17 One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. 18 Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. 19 When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus. 20 When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.” ~ Luke 5:17-20
For all of the people who had followed the Lord Jesus to date, they wanted His miracles more than the message. They wanted His works more than the word. And, when the Lord Jesus spoke of the requirement of eating His flesh and drinking His blood for salvation, they were disgusted and they turned away.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is: God will forgive all our sins through His Son's finished work on the cross if we turn away from self-dependence to God-dependence. Forgiveness is the single most important benefit that God can provide because it debilitates that which separates us from Him. Forgiveness is the door to all blessing.
Now, since the Lord Jesus is forgiving sin, He is indirectly claiming to be God because only God can forgive sin. This is what tripped the religious leaders up. They just could not fathom that God became a regular man from Galilee. The lack of human status caused them to lack the ability to see the humble God come to save His creation.
In v.17, we read, "One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick."
Matthew identifies this story happened in Capernaum in Galilee. And, it happened right after the Lord Jesus had returned from land of the Gadarenes where He delivered the man from the demons, and sent them into a herd of pigs. So, this is fairly early in the ministry of the Lord Jesus and His primary message is forgiveness.
Now, the religious leaders were looking for the opportunity to discredit the Lord Jesus and get rid of Him. They tried to kill Him in Nazareth just before He read Isaiah 61:1-2 in the synagogue. According to v.17 of our text, "And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick."
In v.18 we read, "Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus." Mark tells us there were four men who brought the paralyzed man to the Lord Jesus. And, the man couldn’t walk. He couldn’t stand. His limbs were bent and his body twisted. A waist-high world walked past as he sat and watched. And ... he was totally dependent on others. This is a good thing, as we shall see later.
This man had a form of paralysis which very well may have been caused by a venereal disease. People who were in this condition were generally left out of society. They weren't like lepers in that they had a highly communicable disease and so they were allowed into society but they were stigmatized. This man bore a social stigma that would have alienated him, made him somewhat of an outcast. And people tended to think that people like he were like that because of some sin.
This man's four friends wanted their friend to be healed, but the man's greatest need was forgiveness. The man needed forgiveness and along with the forgiveness, of course, would come the healing. Good for him, the Lord Jesus could see beyond his physical needs to his spiritual need.
The four friends of this man tried to bring him in and set him in front of Jesus, but they had no handicap access. So, these concerned friends devised a plan to lower him through the roof of the house where the Lord Jesus was teaching that day. Imagine being the owner of that home.
According to v.19, "When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus." Most of the houses were one-story houses. This was probably a big house built out of sticks and mud. Spanning the walls were beams that were set below the height of the walls so that they would create a short wall and a roof and then the roof would act as a patio. The beams would cross and then in between the beams would be a combination of sticks and mud that would be put in there.
Luke tells us they got up on the roof and they let their paralyzed friend down through the tiles. The word for "tile" is keramos, from which we get our word ceramic. The four men calculated where the Lord Jesus was teaching in the house and all of a sudden tiles start coming off above the Lord Jesus. And the next thing they know, down through the hole comes this man, through the tiles with his stretcher right in the center in front of Jesus.
In v.20 we read, "When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven." The Lord Jesus knew exactly what was in that man's heart. Here was a poor, dependent, and oppressed victim of his own sinful desires. He was the perfect candidate for forgiveness. It wasn't the faith of the four guys that saved the man that day. It was his faith. I'm sure the faith of his friends impressed the Lord Jesus. They all had faith, but no one is ever saved because of someone else's faith. His faith was more than just ordinary faith. His was a strong, insistent, persistent and dismantling faith. His was unstoppable faith, overcoming all barriers, all barricades, all obstacles. His strong faith was the result of being so dependent in his need.
The Lord Jesus healed people with no faith and sometimes He healed people with little faith. And, of course, He sometimes healed people with great faith. But this was not a healing. This was salvation. The Lord Jesus saved this man from his sin. A must for this salvation was this man's faith. And, the object of that faith is the key here. Everyone has faith, but the key is who is our faith in?
Did you notice that no one made of the Lord Jesus a request? The man is lying there in his paralyzed condition before the Lord Jesus who looks right at him and said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven you." This is written in the pluperfect tense in the Greek, meaning this was a permanent condition. Literally, the Lord Jesus told this hopeless man, "Your sins are and always will be forgiven."
No one's ever forgiven apart from faith. The Lord Jesus saw into this man's heart, and He saw a longing to be forgiven. He saw this man's wretched spiritual condition and said, "Your sins are dismissed permanently." And, this is what He does for everyone who cries out to Him.
The wretched are forgiven and the self-righteous are not. Forgiveness is the most important thing God can do for us, far more than physical healing. God effortlessly parted the Red Sea, but it took nothing less than the death of His Son to achieve the forgiveness of our sins. And the results this renders to our souls? ... Well, that is the topic for tomorrow's blog.
