Bible Study Series: Mark 2:1-12. He has the authority to forgive sins and heal people. How has he forgiven your sins?
Friendly greetings and a warm welcome to this Bible study! I write to learn, so let’s learn together how to apply these truths to our lives.
I also translate to learn. The translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to see many others, please click here:
If you would like to see the original Greek, please click here:
At that link, I also offer more commentary and a Summary and Conclusion, geared towards discipleship. Scroll down to the bottom and check it out!
Let’s begin.
Scripture: Mark 2:1-12
1 When he entered Capernaum after some days, it was heard that he was at home. 2 Many people were gathered, so there was no room, neither at the door. He was speaking the word to them. 3 They came, bringing to him a paralytic, taken up by four men, 4 and when they were unable to bring him because of the crowd, they unroofed the roof where Jesus was and dug through and lowered the mat on which the paralytic was laying. 5 Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are forgiven.”
6 Some of the teachers of the law were there, sitting, reasoning in their hearts, 7 “Who is this man who speaks in this way? He is blaspheming! Who is able to forgive sins except God alone?”
8 And then Jesus, knowing by his spirit that they were reasoning in that way among themselves, said, “Why do you reason in your hearts about these things? 9 What is easier? To say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven’? or to say, ‘Get up and pick up your mat and walk!’?
10 So that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on the earth”—he says to the paralytic, 11 “I say to you: Get up, pick up your mat, and go to your house!” 12 Then he got up and immediately picked up the mat and left in front of everyone, so that everyone was amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen such things!” (Mark 2:1-12)
Commentary
“As elsewhere in the early Galilean ministry, Jesus’s authority is on center stage. Here he demonstrates his authority not only to heal disease, but also to forgive sins. The two are inextricably connected in Jesus’s announcement of the kingdom of God and the restoration of creation that this entails” (Strauss, p. 117)
1:
Capernaum: Jesus temporarily adopted it as his new hometown (Mark 2:1). Scholars estimate that it ranged in population from 1000 to 10,000. A centurion lived there (Matt. 8:5) and a custom post was stationed there (Matt. 9:9), so it was an administrative center. So it was probably closer to 10,000 than to 1000. It was much larger than Nazareth. It was traditionally a Jewish town, unlike other towns in Galilee, which had been Hellenized (Greek) or Romanized (Roman).
He was out on a ministry tour of Galilee, and finally he returned home (Capernaum).
2:
But the crowds would not let him rest. The crowds got so big that the door was blocked and there was no room for him to move, so to speak. Another way to translate “no room” is “not going forward” or “not going out.” No ingress or egress. They blocked the door! Mark paints the image of Jesus being besieged in his house.
Yet he was speaking the word to them. “Word” could also be “message.” It is a broad noun. It is the Greek noun logos (pronounced loh-goss and is used 330 times in the NT). Since it is so important, let’s explore the noun more deeply, as I do in this entire commentary series.
The noun is rich and full of meaning. It always has built into it rationality and reason. It has spawned all sorts of English words that end in –log-, like theology or biology, or have the log– stem in them, like logic.
Though certain Renewalists may not like to hear it, there is a rational side to the Word of God, and a moment’s thought proves it. The words you’re reading right now are placed in meaningful and logical and rational order. The Bible is also written in that way. If it weren’t, then it would be nonsense and confusing, and we couldn’t understand the gibberish. (Even your prophecies have to make logical and rational sense on some level!) Your Bible studies and Sunday morning sermons have to make sense, also. Mark’s Gospel has logic and rational argumentation built into it. People need to be ministered to in this way. God gave us minds and brains and expects us to use them. Your preaching cannot always be flashy and shrieky and so outlandishly entertaining that people are not fed in the long term. Movements like that don’t last over the years without the Word. I have observed this from firsthand experience in certain sectors of the Renewal Movements.
