The Authority to Forgive Sins (Communion this week)
Mark 2:1-12
Mark 2:1-12
Let’s pray…
Alright, tonight we will share in communion and we have a lot to cover in a short amount of time. So, what we’ll do is just read and unpack, read and unpack through to the end of verse 12.
If you’ve reading this Gospel on your own at home, then you may have noticed that in this chapter, chapter 2, we start to get the first major push back from the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. Before this point in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus was possibly just a blip on their radar, but now He was getting a lot of notoriety, He was causing a stir and these scribes and Pharisees began to feel a threat to their place of authority.
So then if we were to read through the rest of the chapter, we would see a progression in their sin. They BEGIN thinking bad things about Jesus in tonight’s passage. Then they point fingers and try to undermine Jesus among His followers in v. 16. Then they confront Jesus directly and accusingly in v. 24.
And in each case, Jesus simply showed the ways in which the religious leaders had misunderstood or even neglected the tenets of their own faith.
Now let’s get into tonight’s text, Mark 2:1-12.
Again, we’ll just read and unpack along the way.
Now, we aren’t going to hit vv. 1 and 2, because it is a continuation of a pattern. Jesus drew crowds all the time with His preaching and healing and so we see that here again.
And listen I’ve heard this passage through verse 12 preached on more than almost any other passage in the Bible, and like other preachers, I’m going to touch on the friends of the paralytic, in fact we are going to come back to it just before we close tonight. But, I want you to leave here tonight knowing that the friends are not the main point of the story.
In fact, they aren’t even the first friends to do this for a person in the Gospel of Mark. In chapter 1:32 it says what?
Again, these four were awesome friends, and they made it into the Bible as more than a footnote because they went so far out of their way to help this guy, but they are not the main point. Who’s the main point and central Character of EVERY Bible story? God.
But, in fairness, there is an important lesson here so let’s look again.
3 Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. 4 Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. 5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."
Here’s the lesson, we need to realize, as Christians, that our faith in Christ – and the ACTION that springs from that faith in Christ – has the power to transform the lives of our friends and family and even our enemies.
I think, based on what I see in my own inaction and the lack of Gospel intentioned living among many Christians around me, that we forget how much POWER our own faith has to help our lost friends outside the church and our suffering brothers and sisters in the church.
These four helping to bring their friend to Jesus which led him to a saving relationship is one great example. Another example, James 5:16 tells us this:
Brothers and sisters, it is to our shame when we don’t do all that we can to assist the hurting, the sick and the lost through our faithful prayers and action.
And I don’t say that to guilt you, I know how much many of you do, but ask yourself, in the light of the lost and the hurting found people around you, are you doing all you can to get them to Jesus.
One more point on this, sometimes we need to STOP and allow our friends in the church carry us back to Jesus with comforting words and prayer and sometimes with loving and grace filled correction when grief, or pain or sin has crippled us.
If you cannot “walk” SPIRITUALLY, then allow the church to come around you like you all did for my family last week.
And, with all that said about helping people get to Jesus or back to Jesus, don’t get me wrong.
We are still told plainly in the Scriptures that no matter how we are brought to Jesus, we still need to individually respond - in faith - to Christ on our Own to be justified, to be made right with God. We teach that every week.
Even here, this paralytic man was carried to Jesus by his friends, sure. But He responded in faith and action on his own by taking up his bed and walking.
Moving on, starting back in v. 5:
Let’s stop there for a minute. Before any of the religious leaders began speaking against Jesus, before they began plotting against Jesus, before the crucified Jesus, before all of that, it was their HEARTS that were against Him.
They were “thinking to themselves”. Friends when you catch your mouth saying things you shouldn’t say, and when you begin acting out in ways that you shouldn’t - don’t simply try to curb your behavior or hold your tongue — instead check your heart.
Our heart is the root cause, so we are called to turn our hearts to Christ. We aren’t told to simply white knuckle “better behavior”.
Let’s keep going and take a look at the hearts of the religious leaders here. They were thinking to themselves:
If you read this carefully you will see that these guys were SO CLOSE! But, they were at the same time miles away from the cosmic reality of WHO was right there in front of them.
You see, if Jesus wasn’t God, then He WOULD HAVE BEEN blaspheming. They are right to imply that NO ONE can forgive sins except God alone.
Now, for us to wrap our minds around that, we need to see sin — ALL SIN — ultimately as cosmic treason. We need to understand it as us basically spitting in the face of our Father in Heaven.
Unfortunately, we usually only see sin in the immediate – in the moment.
If we recognize it at all, many times we only see how we have offended another person or how we’ve hurt ourselves in our sin.
Instead, while we may need to make amends with another person, we FIRST have to acknowledge what we’ve done to our Creator, and realize that there is no way to make amends to Him on our own.
By sinning – any sin, small sin and big sin is not a distinction that will matter on the final day – by sinning we are saying that God’s will for our lives, and His perfect design for the way we are to live, and function, and relate to Him — and to one another — is not as important, and we don’t think it’s as RIGHT as our own will, as our own designs, as our own way.
At the root, every sin is an example of when we have said to the Holy and perfect Creator of the universe, “Forget you. I know better. I’ll do what I want.”
