Mark 2:3-5 (NIV): Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
“When Jesus saw their faith…” Some have read those words and determined that it was the faith of the friends that compelled Jesus to pronounce forgiveness to this man. But the man lying on the mat before Jesus had faith in Him as well. He was not a bystander in this situation. He was a paralytic, but that only meant that his body didn’t work well. He wasn’t unconscious or unaware. He himself had faith that Jesus could heal him.
When those people, that man and his family members and friends, heard about the miracles that Jesus was doing during His earlier stay in Capernaum, their hearts leaped up. Maybe Jesus could heal what no doctor had been able to fix. But then Jesus had left, and their hearts sank. They had missed their chance! But a few days later they heard that He was back in town, and they determined that they weren’t going to miss their chance this time.
They carried him through the narrow streets. They could tell when they were getting close to the house where Jesus was teaching and healing because of the masses of people crowding around the place. They pushed and shoved their way closer, but it quickly became clear that there was no way that they were going to get him inside the house. That’s when one of them, out of sheer desperation, came up with the idea of letting him down through the roof. They dug through and lowered him down. When the people inside saw what was happening (after the laughter died down), they reached up and helped lower his mat down to the ground. Jesus looked up into the expectant faces of those family members and friends, and heard their pleas: “Jesus, we know that you can heal him!” Then he looked down into the expectant and hopeful eyes of the man lying on the floor in front of him in the middle of that crowd. But in that man’s eyes he also saw something else: a sense of guilt and shame that frequently arose in people who sensed Jesus’ own holiness.
As Jesus just kept looking at the paralyzed man, not saying a word as He evaluated where this man’s heart was, the room grew silent. So nobody missed His words when He spoke: “Son, your sins are forgiven.” The room broke out in gasps as people realized the full impact of what Jesus had just said. But Jesus’ eyes never left the man lying on the mat. The bodily healing would come – both the man and those who had gone to such great lengths to get him to Jesus had a faith that would not be denied. But He had come to do much more than just restore broken bodies. He had come to heal the relationship between sinners and a holy God through the forgiveness of sin. And that forgiveness, given right where it was needed most, opened the door to every other blessing that He had come to give.
Father, it is easy to see that a healed body containing a sin-broken soul will result in WAY less than the complete restoration that Jesus came to make possible. But when our hearts are brought to wholeness through Your forgiveness, everything else becomes possible. Thank You for Your forgiveness in my own life that changed everything. Amen.