20 When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”
Here is one of those verses that I would like to rewrite. It is embarrassing. It would be much better if the faith Jesus saw was the faith of the paralyzed man instead of the faith of his friends. I can imagine healing someone who had faith to be healed. But Jesus heals a man whose friends have faith for him to be healed, faith that can be seen. What did Jesus see that would prompt this statement? Was it their persistence at not giving up when they couldn’t get through the crowd? Was it the expenditure of energy in digging through the roof? Was it their facial expressions as they accomplished their task? Could their hope and expectation be seen? Did their faces say, “Finally, the help we have been seeking all our lives”? We don’t know what Jesus saw. All we know is that he saw it in this man’s friend’s lives. That is not to say that the paralytic did not have faith as well. He might be included in those that had faith, but if he did have faith I would expect him to be the one commended for his faith. And then Jesus does another embarrassing thing. He doesn’t heal him, which everyone could see. Instead he proclaims He has done something that can’t be proven, that this man’s sins are forgiven. Now this flies in the face of the teaching of that day, that physical illness is a result of personal sin. “He must have done something to deserve this.” We hear that kind of ‘judgment now’ proclamations during natural disasters and when illness strikes someone with a sin that we feel fits the ‘really bad’ category. But Jesus understands that the connection between sin and illness goes back to the original sin in the Garden of Eden. That is why illness is in the world. Sin has affected and infected every area of life. Our DNA has been changed as a result of the Fall and the consequences that followed. But Jesus doesn’t focus on what most of us focus on, He focuses on forgiveness. Where is your focus? Are you able to see the faith in others that is not necessarily obvious? Are you able to extend grace to those that others reject? If you do then you are reflecting the character of God.
The Arnold Journey 