People have the deepest need to receive solid teaching. Never become so outlandishly supernatural and entertaining that you neglect the reasonable and rational side of preaching the gospel and teaching the Bible. Yes, Luke-Acts, for example, is very charismatic, but it is also very orderly and rational and logical.
On the other side of the word logos, people get so intellectual that they build up an exclusive Christian caste of intelligentsia that believe they alone can teach and understand the Word. Not true.
Bottom line: Just study Scripture with Bible helps and walk in the Spirit, as they did in Acts. Combining Word and Spirit is the balanced life.
Though we don’t know for sure, there is no mystery what he was teaching them. Just read the teaching section of the Gospel of Mark.
3-4:
Four men carried him on a cot or mattress or mat—I chose mat because it makes more sense to be able to lower the paralytic in it. The paralytic’s friends or relatives (or both) intended to place him right in front of Jesus. These were fine friends or relatives of the paralytic! However, crowd blocked their way. But how could they lower a stretcher? They probably just put him in the bedding, so he was bundled up in a big cloth sack.
I don’t know why the crowds would not let them through. All they had to do was step aside. It is probable, to judge from the previous chapter and the large crowds and the flow of the story, that countless numbers of people had their own illnesses or friends and relatives who also needed healing, and in no way would they allow these newcomers to cut in line! Anyone who has attended a large healing rally knows about some unspoken competition.
“unroofed the roof”: that’s a literal translation. If you don’t like it, you can say “made an opening” The men must have removed mud, calculating where Jesus was sitting—probably at the door. They intended to lower their friend right in front of Jesus. He heard the noise. Clay dust may have landed on him or by him. He looked up. He smiled. He admired how they pushed in to get their miracle.
Commenting on vv. 3-4, Wessel and Strauss describe the house:
It was usually a small, one-room structure with a flat roof. Middle Eastern roofs were often used for storage, drying fruit, and for sleeping on warm summer nights. Access was by means of an outside stairway or ladder built against an outside wall of the house (cf. modern escape ladders on the outside of multi-storied apartment complexes). The roof itself was usually made of wooden beams with thatched and compacted earth in order to shed the rain.
5:
No, not every disease is caused by sin. True, the Bible says that sometimes disease and death are caused by sin (Deut. 28:27; Ps. 107:17-18; John 5:14; Acts 5:1-11; 1 Cor. 11:30; 1 John 5:16), but this not always the case (Job 1:8; Luke 13:1-5; John 9:2-3). “The arrival of the kingdom of God will mean the full restoration of God’s creation, both physically and spiritually. Dealing with the root cause of all disease and death—sinful rebellion against God—is essential for all true healing. Spiritual and physical healing are closely linked in Mark’s Gospel. When Jesus says, ‘Your faith has saved … you’ (5:34; 10:52), he is referring to physical healing but with the broader connotation of spiritual renewal” (Strauss).
Lane adds this insightful comment on v. 5:
Healing is a gracious movement of God into the sphere of withering and decay which are tokens of death at work in man’s life. It was not God’s intention that man should live with the pressure of death upon him. Sickness, disease and death are the consequence of the sinful condition of all men. Consequently every healing is a driving back of death and an invasion of the province of sin. It is unnecessary to think of a corresponding sin for each instance of sickness; there is no suggestion in the narrative that the paralytic’s physical suffering was related to a specific sin or was due to hysteria induced by guilt. Jesus’ pronouncement of pardon is the recognition that many can be genuinely whole only when the breach occasioned by sin has been healed through God’s forgiveness of sins.
