimes things happen in a persons life and they paralyze you. A physical action or a word, a lot of things can paralyze a person and keep them from living free.
Sometimes what you and I mostly see are the physical things that paralyze a person, a physical thing in their body, or a relational problem that paralyzes a person, or financial issue, or even emotional issue that seems to be a huge barrier to helping the person move forward in their life and to live freely.
Back to our passage – here we have four guys who in their refusing to give up hope for their friend, begin to think creatively, if we could just get him infront of Jesus I just know he could heal my friend. And so they cut a new door into the room from the roof. I just love creative people who think outside the box. The combination of love for their friend, a deep desire to help him and faith that Jesus could actually help him caused them to be a kind of living sermon of the text of
James 2:26
26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
When Jesus looked at a person – he saw their soul first and understood their deepest need
We see people’s physical problems, financial problems, relational problems,
but Jesus seemed to have a kind of ‘x-ray’ vision that looked beyond the obvious and honed in on the root of the mans problem, what was truly keeping him from responding to God.
1 Sam 16:7
The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."
Jesus regarded spiritual blessings far more significant than material blessings; and claimed to posess “authority” – the right and power – to not only heal the body but heal the soul as well.
Jesus knew that what truly paralyzed this man was not the damage to his legs but the damage to his soul. He also knew that the only thing that would truly bring healing was forgiveness. Now we do not know what the man needed to be forgiven of, we do not know what sin he had committed, and the fact that scripture doesn’t reveal that to us is a blessing, because ALL sin brings death, not physical death but the paralyzing sting of ongoing death. The guilt of sin that limits life and keeps you and I from truly living, and living eternally
The World is looking for the antidote to guilt
ER Video
A Dutch poet has called man’s guilt “the root of all human problems”
A British psychologist has called mans sense of having been forgiven “the most healing force in the world”
How often have specialists informed us that many patients could be dismissed from mental institutions if the were only able to convince themselves that their guilt had been truly blotted out..
Jesus never took sin lightly – he never told people “do you have a sense of guilt? Forget about it, move on...”
Instead Jesus saw sin for what it is – an inexcusable departure from God’s holy law (Mk 12:29-30)
29 "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.e 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'f
Sin has a ‘soul-choking’ effect (mk 4:19)
Mark 4:19-20
19 but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. 2
He knew that getting rid of guilty feelings by allowing a little cruelty, promiscuity, infidelity and saying that “a little is not so bad” ultimately creates more problems than it solves.
He also knew that it was entirely impossible for a person to rid his soul from a sense of guilt by offsetting his sins by good deeds, that philosophy only leads to tragic failure and despair
Instead Jesus knew that the only solution to healing the soul, absolving a person’s guilt – which he proclaimed and provided – was FORGIVENESS – and this on the basis of his own atonement (10:45,
Mark 10:45
45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
14:22-23) so he says to the paralyetic “forgiven are you sins.”
The forgiveness Jesus offers does not stand alone – it is “pardon plus” In Christ, God dispels the invalids gloom and guilt and embraces him the arms of his protection and adopting love - “My son, your sins are forgiven” (Rom 5:1)
Now there were some scribes / teachers of the law who accused him of blasphemy
V7 “who can forgive sins but God alone?” a good question – and they are right. No one can forgive sin but God alone.
And even more – how do you know that the sin has been forgiven? How do you know the holy and divine God has been sufficiently appeased?
There are no outward sign of an inward reality of the forgiveness of sin that can be tested and verified – or is there?
9 Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat and walk'?
You can see when someone has been physically healed = they are better
What is the sign that a person has been forgiven – how do you know
How do you know when you have been forgiven?
So often, Jesus took his enemies on their own terms and refuted their acquations and in v8 He acted in full knowledge of their thought process = he knew what was going on inside of them.
It was – in fact – a much easier thing to heal the body than to restore a soul. For even a prophet might heal – but no prophet could ever forgive sins. But Jesus did both before their very eyes, leaving them speechless.
10 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins . . . ."
