I want you to imagine for a moment that you have a friend who can’t walk. It means you can’t play soccer with him; you can’t climb trees with him; you can’t do the things that other mates do together. But you’ve heard that there is a new guy in town with some sweet skills to heal people of all sorts of different sicknesses and conditions. So you and your mates carry your friend all the way to meet this healer in the hope that his legs will be fixed. However, when you get to the house this guy is in, there are too many people to push through to get his attention. But that’s not going to hold you back! Creatively, you carry your friend up onto the roof and start digging through the roof and then you abseil your friend down to the feet of this healer.
This is the scenario at the beginning of chapter 2 in Mark’s story of Jesus.
But have a listen to verse number 5 “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
What? They’re expecting Jesus – the healer – to heal! That’s why they’ve gone to all this effort to bring their mate to him.
Look at verse 10: But that you may know that the Son of Man [Son of Man is a title that Jesus gives himself] has authority on earth to forgive sins….” He said to the paralytic, “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. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!” (Mark 2:10-12)
Jesus comes along able to heal people; but even more impressively, he comes along with the authority to forgive sins. Jesus claims to have the authority of God himself.
Many people were amazed at Jesus’ ability. But as we keep reading Mark’s epic story of Jesus – we’ll notice that lots of the religious people are offended by Jesus.
Reflection Questions:
- What do we learn about who Jesus is?
- What do we learn about what Jesus came to do?
- How do people respond to Jesus?
- How do you think you should respond to Jesus?