The Hebrew word for “forgive” that only God can offer is salach (pronounced sah-lahkh) (see Works Cited link, below, and the commentary on the Torah, p. 771). It is found forty-seven times in the Hebrew Bible. Let’s focus on Leviticus, since the temple and the sacrificial system in Jerusalem loomed over Judaism, even up in Galilee; it is in this book and the sacrificial system where forgiveness can be obtained. (In many of the other references, people pray that God would forgive sins [2 Chron. 6:21, 25, 27, 30, 39], or God himself pronounces forgiveness on people: “I will forgive their iniquity” [Jer. 36:3].) In Leviticus, which prescribes specific offerings for sins, the priest pronounces that the offerer is forgiven, but only after the right offering is done. Then the priest uses the “divine passive”; that is, the Torah says repeatedly, “his sin will be forgiven,” implying that God is the one forgiving. Here’s a sample verse: “With the ram of the guilt offering the priest is to make atonement for him before the Lord for the sin he has committed, and his sin will be forgiven” (Lev. 19:22, emphasis added). Note the passive “will be forgiven.” However, the entire context says that Jesus is not acting like a priest, who declares sin forgiven, but actually forgiving sin (see France’s comment at v. 10).
In contrast, the paralytic or his four friends or relatives are never said to have offered a ram or any other animal at the temple. Jesus simply and authoritatively pronounces forgiveness of sins on the paralytic. Jesus did not go through the temple system. Even Nathan the prophet did not use the word salach when he said that the Lord had taken away David’s sin (2 Sam. 12:13).
And so we should have no doubt that Jesus used the Hebrew word salach (his native language was Hebrew) when he pronounced forgiveness outside the temple system. It was surely this word which got the religious leaders’ attention. The priest depended on the authority of the Law of Moses—the Torah, the Very Word of God—to pronounce forgiveness with the divine passive. In contrast, Jesus independently asserted his own authority to pronounce forgiveness (v. 10), outside of the Law of Moses and the priesthood. Jesus was not playing by the rules but took on himself divine prerogatives, as the Son of Man, echoing Daniel 7:13-14, which says that the Son of Man has the highest divine status. The phrase could be translated as Son of Humanity.
Here are the key verses in Daniel:
13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. (Dan. 7:13-14, NIV)
The Ancient of Days is God, and the Son of Man is “coming” towards him and given authority, glory, and sovereignty and dominion. Jesus’s status as the Son of Man is the highest in the universe, apart from God’s.
Jesus is bringing God’s salach down here “on earth” (v. 10) and embodying it in his own person. The religious leaders never dreamed of doing this in their own authority. For them, this arrogation would be “blasphemous” (v. 7). Yet he backed up his own authority by healing the man in front of everyone, something the religious leaders or the priests never did or even dreamed of doing. He seemed to have swept aside the entire system.
However, you may not accept that Jesus used the word salach. If so, in the parallel passage in Matthew’s Gospel, commentator Craig Keener says that the authority to forgive sins is an “attribute Jewish people did not even associate with the Messiah” (A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Eerdmans, 1999, p. 289). This indicates that Jesus the Messiah is still speaking in a new and authoritative way which traditionalists would find blasphemous.
For further study, please click here:
The Son of Man Claims God’s Authority to Forgive Sins on Earth
Further, Jesus “saw” their faith. There is nothing out of the ordinary about the word “saw.” It is the standard one. But Jesus could “see” an invisible thing like faith, which is unusual. But he also saw their faith because he saw them digging a hole in the roof (and perhaps he read the lame man’s heart).
“faith”: In the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus often heals in response to people’s faith (Mark 5:34, 36; 9:23-24; 10:52; Matt. 9:2, 22, 29; 15:28; 17:20; 21:21; Luke 5:20; 7:9, 50; 8:48; 17:6; 18:42). It is important to exercise one’s faith, and the standard way in all of those passages is the sick person’s words or actions. Then Jesus responds to the person’s faith.
Commentator R. T. France says:
Here, however, faith is apparently exercised on behalf of another, while the patient himself remains inactive until v. 12, and is silent throughout. No reason for this is offered; clearly Mark does not have a fixed stereotype of how faith must relate to healing. It is possible that he intends to include the faith of the patient as well as of his friends in [autōn, pronounced ow-tone, or their] (his action in v. 12 is certainly an act of faith), but it is their action, not any indication of his own attitude (unless he is understood to have instigated their unorthodox approach to Jesus), which Jesus sees … and on which his response is based.
