ONLY GOD CAN FORGIVE SINS—Mark 1:1-12
***It was a Sunday morning, and light was just beginning to dawn. I got up and went to the bathroom, and promptly fainted. When I came around, I panicked, because I felt a tingling in my arm, a marker for a stroke. My wife called 911, and after a couple of hours in the emergency room, the doctor decided it was just a case of the flu. My wife drove me home, and in the middle of the morning I walked up the steps of our apartment building, suddenly realizing that I was in my pajamas! I felt like everyone in the building was staring at me.**
Maybe the paralyzed man was used to being stared at. But when he was lowered into the middle of the crowded room, with everyone staring, he must have felt almost naked. (Some people feel like everyone is staring at them when they enter a church for the first time.)
In this house, everyone WAS staring.
Imagine the scene. The house is packed, because Jesus has returned to Capernaum, where a few days earlier, at Peter’s house, he healed a whole bunch of people. Some of those lucky enough to be inside are the owner’s friends and neighbors, but Mark (reflecting his source, Peter) notes that “some teachers of the law were sitting there,” probably claiming the best seats.
There is a loud pounding on the roof, and the sound of the sticks and straw and sand and tar being torn off. Then a shower of fragments, and finally a cloud of dust and a burst of daylight. The people are scrambling, falling on top of each other to make a landing spot for a man being lowered into the room.
Everyone stares at the man! Some recognize him, and others immediately see that his body is limp—paralyzed. Their stares alternate now between the paralyzed man and Jesus: What will Jesus say and do?
Day after day, this man lay on his bed or mat, pulling himself around with his arms. The world went off to work, but he stayed home, or relied on the kindness of friends or strangers to get him out of the house.
Four of his friends or relatives love him enough to literally tear the roof off the house to get him to Jesus. They have risked the anger of the owner and the expense of repairing the roof because they believe Jesus can heal their friend.
Now the man is lying helplessly before Jesus. What will Jesus say and do?
Jesus looks at him, then at the four men on the roof, and then at the people crowding around him. Then he looks back at the paralyzed man, and he says to him, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
It is like the oxygen has been sucked out of the room.
The man looks puzzled, perhaps disappointed. The men on the roof are stunned; this is not what they hoped for. The people in the room are perplexed, and some begin to whisper among themselves. The teachers of the law are stone-faced, seething with anger.
And us? We are confused.
IS FORGIVENESS THE GREATEST NEED OF THIS PARALYZED MAN?
Some people speculate that the man had committed a horrible sin, and his paralysis was a reaction to his guilt. That is medically unlikely. Others speculate that his paralysis was caused by risky and irresponsible behavior—drunk driving, or a robbery gone bad.
I don’t think this man was a worse sinner than most people. He kept company with four good friends or relatives, whose faith impressed Jesus. He had enough faith to allow them to drop him into a crowd, where everyone would stare at him, in the hope that Jesus would heal him. I think he was a pretty good man.
I also think this man understood, better than most of us, that he needed forgiveness. When things are going well, we might think that we are thriving because we are pretty good people, who deserve to be blessed. People who struggle don’t have that luxury. Some rebel and blame God for their suffering, but others gain a deeper understanding of the evil that permeates our world. The world is not as it should be: cancer, birth defects, depression, arthritis, war, abuse, unfairness. Those things are evil, symptoms of a world estranged from God.
Suffering may force us to recognize the evil within every one of us.
***I once knew a saintly old woman who inspired everyone by her kind and gracious words. Then she had a debilitating stroke. Since she did not have much money, she was sent to the county hospital for indigent care. I visited her in a large ward, with dozens of people in a drafty room, and I was shocked to hear the words that came out of her mouth. The stroke had taken away her inhibitions, distorting her thinking so that she swore like a trooper. Sadly, I had to wonder whether some of those words and attitudes were also rumbling around in my brain.**
I think the paralyzed man recognized his need for forgiveness. His condition had caused him to look into the darkness of his own soul, and he wanted more than relief from the evil that paralyzed his body. He wanted to be restored, body and soul, to the way he should be.
