Mark 2:1-12
It is tempting to play up the paralytic’s apparent immediate need and to become uneasy at Jesus’ first response to him. Here friends or family of the paralyzed man (at least two men according to the text) had gone to the trouble to carry and lower him through a roof in order have Jesus heal him. After all that trouble and anticipation, Jesus receives the man and tells him that his sins are forgiven.
As theologically remarkable as that statement was to the first-century Jew, it had to be disappointing for the paralyzed man. Why didn’t Jesus just reach out and heal him? This man is completely helpless, why not heal him first then worry about his sins? Why did Jesus need to use his condition as a way to humiliate his enemies?
But Jesus did address the paralyzed man’s most immediate need. In forgiving his sins, the man was released from the eternal paralysis to come. He was freed from a burden which far overshadows any earthly suffering.
In his compassion, Jesus didn’t rest with the spiritual. He asked the monumentally profound question: “Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’?” Both are equally impossible for us, but not for God – who holds the power to forgive sins as well as mend bodies. The teachers of the law were right with their mouths, even if their hearts weren’t: No one can forgive sins except God alone. So Jesus physically healing the crippled man with a mere command was a sure sign to the religious professionals that he had authority over both heaven and earth – that the Son of God holds the power over the eternal consequences of sin and the unquenchable appetite of the grave.
Here Jesus set a helpless man free from his physical suffering, but he’s set many more free from a deeper helplessness though they have two perfectly good legs.
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