Sometimes others have to stand in for the sick person’s absence of faith. It is a blessing to see the four men care for their friend or relative. As one effective healer used to say, “Somebody in the room has to have faith somewhere” or “faith has to be in the room for healing to occur” (that’s a paraphrase of a very effective pastor and healer).
Let’s study the noun more broadly, as I do whenever the noun or verb appears.
The noun is pistis (pronounced peace-teace or piss-tiss), and it is used 243 times. Its basic meaning is the “belief, trust, confidence,” and it can also mean “faithfulness” and “trustworthy” (Mounce p. 232). It is directional, and the best direction is faith in God (Mark 11:22; 1 Thess. 1:8; 1 Pet. 1:21; Heb. 6:1) and faith in Jesus (Acts 3:16; 20:21; 24:24; Gal. 3:26; Eph. 1:15; Col. 1:4; 1 Tim. 3:13). Believing (verb) and faith (noun) is very important to God. It is the language of heaven. We live on earth and by faith see the invisible world where God is. We must believe he exists; then we must exercise our faith to believe he loves us and intends to save us. We must have saving faith by trusting in Jesus and his finished work on the cross.
True acronym:
F-A-I-T-H
=
Forsaking All, I Trust Him
In this verse they had faith for their friend to be healed. They directed their faith towards Jesus the healer. They acted before the paralytic was healed. They had such confidence in the healing power of Jesus that they broke through the barriers—now that’s the faith that God likes!
Word Study on Faith and Faithfulness
“sins”: it comes from the noun hamartia (pronounced hah-mar-tee-ah). A deep study reveals that it means a “departure from either human or divine standards of uprightness” (BDAG, p. 50). It can also mean a “destructive evil power” (ibid., p. 51). In other words, sin has a life of its own. Be careful! In the older Greek of the classical world, it originally meant to “miss the mark” or target. Sin destroys, and that’s why God hates it, and so should we. The good news: God promises us forgiveness when we repent.
“forgiven”: it comes from the verb aphiēmi (pronounced ah-fee-ay-mee), and BDAG, considered by many to be the authoritative lexicon of the Greek NT, defines it with the basic meaning of letting go: (1) “dismiss or release someone or something from a place or one’s presence, let go, send away”; (2) “to release from legal or moral obligations or consequence, cancel, remit, pardon”; (3) “to move away with implication of causing a separation, leave, depart”; (4) “to leave something continue or remain in its place … let someone have something” (Matt. 4:20; 5:24; 22:22; Mark 1:18; Luke 10:30; John 14:18); (5) “leave it to someone to do something, let, let go, allow, tolerate.” The Shorter Lexicon adds “forgive.” In sum, God lets go, dismisses, releases, sends away, cancels, pardons, and forgives our sins. His work is full and final. Don’t go backwards or dwell on it. Clearly the most significant definition in this context is the second one and the Shorter Lexicon’s. It means to forgive.
Please read these verses for how forgiving God is:
10 He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us. (Ps. 103:10-12)
And these great verses are from Micah:
18 Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over transgression
for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not retain his anger forever,
because he delights in steadfast love.
19 He will again have compassion on us;
he will tread our iniquities underfoot.
You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea. (Mic. 7:18-19, ESV)
It would be over-generalizing to believe that sin always leads to sickness, and disease is always caused by sickness. But here we see that sin was somehow connected to this man’s paralysis. Since we don’t know the details, let’s not speculate. Yet in our prayers for the sick today, ask God for special knowledge—a word of knowledge—to know whether the sick person you are praying for has any kind of unconfessed sin in his life. He may not even be saved. Lead him to Christ before you pray.
