Why Does This Fellow Talk Like That?

I am okay if you are skeptical of Jesus. I think most people in his own day were skeptical. 

So Skeptics, you are welcome here! Just as they were welcome at the meetings Jesus held in Galilee, so skeptics are welcome in this church. We are glad you have come, you who are still undecided, perhaps leaning away from faith in Jesus.

Skepticism has a long and revered history. A skeptic is one who questions the validity or authenticity of something purported to be factual. We all need some skepticism or we would be completely gullible and the butt of every joke.

Luke tells us that the “teachers of the law” came from every village of Galilee and from Jerusalem. There is quite a group of them, it appears. They are present to see for themselves what Jesus is doing and saying.

The teachers were skeptical from Day One. They thought he was a fraud. It would take a miracle to change their minds. Many people are like this about Jesus. They are skeptical from the very first. Dead men don’t rise, they reason, so Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. It’s all a sad mistake.

Jesus has already broken the Sabbath laws by healing on the Sabbath. He has caused a stir with his teaching. The teachers will very soon conclude that he must die. They will kill him rather than believing in him. Everything Jesus does and says is designed to present the truth to them even though he knows it will not change their minds or their hearts.

Concerning their minds, Jesus can read them. The dialogue in this passage is about what the teachers are thinking in their hearts and how Jesus reads them. Matthew 9:4 records Jesus initial question to the teachers like this, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?” 

Let me ask you, What do you see as the heart of this story? How do you read it? I think the entire incident revolves around this question of God’s forgiveness in Christ. 

He Leaps to Another Level:

“Your sins are forgiven.” - Mark 2:5

Jesus startles all of them and all of us now with this simple statement of forgiveness for the paralyzed man.

We anticipate that the man described only as “paralyzed” will be healed. That would be the highlight of this incident as it unfolds, right up to those first words, that declaration of forgiveness by Jesus. It does not appear to us to be the man’s immediate need. His four friends have brought him all this way so that Jesus will heal him. They have faith as they lower him down through that hole in the roof that Jesus is going to do this. Jesus saw their faith and responded by forgiving the man’s sins.

It’s just not where we saw this thing going. It’s almost a right-angle turn. It is definitely a change of trajectory. In fact, it feels like a leap to another level.

Jesus jumps from the physical condition we all expect him to address to the man’s spiritual condition.

• There is something more urgent for this man than paralysis. The man has been living with this condition for an undetermined season. People actually live very long lives being paralyzed and accomplish many things. Our sense of urgency about his physical need is reflective of the assessment of his friends. They lug him to the meeting, then to the roof, then lower him down because they see his condition as a medical emergency. 

• Jesus assesses the situation differently.

• Three people shared with me in recent days that they went to the doctor for one thing, and the tests uncovered a much more dangerous situation. It may have saved her life to go in for tests related to pinkeye, one person said.
• We are introduced to the man by a single phrase. Jesus knows him way beyond that terse introduction. He moves quickly from that obviously broken body to his most urgent need—his guilty conscience and his sin-sick soul.

• Our Care Effect often addresses the physical needs of people around us. We must remember what Jesus did here. He elevated the spiritual above the physical. But he kept them both together. One explains and illuminates the other.

Just a thought: Is there anything dominating your life and thoughts right now that you consider the top priority but that Jesus might deem secondary to other matters?

He Pushes All Our Buttons:

“Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” - Mark 2:7

The crowd that day in the house, and especially the skeptics, believe that this man’s paralysis is a result of his sin. God is punishing him. He is getting what he deserves. 

• We do share some of this attitude. We see someone who is sick and assume they have done something wrong. They should have eaten differently or exercised more faithfully or abandoned dangerous lifestyles.

• Another man may get a diagnosis of terrible disease, and we can imagine why this affliction has come upon him. But if we get the disease, we are indignant. We have done nothing wrong. We cannot imagine why God would allow us to have such sickness. In this way we are just like the people in the room that day with Jesus. 

Mark records here the thoughts of the people on the front row. These are the teachers of the law who have heard about Jesus and his unorthodox teachings and activities, and they have come to check him out. Many visible signs indicate what is going on inside of them. Their smiles are gone. Their faces are clouded. They are clenching their teeth and hands. Perhaps they are glancing at one another.

We are all given pause with this declaration. 

• Can this fellow really do this?

• He has sinned against God, and God has afflicted him. That’s why he is paralyzed. No one can reverse this but God.

He Makes the Miracle About Who He Is:

“That you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” - Mark 2:10

There is something more urgent for the teachers than seeing Jesus perform a miracle. They need to see Jesus himself.

These teachers are also in need of God’s forgiveness. And their hearts are hardened in unbelief. “'Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?' Jesus said to them." - Matthew 9:4

Only discovering Jesus as God’s Promised One will they be able to receive God’s forgiveness and salvation. 

• Jesus was announced by John the Baptist as “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Jesus came to be our sin offering. That is why he was in Capernaum.

• God alone can forgive sin. None of their efforts to live a purified life, as the Pharisees sought to do, will cleanse the sin from their lives.

• The skeptics have underestimated the love of God and the grace of God. They think God favors them because they are the descendants of Abraham, and this will be enough to satisfy God on the day of judgment: “We are Abraham’s children.”

• They think their keeping of these hundreds of little religious laws—what they eat and how they dress and where they go—will satisfy God.

• The teachers think they are exceedingly good, much better than other people, especially people like this paralytic.

• Yet their only hope of forgiveness and heaven is this Jesus of Nazareth who stands before them. And only he knows it.

So he reverses the order of things. He forgives the man first. And when the teachers’ minds revolt against this blasphemy, he asks them the question that traps them in their own silly equations. “Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? (Mark 2:9). And then he heals the man, but not so that they will believe he can do medical miracles. He heals the man so that the skeptics will believe that he has authority on earth to forgive sins.

I have great news for you. I know where you can get your sins forgiven.