Context No. 700 of 4322 · Matthew
Context · Reflection
Matthew 9:1-6: in context
1He entered into a boat and crossed over, and came into his own city. 2Behold, they brought to him a man who was paralyzed, lying on a bed. Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, “Son, cheer up! Your sins are forgiven you.” 3Behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man blasphemes.” 4Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? 5For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven;’ or to say, ‘Get up, and walk’? 6But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins—” (then he said to the paralytic), “Get up, and take up your mat, and go to your house.”
Jesus comes back across the lake to his own town, and some men bring him a paralyzed friend, carried in on his mat. Matthew notes whose faith Jesus responds to: seeing their faith, the faith of the ones who carried him, he speaks to the man on the bed. And what he says is not what anyone in the room expected first. Not stand up, not be healed, but take heart, son; your sins are forgiven. He goes past the obvious trouble to a deeper one, and names it first.
The scribes catch the claim immediately, and by their own theology they are right: only God can forgive sins, so this is blasphemy. Jesus knows their thinking and meets it head-on. Which is easier, he asks, to say your sins are forgiven, or to say get up and walk? Forgiveness is the easier thing to say, because no one can check it; healing can be checked on the spot. So he does the thing that can be checked, to prove his authority over the thing that cannot. Get up, he tells the man, take your mat, and go home. The visible miracle is offered as evidence for the invisible one, and the scribes' own premise, that only God forgives, is precisely the claim he is making about himself.
Jesus reached past the paralysis to the sin, and named the need the man had not come asking about. What is the deeper thing in me that I keep hoping he will overlook in favor of the obvious one?
Sources
- Mark 2:1-12 with Luke 5:17-26: the parallel accounts, where the friends lower the man through the roof
- Isaiah 43:25: I am he who blots out your transgressions, the ground of the scribes' charge that only God forgives
- Matthew 9:8: the crowd's response, glorifying God who had given such authority to men