6-7:
“teachers of the law”: They were also called scribes. To learn more about them, please click here:
Quick Reference to Jewish Groups in Gospels and Acts
They were the Watchdogs of Theology and Behavior (David E. Garland, Luke: Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament [Zondervan, 2011], p. 243). The problem which Jesus had with them can be summed up in Eccl. 7:16: “Be not overly righteous.” He did not quote that verse, but to him they were much too enamored with the finer points of the law, while neglecting its spirit (Luke 11:37-52; Matt. 23:1-36). Instead, he quoted this verse from Hos. 6:6: “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9:13; 12:7). Overdoing righteousness, believe it or not, can damage one’s relationship with God and others. Too self-focused.
They were probably muttering amongst themselves.
Wessel and Strauss write of v. 7 and Jesus’s pronouncement of forgiveness:
The OT priests pronounced God’s forgiveness of repentant sinners who brought sacrificial offerings to the temple and a prophet such as Nathan could pronounce David forgiven on the basis of his repentance (2 Sam. 12:13). But Jesus’s functioning as God’s spokesperson is clearly not how Mark intended his readers to hear Jesus’s words, since the teachers of the law immediately accuse Jesus of blasphemy, and since in v. 9 Jesus explicitly declares his own authority to forgive sins.
Blasphemy is a serious charge that brought death (Lev. 24:15-16). An Israelite was actually stoned to death for doing so (Lev. 24:23). It is abusive and defiling speech about God. That was the crime of which Jesus will be accused, which triggered his death (Mark 14:62-64).
Wessel and Strauss write of blasphemy:
The Mishnah [collection oral traditions written down in about AD 200] defines blasphemy narrowly as the act of pronouncing the divine name … but Bock [a NT scholar] and others have shown that the term could be used for a much wider range of offenses against God. To lay claim to God’s sole prerogative to forgive sins would certainly have qualified. If the scribes [teachers of the law] are correct about who Jesus is, their reasoning is flawless. In Jewish teaching even the Messiah could not forgive sins. The manner in which the accusation is expressed, “Who can forgive sins except One—God” … may indicate an allusion to the Shema, the classic Jewish statement of monotheism from Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God; the LORD is one.” Jesus is accused of usurping God’s unique position.
This is high Christology in Mark.
“hearts”:
Word Study on Spirit, Soul, and Body
8:
“There is heavy irony here. Even as the religious leaders are scoffing at Jesus’ claim to divine authority, he is reading their minds—demonstrating a prerogative of God!” (Strauss).
Knowing: He was using the gift of the word of knowledge; that is, by the Spirit he got access to their thoughts. However, some Bible teachers say that he got access to their thoughts because he was God incarnate, and God is omniscient. So Jesus’s omniscience “flashed out” from behind his humanity by the Father’s will. Remember, Jesus did not lose or lay aside or give up or divine attributes or have them “lopped off” when he was incarnated. Instead, his humanity was added to his divinity. And then his divine attributes were hidden behind his humanity and surrendered to his Father. And once in a while, the Father willed that his Son could know things that only God could know. Whether he used the Spirit by word of knowledge to read their thoughts or his divine omniscience “broke free” or “shone out” of humanity, both sides agree (or should agree) that he never lost his divine attributes. I prefer the theology that says that the Spirit revealed their thoughts to him. But you can choose the other explanation, if you wish. Maybe it is both his divine nature and the Spirit, cooperating together, by the Father’s will.
2. Gifts of the Spirit: Word of Knowledge
Let’s discuss Jesus’s fearless confrontation with these religious leaders.
As I noted in other chapters, first-century Israel was an honor-and-shame society. Verbal and active confrontations happened often. By active is meant actions. Here the confrontation is both verbal and acted out. Jesus healed the paralytic, so he won the actual confrontation, and this victory opened the door to his verbal victory with religious leaders who were binding people up with traditions. They needed to be loosed from them. Jesus shamed the leaders to silence. He won. It may seem strange to us that Jesus would confront human opponents, because we are not used to doing this in our own lives, and we have heard that Jesus was meek and silent.