There are 2 ways to understand this verse – both of which are good and
A paraphrase “you say that only God can forgive sin, but i will show you that here is a human who has the same power” – that the “Son of Man” has authority =
Emphasising a human Jesus ‘Son of Man’ extraordinarily relating to the divine God
Understand ‘Son of Man’ as Jesus own self-chosen title for himself and would then paraphrase as ‘to show you that I – in person – have the power to forgive sin’.
Either way, the miracle becomes evidence to prove the divine authority of Jesus who able to forgive sin and free this man from every bondage.
Once again, the word of Jesus proves to be effectual, a word of power and authority. As in Genesis, God created from nothing by a word
Heb 11:3
3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
So at a word, Jesus, God’s Son brings strength out of weakness, freedom from the bondage of paralysis, forgivenss from the bondage of sin.
Something that was impossible by nature became possible and a paralyzed man walks home with his mat under his arm.
The natural reaction of the crowd was to praise God. All that they saw with their physical eyes was a paralyzed man get up and walk and Jesus, the newest – and most entertaining prophet just stood up to the scribes who were constantly heaping guilt on them through their teachings. The crowd was mesmerized and amazed, but the man who walked home walked away in the freedom of his soul.
A feature of this passage is the faith that the paralyzed man had to exercise to live in the reality of his new gained freedom. It is one thing to be forgiven, another to stand up and walk out by faith – is what we might say because we look at everything backwards. And Jesus know that about us. – but from his point of view – it is one thing to heal a persons body, but another thing entirely to provide their forgivenss – he knows it is ultimately taking him to the cross to provide that forgiveness. We are often too satisfied to mearly be healed physically.
And so he says to the man
He said to the paralytic, 11 "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." 12 He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!"
Today, I often hear “I know Jesus has forgiven me, I just can’t forgive myself” and so the person continues to live in bondage to the sin that Jesus has provided the forgiveness for.
For some reason we still feel we must forgive ourselves, that we have some power or ability to forgive ourselves. And so, many of us stay paralyzed.
That is like a doctor giving you a prescription for an illness - and you deciding once you get home with the medication that you wont take it until you are able to reproduce the drug with what you have in your kitchen = and the truth is you cant make penicillin at home – even if it is made from bread mold.
You cant provide forgiveness on your own.
Also when we say “I just cant forgive myself” really says that you owe yourself a debt, that your sin was a sin against your own holiness – and that is a lie that we buy in to. In saying that, we have replaced the holy God with ourselves, that we are not ultimately accountable to him, but to ourselves and that is really matters.
It would be like that paralyzed man saying “as soon as I get over my paralysis in my own mind then i will get up and go to work” He could no more do that than you or i forgive our own sin.
The truth is – Jesus alone forgives sin, and we receive that forgiveness by faith. We believe the reality that he sets us free and we get our souls up off the mat and live free. We apply the prescription of His grace to our souls – and it is his grace that softens our hearts so they can beat again.
More than that, we apply his grace liberally and regularly to counteract the deadening strength of sin
As soon as we begin to think we don’t need it, we have come up with our own homecooked concoction of forgiveness and grace, we begin to move back onto the mat and become paralyzed again.
Then our friends, who care about us, are going to see that things are not right in our lives again, the paralysis is coming back,
Why? What are we going to do? Friends want to help friends live well,
They are going to look for the next solution – “I guess Jesus really wasn’t able to help our friend” when that is not true at all = we just replaced his forgivenss and his grace with our own, we stopped living free by faith.
Jesus offers you freedom – the ability to walk out of here free – truly free
You must receive it by faith – the only thing you do is get up and walk
Maybe you have been living paralized for a long time, something has held you down, You know the bitterness of guilt and you cant seem to get away from it. You can today, you can trust Jesus - that his death on a cross was sufficient to forgive you all your sins.
Maybe you have moved back on the mat and paralysis has crept back over your life. Jesus set you free and you tasted what it was to live free, but when that guilt comes back you try to tackle it yourself instead of saying “no” to that sin and “yes” to the forgiveness of Jesus. STOP trying to come up with your own homecooked concoction of forgiveness and begin to apply the grace of Jesus to your life again, receive his forgivenss again.
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