We are going to begin this morning by reading our text, Matthew 9:1-8. This is one that I am sure you are all very familiar with. The healing of the paralytic lowered through the roof of a house that Jesus is teaching in, though Matthew decides to leave that aspect of this event out of his account. We see this account in Mark 2 and Luke 5 where those gospel writers do mention him being lowered through the roof. Either way, let us begin by reading our text for this morning, Matthew 9:1-8.
“Getting into a boat, Jesus crossed over the sea and came to His own city. And they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, “take courage, son, your sins are forgiven.” And some of the scribes said to themselves, “This fellow blasphemes.” And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, “Why are you thinking evil in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, and walk?’ but so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” then He said to the paralytic, “get up, pick up your bed and go home.” And he got up and went home. But when the crowds saw this, they were awestruck, and glorified God, who had given such authority to men.
Both Mark and Luke have this account earlier in the timeline of the ministry of Jesus. In their gospels, this happens actually right after the healing of the leper we see Matthew record for us at the beginning of chapter 8. From there, Jesus heads to “his own city” which at this point had become Capernaum rather than Nazareth. There are a few days, possibly a week or more in between the account of the leper and this one, and it is likely that after this event Jesus headed across the lake and we have the account of the calming of the storm.
Why is that? Did Matthew get his timeline wrong? No, as I have mentioned in the past, Matthew is recording this information not in chronological order but topically in order to prove a point. He is been demonstrating both the divinity of Jesus and His fulfilling of Old Testament prophecy concerning the Messiah. What we see after the sermon on the Mount ends in chapter 7 is a crescendo of power over the forces in the world.
Matthew begins by demonstrating Jesus’ power over disease and deformity. There are the accounts of the healing of the leper, the centurion servant, and Peter’s mother-in-law. From there, though we are told that He was casting out demons and healing all who were brought to Him, Matthew raises the stakes by demonstrating Jesus’s power over nature itself with the calming of the storm. With the word, He had cast out demons and healed the sick, with the word, He brings the winds and the waves to a dead stop. And then Matthew continues by demonstrating Jesus’s power over the supernatural forces by casting out the Legion of demons that were tormenting the two demoniacs.
It is clear from these events that Jesus is no ordinary man. It is clear that He has the stamp of approval from God who is the only one who can give authority to do these kinds of miracles. I am sure the Jews who had seen these things happen recalled the magnificent stories in, what we know as the Old Testament, in the miracles of Moses, Elijah, and Elisha. The parting of the Red Sea, the miraculous healing from snakebites, the healing of Naaman’s leprosy, even the raising of the dead. Miracles like these did not happen every day, even in Scripture they are rare and when they do occur it can only come with the authority of God over these aspects of creation.
But Matthew does not end there because Jesus is not merely another in the line of Old Testament prophets. He goes beyond in this ascending drama of miracles by demonstrating that Jesus has authority over the root of all of man’s misery which is sin. Jesus goes beyond healing the sick, he goes beyond repairing the deformed, he goes beyond controlling nature, he goes beyond casting out demons, Jesus deals with man’s greatest need, man’s need for forgiveness of sin; man’s need to be relieved of guilt before a Holy and Righteous God.
The miracles of Jesus continue and some people might say that one of His greatest miracles came next with the raising of the dead in verse 25; but Matthew’s focus begins to shift with these miracles. They are still proving the divinity of Jesus, but Matthew starts with the miracle accounts in the rest of chapter 9 to show the fame of Jesus “spreading throughout all the land” as we see repeated in verse 26, and 31 demonstrating the need for workers to be sent out into the plentiful harvest awaiting them in verses 37-38 and chapter 10.
That is where Matthew is going to go through the rest of this chapter, but here, in verses 1-8, and really, it should be 2-8 because verse 1 is an addendum to the account of 8:28-34. Remember that these chapter and verse separations came hundreds of years later and are subjective. I think it makes a whole lot more sense to attach verse one to the end of chapter 8, but that does not matter much in the long run. What we see Matthew doing with this account is demonstrating Jesus his ultimate authority on this earth, His greatest act, His greatest miracle and that is the forgiveness of sins.