More relevantly, for many years now there has been a teaching going around the Body of Christ that says when Christians are challenged, they are supposed to slink away or not reply. This teaching may come from the time of Jesus’s trial when it is said he was as silent as a sheep (Acts 8:32). No. He spoke up then, as well (Matt. 26:64; Mark 14:32; Luke 23:71; John 18:19-23; 32-38; 19:11). Therefore, “silence” means submission to the will of God without resisting or fighting back physically. But here he replied to the religious leaders and defeated them and their inadequate theology. Get into a discussion and debate with your challengers. Stand toe to toe with them. In short, fight like Jesus! With anointed words!
Of course, caution is needed. The original context is a life-and-death struggle between the kingdom of God and religious traditions. Get the original context, first, before you fight someone in a verbal sparring match. This was a clash of worldviews. Don’t pick fights or be rude to your spouse or baristas or clerks in the service industry. Discuss things with him or her. But here Jesus was justified in replying sharply to these oppressive religious leaders.
Please see this post for further study:
When Jesus Used Harsh Language
9:
Some interpreters argue that it is easier to heal the man than to say his sins are forgiven, because Jesus will die on the cross for them, which is much more difficult than to heal the man’s broken body. However, that line of teaching exercises too much interpretive gymnastics, our minds making connections two thousand years later, bundling things up that the people in this section of the Gospel did not focus on. Jesus was not dying on the cross then and there. Instead, the straightforward interpretation is that it is easier to say the man’s sins are forgiven because people cannot see with their own eyes the effects of this pronouncement. In contrast, they are about to see with their own eyes the physical healing of paralysis. By analogy you or I can say an inner work in the soul is done, but it is more difficult to say a leg is lengthened because viewers can measure the leg. It is more difficult to say, “Get up and walk!” than it is to say “your interior sins are forgiven.”
Wessel and Strauss write of v. 9 and the debate over “which is easier”:
Of course, as Jesus meant the words, neither of the two was easier. Effecting both was equally impossible for human beings and equally possible for God. To the teachers of the law, it was easier to make the statement about forgiveness, for who could verify its fulfillment? But to say, “Get up … and walk”—the authority to issue that command could indeed be verified by an actually, observable healing. Jesus’s question takes the form of a rabbinic-style “lesser-to-greater … argument. If someone can do the “harder” (in this case physically heal someone), it will prove the “easier” (here the forgiving of sins) has also been accomplished.
10-11:
How would they understand this? He backs up his words with healing the paralytic. So the words are demonstrated with power. Paul said the same thing. He did not come with high and mighty words of human wisdom, but with a demonstration of signs and wonders and God’s power (Rom. 15:18-19; 1 Cor. 2:4-5).
People too are tired of just words. They want to see signs and wonders. Yes, bad people can work signs and wonders (Matt. 7:15-23; 2 Thess. 2:9), but God also works them, as here and in Paul’s life. Do we have to let the bad people dictate terms? In any case, people ask, “I wonder where the signs went!” They are right.
“Son of Man”: it both means the powerful, divine Son of Man (Dan. 7:13-14) and the human son of man—Ezekiel himself—in the book of Ezekiel (numerous references). Jesus was and still is in heaven both divine and human. As noted, it could be translated as Son of Humanity.
4. Titles of Jesus: The Son of Man
“authority”: it is the noun exousia (pronounced ex-oo-see-ah), and it means, depending on the context: “right to act,” “freedom of choice,” “power, capability, might, power, authority, absolute power”; “power or authority exercised by rulers by virtue of their offices; official power; domain or jurisdiction, spiritual powers.” Here Jesus proclaims that “the Son of Man’s authority is equivalent to that which the Father exercises in heaven. Through the Son of Man, God’s heavenly forgiveness has now come to earth” (Strauss).
