Life of Christ 47
Well
into Jesus' first year of ministry He pauses in the midst of His preaching tour
of Galilee, and stops off at His home base of Capernaum. When He arrives He
discovers that His reputation has spread so high and far that a delegation of
'doctors of the law' from Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem were waiting to speak
with Him (Luke 5.17-26). Accompanying them was the new normal, a huge crowd of
people that seemed to throng whatever house He happened to be in while in town.
Meanwhile, a palsied man
had the fortune of having some good friends who were determined to get him an
audience with Jesus. As he could not walk they carried him, in his pallet, to
the house where Jesus was, but they found the crowd so thick it was impossible
to force their way through carrying the palsied man on his pallet. They decided
to risk an unorthodox attempt at entry via the roof.
Most roofs of ordinary
houses in the Palestine of Jesus' day were not solidly constructed of timber,
plywood, and shingles all nailed together such as ours are. The climate was
mild, and consequently they were often flat, instead of peaked, and consisted
of thin limestone tiles three feet long glued over rafters. Additionally, there
was often no additional ceiling below this simple roof. Thus, it would have
been relatively easy to pull up a few of those tiles, and then to repair the
minimal damage afterward.
This is exactly what
these friends do, and I can picture the crowd in the rooms below shrinking back
in alarm as the roof ceiling begins to open up. The friends then carefully
lowered the palsied man through the gap and down into the space created inside
as the people pressed backward.
I want to pause the
story for a moment, and explain an important doctrinal point that has direct
bearing on what is to come. Up to this time, all through Jesus' first year of
ministry, He had not yet mentioned publicly His claim to be God. He had
clearly, repeatedly, and publicly asserted His claim to be the Messiah, but those
two things (being messiah and being the Son of God) were not synonymous in the
Jewish mind of the day. In fact, when you read the extant rabbinic writings of
the time, although they frequently discuss the prophecies surrounding the
promised messiah, and wander way out in the left field of expectation, they
most assuredly do not expect this messiah to be divine.
Jesus, of course, well
understood this, and He realized that if He had launched His ministry and His
claim to the messiahship by declaring Himself to be the Son of God He would
have been immediately written off as crazy or stoned for being blasphemous.
Jesus was a revolutionary, but He wasn't rash. He knew that He needed to build
a solid base of support in the mind of His followers, and the general public,
first so that when He did reveal His claim to deity people would be already
prone to believe Him.
If you stumble out of a
darkened room into the brilliant sun of full noon you are not much helped, but
rather blinded, and you do not welcome it so much as resent it. So it was with
Jesus and the Jewish people. Gradually, as the sun climbs its way up the
eastern sky, He revealed to His people the precious truth that He was not only
their Messiah, but also their God come in the flesh. This story is the first
blush of that rosy fingered dawn.
Every word that Jesus
was spoke was carefully considered, and wisely chosen. Fascinating, then, isn't
it, that His first words to the palsied man were 'Thy sins are forgiven thee'
(Luke 6.20)? Why start with that? Why not, 'hello'? Why not, 'What brings you
here?' Why not, 'How can I help you?' or some version of that? Very simply,
because in saying 'thy sins are forgiven thee' Jesus was launching a well placed
cannon shot across the bow of the assembled delegation of Israel's religious
leadership. By stating this, He was implicitly taking upon Himself the power to
forgive sin, a power reserved in Jewish theology for God alone. Ergo, He was
calling Himself God.
John Cunningham Geikie,
a 19th century Presbyterian preacher from Scotland said it this way:
The Law knew no such form
as an official forgiving of sins, or absolution. The leper might be pronounced
clean by the priest, and a transgressor might present a sin-offering at the
Temple, and transfer his guilt to it, by laying his hands on its head and
owning his fault before God, and the blood sprinkled by the priest on the horns
of the altar, and toward the Holy of Holies, was an atonement that “covered”
his sins from the eyes of Jehovah, and pledged his forgiveness. But that
forgiveness was the direct act of God; no human lips dared pronounce it. It was
a special prerogative of the Almighty, and even should mortal man venture to
declare it, he could only do so in the name of Jehovah, and by His immediate
authorization. But Jesus had spoken in His own name. He had not hinted at being
empowered by God to act for Him. The Scribes were greatly excited; whispers,
ominous headshakings, dark looks, and pious gesticulations of alarm, showed
that they were ill at ease. “He should have sent him to the priest to present
his sin-offering, and have it accepted: it is blasphemy to speak of forgiving
sins, He is intruding on the divine rights.” The blasphemer was to be put to
death by stoning, his body hung on a tree, and then buried with shame. “Who can
forgive sins but One, God?”
Jesus was doing several
things here. He was presenting, for the first time, His claim to deity.
Additionally, He did it in the presence of the 'doctors of the law', so that
they had direct first-hand knowledge of it. This would allow them not only to
carefully establish the circumstances, but also to see the proof for His claim
that He was about to furnish them. He is also making this claim for the sake of
the people watching, both those that already believed on Him and those that
didn't. It was time they began to see Him for Who He really was, and especially
for His followers to understand this. And, of course, He was also actually
ministering to the palsied man in question.
So He does. The palsied
man goes away both healed and saved. His friends are also likely saved, if they
weren't already. As well, Jesus, for the
first time, plants the thought of His claim to deity in the minds of the Jewish
people, and Israel's religious leadership is put on notice of those claims, and
furnished with an immediate and convincing proof of their authenticity.
You see, contrary to
what so many modern religions assert, Jesus most emphatically did claim to be
God. Of course, this is not the only time; it is, indeed, only the first time.
Yet somehow Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Muslims, and
scores of others all say differently. We will see, however, as this blog
progresses, that Jesus asserted His claim to deity again and again and again.
It is absolutely crystal clear in the New Testament, and the only possible way
to miss it is to want to miss it. In fact, it was this claim that was precisely
the religious motivation behind His assassination.
Beloved, one of the
fundamental truths we must firmly embrace, against all comers, at all costs, is
the deity of Jesus Christ. He wasn't just a prophet. He wasn't just a good man.
He wasn't just a religious leader. He wasn't must a moral ethicist. He wasn't
just a social activist. He wasn't just another in a long line of influential
and helpful religious leaders. He was God in the flesh, come down from Heaven,
sent to be the only acceptable sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.
This story contains yet
one more exceedingly precious application. Since He is God He does have the
power to forgive sin. Go ahead, try to name a sin that Jesus cannot forgive.
Idolatry? Swearing? Breaking the Sabbath? Disrespecting your parents? Murder?
Adultery? Theft? Lying? Coveting? Greed? Gambling? Smoking? Drinking? Drug
Abuse? Rape? Homosexuality? The simple truth is that some people may be so far
gone in their sins as to not want to be forgiven, but Jesus Christ can forgive
anybody of anything. Including you.
He can do that. He is
God.
If you would like to listen to the audio version of this blog you may find it here on our church website. Just press 'launch media player' and choose We Preach Christ 22, 'The Son of Man Hath Power to Forgive Sins'.
No comments:
Post a Comment