This is what David understood in Psalm 51. After he had gotten a married woman pregnant by abusing his royal power, and after he had the woman’s husband killed to try to cover up his own sin, and after several other soldiers in David’s army were also killed in the cover-up process, what does David say in the Psalm?
Praying out to God, David says:
Until we realize that it is ultimately God whom we need to be made right with, we will never be free of the sins of our past.
I used to be a part of a group that helped me stop drinking. I thank God that He used them to bring me that freedom, which ultimately laid a path on which I found Jesus.
But, one thing that I never understood in that process was why I still felt miserable even though all the people I had wronged had forgiven me for what I had done to them.
The problem was that I didn’t see the bigger area of Spiritual damage that I had done through my sins – all my sins, drunken and sober. Every sin since I was born...
I didn’t just need a nod of, “it’s okay,” from friends and family and enemies, I needed to be made right with God, but that wasn’t going to be possible through my own efforts.
Try as I might, I couldn’t do enough good to make up for the bad. In fact, the Bible is clear to tell us that even the “good” is garbage if I don’t have faith.
And so back to the passage: at that level of understanding all sin as being against God before it’s against anyone else, on that level, the religious leaders were on the right track.
When they said who can forgive sins, but God alone?! That was the right question.
They saw the gravity of sin. They understood the weight of sin in a person’s life. The problem was that they didn’t recognize God when they were face to face with Him.
The answer to their question is that no one but God can forgive sins, and that is why Jesus was able to do it. Because Jesus Christ is God in the flesh.
What’s the answer to verse 9, which is easier? Obviously, it is easier to SAY your sins are forgiven. It isn’t something that can be tangibly seen or proven on this side of eternity. But, to SAY get up! Take up your may and walk to a paralyzed man, whose musculature and joints had atrophied over the course of his lifetime - or at least since the injury that took his freedom to move on his own – that kind of verbal command would be more difficult to SAY because it would be applauded or heckled in the moment when the man was able or not to move.
BUT, let me ask you what Jesus doesn’t ask. Forget for a minute about which is harder to SAY, and ponder which is harder to DO?
To revive the ability to walk for a person who is paralyzed is a miracle for sure. But, we may see a time in our own lifetimes when God allows scientists to help a once paralyzed person to walk again.
But forgiving sin isn’t a one off wonder-work, and it isn’t something that science can ever do. The science of philosophies may come to conclusions where they deny sin and therefore deny a need for forgiveness.
Even some people who call themselves Christians have a hard time with the idea that some people will not be forgiven of sin and so they try to invent universal salvation, even though to do that requires throwing out huge chunks of the Bible.
But, if you follow Jesus’ teaching, and follow His ministry to the cross. Even if you just look through the Old Testament, you will see that the forgiving of sins – or even the temporary covering of sin — is a transaction with a cost.
There is a trade-off. Sin ALWAYS comes with a very high cost. 100% of the time sin leads to death.
The sins of Adam and Eve, among other things, (they eventually died physically, but even before that) their sins caused them to be ashamed of their nakedness.
And in His grace and love for His image bearers, how did God cover them, by slaying animals and allowing them to use the hides for a covering.
This animal covering the sin is seen throughout the sacrificial Laws later for the Nation of Israel.
And just like Adam and Eve, and every generation after them right up to now. We are all going to physically die unless Jesus comes back first. Death ALWAYS comes after sin. There is a cost.
So which is easier for Jesus to DO?
It is easier for Him to grant a paralyzed man to walk. To forgive the man’s sins would ultimately mean paying the man’s sin debt, to ransom the man from the slavery of the sin. Forgiving the man’s sins and ours would lead Jesus to the cross.
Now for the main point of the whole passage:
10 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins..." He said to the paralytic, 11 "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." 12 He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!"
Again, as preachers we want you to be able to take some practical pieces home and into your work-a-day worlds, we want you to be able to apply the Bible and these passages to your life. But again, never forget that God is the Main character and the main point of everything we talk about.
The main point is that Jesus has the Authority to forgive sins. And that authority – His right as God the Son to say to God the Father on the day of Judgment, “They are safe, they do not get your wrath,” that authority and that power comes because of the cross.
God the Son doesn’t say to God the Father, “They’re safe because I said so.”
No, Remember, sin ALWAYS equals death. Sin always causes God’s wrath to be stored up for a time and then poured out.
That is even true for those of us who will be in heaven, that portion of wrath was produced for our sin, and it had to be poured out.
But Jesus can look to us and say, “No he’s safe. She’s safe, That former paralytic man is safe, because I already took that wrath for them.”
Jesus already paid that sin debt for us and for that paralytic man.
When Jesus said, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” He knew He could say it because he knew from eternity past that He would absorb the wrath of that man’s sins. And listen, He knew from eternity past that He would take the sins of all of the people that God the Father gave Him (John 17:6; John 18:9).
But, to receive that gift, that gift that cost Jesus so very much, than you have to recognize your need for Jesus and put your faith in Him and His authority to forgive your sin.
And if you have already been saved by the Grace of God that granted you faith in Christ alone for your salvation, then I beg you go find someone who is lost and bring them to Jesus. Until He comes back to end all of this – that is your task and mine...Let’s pray...
Communion…