The difference between authority and power is parallel to a policeman’s badge and his gun. The badge symbolizes his right to exercise his power through his gun, if necessary. The gun backs up his authority with power. But the distinction should not be pressed too hard, because exousia can also mean “power.” In any case, God through Jesus can distribute authority to his followers (Matt. 10:1; Luke 10:19; John 1:12). Jesus will give us authority even over the nations, if we overcome trials and persecution (Rev. 2:26). And he is about to distribute his power in Acts 2.
Never forget that you have his authority and power to live a victorious life over your personal flaws and sins and Satan. They no longer have power and authority over you; you have power and authority over them.
For nearly all the references of that word and some theology, please click here:
What Are Signs and Wonders and Miracles?
And commentator R. T. France writes about v. 10 and says that Jesus claimed for himself a distinctive divine prerogative to exercise forgiveness on earth, as follows.
The [exousia] which Jesus here claims is not merely that of declaring sins forgiven, but of forgiving (see on v. 5 for the distinction). This is exactly the way the scribes’ [teachers of the law] unspoken thoughts have set up the problem in v. 7; they have in mind a distinctively divine prerogative, and Jesus responds in their own terms, claiming to be able to exercise that divine right [on earth]. This phrase is added not so much to limit the [exousia] asserted (on earth but not in heaven), but rather to underline the boldness of the claim: forgiveness, hitherto thought to be an exclusively heavenly function, can now be exercised [on earth] because of the presence of [the Son of Man] (who according to Dn. 7:13–14 was to receive from God an authority to be exercised over all the earth).
12:
The people’s response is interesting. They showed reverential fear and awe, and they also glorified and praised God. The two are linked. So far, so good.
No one else around the first century could pronounce healing with such decisive results. But evidently they were not convinced that Jesus was the Messiah. Maybe that’s why Capernaum would come under Jesus’s pronouncement of judgment for not believing in him (Matt. 11:23). They could not connect the miracles and his authority to forgive sins with his Messiahship.
The healing was instant, and Mark makes a point of it. No gradual healing for this man in this circumstance, despite this skeptical audience. (Sometimes healings are gradual.) Jesus needed to demonstrate that the Son of Man could forgive sins. Did the paralytic convulse a little as strength and feeling surged through his body? Or did he just get up smoothly without adjustments to his body? Probably the latter thing happened. He just got up and picked up his bedding.
He glorified or praised God on the way home. His friends or relatives had to scurry down from the roof and catch up to him. Did the men look triumphantly at the crowd as they passed by, when the people had refused to let the stretcher go through? No word on their offer to repair the roof! The text is silent, but it is fun to speculate about small things like this.
What was so strange, wonderful, remarkable? First, a paralytic got his complete, instant healing. Second, the ex-paralytic’s sins were forgiven, after all. Third, the Son of Man—the Messiah—was standing right in front of them. Fourth, this was an honor-and-shame society, and the people saw the Pharisees and teachers of the law get their comeuppance, and some of the less pious in the crowd must have snickered at their expense. The powerful were shamed, while the paralytic was honored. Fifth, quarreling and quibbling over matters of the law and traditions was cut apart like the Gordian knot was cut through. It is God breaking in and crushing these empty discussions, demonstrating his love and power. Sixth, the Pharisees had strong political views, and Jesus lifted their sights to the kingdom of God. Politics about Israel doesn’t matter, standing in contrast to the soon-to-be global kingdom (Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8).
I like how Wessel and Strauss conclude this pericope: “In this act of forgiveness Jesus was declaring the presence of God’s forgiveness” (p. 727).
GrowApp for Mark 2:1-12
1.. Jesus forgave the paralytic’s sins. What happened to you when your sins were forgiven?
2.. Is faith and reasoning (or inner debating) opposites? How has over-analyzing hindered your walk with God, if it has?
RELATED
10. Eyewitness Testimony in Mark’s Gospel
2. Church Fathers and Mark’s Gospel
2. Archaeology and the Synoptic Gospels
14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels
1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
SOURCES
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