Context No. 803 of 4322 · Luke
Context · Reflection
Luke 5:17-21: in context
17On one of those days, he was teaching; and there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by who had come out of every village of Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem. The power of the Lord was with him to heal them. 18Behold, men brought a paralyzed man on a cot, and they sought to bring him in to lay before Jesus. 19Not finding a way to bring him in because of the multitude, they went up to the housetop and let him down through the tiles with his cot into the middle before Jesus. 20Seeing their faith, he said to him, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” 21The scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?”
Luke tells the story of the paralyzed man with an eye on the people carrying him. Jesus is teaching in a house so packed that Pharisees and law-teachers have come from every village to sit and listen, and there is no room left at all. Some men arrive carrying a paralyzed friend on a mat, and they cannot get anywhere near the door. Most people would have given up, or waited for another day. These men climb up onto the roof instead, pull apart the tiles, and lower their friend down on his mat into the middle of the room, right in front of Jesus. It is a startling, almost comic scene: a crowd, a teacher mid-sentence, and suddenly a man on a stretcher descending through a hole in the ceiling.
And Luke notes exactly what Jesus responded to. Seeing their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, your sins are forgiven. Their faith. The faith Jesus rewards here is not the sick man's, who could do nothing, but the faith of the friends who would not let a roof or a crowd keep them from getting him to Jesus. He is carried into the presence of Christ on the backs and by the determination of people who believed on his behalf. It is a picture of two things at once. Sometimes I am the one who cannot get there under my own power, and I need people whose faith will carry me. And sometimes I am one of the friends on the roof, and someone is depending on my stubborn refusal to let anything stand between them and Jesus.
The man was forgiven because his friends tore open a roof to get him to Jesus, and Jesus saw their faith. Who is carrying me to Christ when I cannot get there myself, and whom am I stubbornly carrying to him?
Sources
- Mark 2:1-5: the parallel account, the four men who dug through the roof
- James 5:14-16: the prayer of faith offered on behalf of the sick
- Galatians 6:2: bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