To demonstrate this authority over sin, Matthew records this account of Jesus healing a paralyzed man. I think it is worth noting how amazing the providence of God is as we see this story unfold. This is the perfect way to reveal Jesus’s authority to forgive sin, to compare it directly to such an astounding miracle, a miracle of physically healing a quadriplegic. In Luke’s gospel, he gives us a specific term for someone who is completely paralyzed, as compared to the more basic term for someone who had lost feeling in only part of their body. It could be from the neck down or paralyzed to the point that he could not even talk, but this is someone who is unmistakably afflicted.
We must also remember that in the mindset of the Jewish people, illness or disease, especially those that afflict to the person in an extreme way like leprosy or paralysis was directly linked to sin. This mentality was common throughout the history of the Jewish people and in much of the world. The book of Job is largely centered around this very debate. The first two chapters record all the bad stuff that happened to him, the next 35 are a debate between Job and his friends about what sin could have caused this and Job defending himself, saying that he had done nothing to deserve this level of punishment; only for God to come in and declare that sin had nothing to do with His decision to allow Job to suffer.
Even the disciples had this mindset. In John 9, Jesus and his disciples come to a man who was blind from birth. The disciples asked Jesus “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” Jesus responded to his disciples “it was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Sickness is not always related to sin. People suffer because God has other purposes, not necessarily because he is punishing them for their sin.
This was an issue that we see come up over and over again both in the Old and the New Testament. God had been fighting against this mentality amongst the Jewish people for quite some time and yet it persisted. Not all suffering is a chastening act by God; at the same time, all sickness and suffering is a demonstration of the destructive power that is at work in this world because of sin.
In this instance, I believe that Jesus was banking on the people making this connection in their mind so that He could present to them this visual representation of His authority over both the physical ailments of this man as well as the far more serious spiritual ones.
Scripture does not give us any indication of how this man came to be paralyzed. There could have been any number of things that led to his condition. Through an accident, a neck or back injury, through a debilitative disease like polio or syphilis which was common disease that contributed to paralysis in that time. He may have been born with it; it might have been some sort of birth defect. No matter what the situation was, this man would have been looked down upon by many in his society because they would see his condition as a punishment from God for sin. He might have done something to directly cause his own dire situation, but even if it was something he had no control over, in the minds of the people around him, it was because of some sin that he was in this condition.
Though Matthew covers a lot more altogether as compared to Mark and Luke, he tends to give us just the bare amount of facts needed in these encounters. He does not mention exactly how this man ends up at the feet of Jesus, but in the other two accounts we are told that because of the crowds filling out the house in which Jesus was teaching, the friends of this paralytic climbed to the roof of the house, dug away at the ceiling, and lowered him directly in front of Jesus. That would have been quite a sight. I feel like I keep saying that. Imagine being in this room, crammed with people from wall-to-wall, standing room only with more people crowding around the doors and windows doing their best to hear what was going on. While Jesus is in the middle of teaching, debris starts falling from the ceiling. This would not have been a quick event either, it would have taken some time for these men to tear through the ceiling all the while everyone below is looking up in confusion. Of course, everyone except the owner of that house who I am sure was pretty ticked. I wonder if those men never came back to fix the roof.
Either way, after this bizarre entrance, this quadriplegic is laying on the stretcher at the feet of Jesus and everyone is wondering what will happen. I can see Jesus look up at the faces of the men on the roof and then back down at the man on the mat and to everyone’s astonishment the first words that come out of his mouth are not the words of healing that everyone was anticipating. They were words of healing to be sure, just not the kind of healing that everyone expected. “Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven.”
