Jesus the Paralytic
This is a very familiar passage for many of us - Luke 5:17-26 & parallels - but I wanted to share fresh insights I have received this week. Perhaps it might help others to preach the cross from this passage.
What does it meant that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins?
We typically think like this: that Jesus is God, so he can forgive sins. And we don’t go much further than that.
But, we must ponder this more carefully: actually, not even God the Father has authority to forgive sins, if by that cancelling of debts he is acting unjustly. Remember “righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne” (Ps 89 & 97). He cannot sweep sin under the carpet.
“The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). If Jesus had come to earth and said ‘I wipe away sins’ - without paying the price for sin - he would have been rebelling against his Father’s just government of the universe.
So, he came to die, to pay the full penalty for the world’s sin. And by means of the cross he gained the right to cancel sins, and to remove the consequences of sin in our lives. It actually would have been unjust for Jesus to cure the man’s paralysis, because all of us deserve death and sickness.
Think of it this way: Jesus gained the authority to heal and to forgive sins the man who was stuck on that stretcher by being himself stretched out in a kind of paralysis. Not carried on wooden poles with a cloth between to lie on in some sort of comfort but nailed to two Roman poles and lifted up to die in excruciating pain.
And...one of the criminals next to him said effectively ‘go on, get up and walk’. Free yourself of this paralysis you’re stuck in! (Luke 23:39). And he could have called on twelve legions of angels to save him. But he refused to ‘get up and walk’. He endured the cross, scorning its shame. He drained the cup of God’s wrath to the end, crying “It is finished!”