Whether he knew it or not, the man needed forgiveness (as we all do).
WHO CAN FORGIVE SIN?
If I do something that hurts you, you might forgive me. You have the right to do that, since the offense was against you. Your friend might forgive me for what I did to you, but that doesn’t take care of the problem we have. Only you can forgive an offense against you; no one else can.
If I do something wrong, I might forgive myself. That might be a healthy thing to do, but it doesn’t take care of an offense against someone else. Only they can forgive me for how I hurt them.
SIN is an offense against God. It is defined in the Bible as disobedience, missing the mark, and rebellion against God and his ways. Sin might hurt other people as well, but it is essentially an offense against God, and only God can forgive sin.
***David understood that, when he said to God in Psalm 51:4, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” David wrote the psalm after he did some pretty despicable things: He committed adultery with Bathsheba, and then he had Uriah her husband killed to cover up his sin. He wronged Uriah and Bathsheba, violated the trust of the nation he led as king, and committed a crime against humanity. Yet the SIN was against God.**
Only God can forgive SIN, because sin is an offense against God. So when Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven,” the teachers of law sitting next to him saw red. What right did Jesus have to forgive sins? Only God has the right to forgive sins; no one else has the right to wipe the slate clean.
So when Jesus said, “Son, your sins are forgiven,” the teachers of the law were smart enough to know what Jesus was doing:
JESUS CLAIMED THE AUTHORITY OF GOD.
Mark 2:6-7 “Some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, ‘Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’”
The men understood that Jesus was claiming authority to do what only God has a right to do. This could not be good, unless Jesus spoke for God.
Some people would like to think that Jesus was just a good man—a good person and a wise teacher. Jesus doesn’t give us that option. If Jesus was not the Son of God with authority to forgive sins, he was not good; he was then a liar, a blasphemer, or a lunatic. We cannot read the gospel of Mark and say that he was just a good man or a brilliant teacher.
Could Jesus really forgive sins? How would they know? It wasn’t like he could pull out God’s ledger book to prove that the sins had been canceled.
The teachers of the law were skeptical, and Jesus knew it. Mark 2:8-9, “Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, ‘Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’?’”
Both are easy to say, and neither are easy to deliver! But only one can be seen and verified physically, so Jesus went on to say, (Mark 2:10-12a) “I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all.”
Can Jesus forgive sins? The healing of the paralyzed man proved that Jesus wasn’t just blowing smoke; he really did have power and authority—power and authority from God.
Mark 2:12 [The paralyzed man] 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!”
The people weren’t yet ready to say that Jesus was God. Even the disciples were still figuring out that Jesus was God, and Jesus had not yet died on the cross and risen from the dead, making atonement for sins and providing forgiveness for all who believe. We have the benefit of knowing more, so we believe Jesus CAN forgive sins.
But there is one more question we have to ask:
WHAT IF JESUS CAN FORGIVE SINS?
The paralyzed man and his four friends were desperate for him to walk, and they took radical action to go to Jesus for healing. Jesus recognized that the man had an even greater need, and he forgave his sins.
Do you have that same passion, even desperation, to be right with God and right with life? Jesus offers that: "Son (daughter), your sins are forgiven."
What are you willing to do to receive God’s forgiveness? It’s not that complicated; you don’t have to tear the house down! Admit that you are a sinner in need of God’s forgiveness. Believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead to make forgiveness possible. Repent of your sin, and accept Jesus as your Lord and Master, the one who will set a new direction for your life. Do that today! Tell someone when you do. Set a new direction with Jesus as Lord.
What about your friends and relatives? Do they need to be right with God? Would you strip the roof off a building to bring them to Jesus? Would you even invite them to church, or have a frank conversation, or take a moral stand for Christ?
Why would you do those things? You would do them because only Jesus can forgive sins! No one else can--but Jesus can!