This is astounding to everyone there. We have lost some of that wonder being on this side of the cross, being so familiar with the story and others like it. But this is an amazing statement, an amazing claim for Jesus to make. We have seen that He can heal, but all of the healing that He had done up until this point was merely relieving a symptom of man’s true condition. He had been healing the sick, casting out demons, restoring the broken to health, but now Jesus was beginning to deal with sin. If you remember back to our look at Matthew 8:17, Jesus came to deal with illness, through His atonement He would eventually relieve them altogether but in order to fully cure the problem of sickness and death, Jesus had to deal with sin and that is what He is doing here.
Now I do not know what was going through the mind of this man laying before Jesus. I do not know if he was more concerned about his physical condition or his spiritual one. We see in verse two that Jesus saw the faith of the quadriplegic’s friends and was moved. I think we can infer from the situation that the paralytic at the feet of Jesus was concerned about his sin because Jesus does not forgive sin unless there is a repentant heart present.
In either case, Jesus takes this opportunity to demonstrate His authority over sin in a dramatic way. “Take courage, son: your sins are forgiven.” That statement sent shockwaves through the minds of the scribes and Pharisees listening.
He sees the thoughts of the scribes in verse three who were thinking to themselves “this fellow blasphemes.” And to these religious scholars He responds, “why are you thinking evil in your hearts?” Now we know that their initial thought was not completely wrong. They knew the Old Testament well enough to know Isaiah 43:25, “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” And 48:11, “My glory I will not give to another.” Mark adds to their thoughts “who can forgive sins but God alone?” They were not wrong in thinking that only God can forgive sins and that He does not share this authority with anyone.
The evil of their thoughts was not based on a wrong understanding of who God is but in who Jesus is. They had failed to heed the prophecies of the Old Testament, they had failed to recognize their Messiah by all that He had fulfilled and by all that he had been doing in preaching the truth and bringing physical and spiritual healing to those who were suffering. They had hardened their hearts against God’s truth, and they were already beginning to formulate excuses and justifications. In verse 34 and again in 12:24 we will see them accusing Jesus of performing these miracles by the power of the ruler of demons.
As we saw in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had also just spent quite some time tearing away at the tradition of the scribes and Pharisees, propping them up as the face of all that is wrong with man-made religion. It is not much of a stretch to think that these men were planning how to use a statement like this against Jesus. The punishment for blasphemy was stoning, but in order to make this case they needed a lot of evidence and Jesus was playing into their hands with this statements.
Jesus was not going to let their blasphemous thoughts continue. To prove His authority to forgive sin He challenges them with a conundrum, “Which is easier to say, ‘your sins are forgiven’ or to say, ‘get up and walk?” He is backing them into a corner, they had seen Him perform many miracles already, they knew that He had the power to heal the man lying before them but to admit that was to admit that He had the backing of God and one could not blaspheme so flagrantly and maintain communion with the Father. Jesus had either the authority to do both or neither.
I think it is also interesting that Jesus used the word “to say” rather than “to do.” In one sense, both are easy to say, anyone can say the words “your sins are forgiven” just as easily as they could say “get up and walk.” To take it further, to say “your sins are forgiven” in front of a crowd of people is easier because there is no visible proof. It is like giving a prophecy of something so vague that it could mean anything. You can never be called on it because know one would have any proof. But to say in a crowd of people “get up and walk” and to have the man remain on his stretcher would prove your hypocrisy to everyone in the room.
Jesus did not say “which is easier to do, to forgive sins or to heal this paralytic” because the Pharisees knew that both required divine authority. Both were impossible without God. The scribes and knew they could not say either one but that Jesus had already demonstrated His ability to heal. Which is easier; to forgive or to heal? Neither is easier, both are completely impossible without God. Jesus had them trapped and the only way out was to admit the truth that Jesus was God which they were adamant they would never do; or they could hope that He somehow lost the ability to heal in that moment. I am sure a few of them had their fingers crossed hoping that was going to be the outcome.
But before they can interject, Jesus continues, “But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” then He said to the paralytic, “get up, pick up your bed and go home.” Jesus took this moment to prove that He had equal authority to forgive sins and to heal. He was giving them a very visible representation of His power. In the same way that no one would have known if the demons had really been cast out of the demoniacs unless they saw the 2000 pigs run off the cliff, the visible proof that this man sins had been forgiven came when he picked up his mat and began walking out the door. Jesus proves His authority over sin, He makes it visible to all who are standing there.
And in verse 8 we read, “But when the crowd saw this, they were awestruck, and glorified God who had given such authority to man.” This is the last point that I want to make. That word translated “awestruck,” “marveled” in the KJV, “filled with awe” in the NIV, “afraid” in the ESV. In the Greek that word is phobeo commonly translated “fear, terror, or to be afraid.” It is where we get our word for phobias like hydrophobia, the fear of water or arachnophobia, the fear of spiders. It can have the nuance of being “awestruck” as it is translated in the NASB. It overwhelmingly has to do with the fear of the divine. It is the same word that was used of the reaction of the disciples when Jesus stilled the storm. It is the same word that is used of the reaction of the people when they saw the two demoniacs cleansed and in their right mind which caused them implore Jesus to leave. We see this reaction over and over again whenever someone is given a glimpse of the divine authority of Jesus or when they are in the presence of the glory of God.
The crowds were awestruck, they were afraid, terrified and in this instance, it drove them to the correct response which was to glorify God in recognition of the authority that He had given to Jesus. It is how we as believers are to live before God. In Philippians 2:12 Paul tells the believers that we are to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.” In Ephesians 5 the fear of Christ is to be the foundation on which we are subject to one another, serving one another. In 2 Corinthians 7 our repentance is to lead us to a life of fear and longing, and zeal. And in chapter 5 it is to be the foundation for evangelism, “therefore, knowing the fear the Lord, we persuade man.”
This fear of God, this reverential awe of God is the substance out of which all Christian behavior is to come. It is what drives us to prostrate ourselves before God, to glorify Him.
Now what makes this all the more interesting is its contrast to Jesus’ initial statement to the paralytic. When the man was first laid down at his feet, what were Jesus his first words? “Take courage, son.” “Take courage.” In the Greek there are two words often translated “take courage” or “fear not.” One refers to an active taking courage, taking control. It is the idea of mastering your fear, recognize the situation, master your worry, your anxiety, your fear and get on with the task, get out of the trench and charge the enemy.
But that is not the word that is used here, the word that is used here is the more subjective idea of “take courage.” The word that is used here has the idea of “there is nothing to be afraid of, there is nothing to fear.” Jesus is saying to this paralytic laying before him “child, there is nothing here for you to fear.” That is the exact opposite of how everyone feels at the end of the story. They are terrified at the holiness of Jesus as he forgives sins and causes the lame to walk. There is something real there that terrifies them as it should.
There is plenty to fear when coming before the Holy One of God; our sin, His holiness. But there was nothing for this man to fear because he had a broken and contrite heart. The Lord does not forgive the sins of people who do not. His heart was right. I am convinced that this paralytic laying at the feet of Jesus had a heart that reflected the beatitudes. Poor in spirit, contrite, mourning over sin, hungering and thirsting for righteousness. He was shaken by grief, overcome with fear and burdened by his guilt and Jesus says to him “there is nothing to fear child. Your sins are forgiven.”
We should be awestruck by the holiness of God. We should go through our life in recognition of the truth of our sin and our absolute need, our complete dependence upon the mercy of God. There should be phobeo in our life. Wonder, awe of the power and majesty and glory of God. Yet at the same time we have nothing to fear. Why? Why do we not have to live in fear, to tremble, be terrified by that which should cause to stand awestruck? Because our sins are forgiven. Because we are the children of God. Because, as Paul says in Romans 8 “therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus… For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.”
If we have faith in the promise of God that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness;” then though there is every reason to live terrified because of the awesome glory and holiness of God, we can be confident that there is nothing to fear thanks to the merciful forgiveness of our Savior, Jesus Christ.