Your Sins are Forgiven

Hello to the person reading this. We are currently in the second of three blogs on this

story that Mark gives us in his account of The Gospel of Jesus forgiving and healing

a paralysed man. This is a deeply compelling story. I believe that it is a beautiful

portrayal of who Jesus is and who Jesus reveals God to be. In the last blog we

looked at the faith of this man’s friends. They so deeply believed in the person of

Jesus. We know this because they carried their paralysed friend on his mat to the

roof and then tore through the roof to get to Jesus. It’s a beautiful picture of how

there will be seasons where you will need the faith of your friends to carry you to

Jesus. In this blog I want us to take a look at how Jesus responds. Like I said in the

last blog, there are a million beautiful things happening in this story.

After Jesus sees the faith of this man’s friends, here’s what he says in Mark 2:5;

“When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, ‘Son, your sins are

forgiven.’” As usual let’s imagine ourselves in this story. Imagine you’re the

paralysed man, your legs don’t work and now you’re finally in front of Jesus, this guy

who you think is the returning king that your God promised your ancestors, you’ve

heard the stories of him healing all sorts of ailments and he finally addresses you.

What would you want to hear? Please don’t give me your religious answer. If you’re

that man and you’re in that room what you want to hear Jesus say is “get up and

walk”. So imagine how you would feel when instead of “walk” Jesus says “Son your

sins are forgiven”. What? “Okay? Thanks Jesus, I guess. But I kinda have this thing

with my legs…I can’t walk!” I’m trying to make it funny so it sinks in, hopefully I

succeeded. So what’s actually going on here? Jesus’s intention is to heal this man. It

would have been the next thing he says after this, but he gets interrupted (more on

that in the next blog). So the question remains, why did Jesus feel the need to start

with letting this man know that he was forgiven?

What do we know about Jesus? We know that he can see things that we can’t see.

As we go on in the story we will see an example of it. Jesus has the ability to see into

the hearts of the people who are around him. Thus Jesus must’ve known that this

man needed to hear that his sins were forgiven. Why was this important for this

man? Well, in this man’s cultural context the relationship between sickness and

wrongdoing was a huge theme. It’s actually not that different from our culture. There

was this belief that if I get sick or if I experience deep trauma, or even if I’m just

constantly unlucky, then the gods must be displeased with me and the way they are

alerting me to their displeasure is by inflicting this tragedy upon me. Again, this isn’t

that unique a view and people still think like this. Maybe in some ways, you think like

this as well. Jesus would’ve grown up with this being the view. And to make matters

more complicated there are stories like this in the Old Testament. There’s this story

where Moses’s Sister Miriam publicly shames him and undermines his authority in

front of the tribe and Yahweh responds with anger. God is angry that she

undermines the leader he chose so he inflicts her with a skin disease. She does get

healed, but you get the point, this was a thing that happened. To take it further this

happens even on a community level. God expressly tells Israel that if they honour

the terms of the covenant they enter with him, there will be rain and health and food.

But if they don’t there will be drought and sickness and death, so there are cases

where sickness is a direct result of sin. On the other hand, because apparently The

Bible can’t just do what we want it to do and instead it forces us to wrestle, there may

be cases where sickness is a result of sin. But that’s not always true so you can’t

assume because someone’s sick they must have done something wrong. In fact the

book of Job is the book in The Bible, that’s dedicated to this wrestle. Job is a

righteous man in the eyes of God but he suffers horribly and the book makes the

point that his suffering isn’t his fault. What does this mean for us? Well, when you

see someone who is sick or suffering or going through it, can you just assume

they’ve done something wrong and God is expressing his anger? No. Could it be the

case that they have done something wrong and God is expressing his anger? Yes.

The Bible doesn’t give us a direct answer on this view so we have to learn to walk in

the tension of these perspectives. But we’re bad with tension because we want

simplicity so we end up picking one side and discarding the other side.

This I believe is why Jesus brings this issue up first. There’s a story in John 9 where

we meet this man who was blind from birth; and before Jesus heals him his disciples

ask him; “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus

responds and says; “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so

that the works of God might be displayed in him.” There we go, Jesus shows us that

we can’t make this assumption but the culture this paralysed man is in did make that

assumption. Imagine growing up in a culture that believes that any sort of deep

affliction is the sign that God is displeased with you and that he has abandoned you.

Imagine what this paralysed man knows about what people think of him. Imagine

what he may have begun to think of himself. Imagine the weight of the words “son

your sins are forgiven” for a man in his situation.

What does Jesus mean when he says your sins are forgiven? In Hebrew the word

for Sin is ‘Khata’ what it means is to miss the mark, or to fail. Miss the mark on what?

Fail at what? I’m glad you asked. In Matthew’s account of The Gospel there’s this

interaction Jesus has with a Pharisee. The Pharisee asks Jesus what the greatest

commandment is in order to test him. Jesus responds with two commandments.

Love God with everything you are and Love your neighbour the same. Jesus goes

further and he says if you do this you fulfill the scriptures. Therefore what we can

draw from this is that according to Jesus the meaning of life is to love God and love

your neighbour; this is what it means to be truly human. Sin is our failure to do this.

Forgiveness is release. The Greek word is ‘aphiemi’. To be forgiven is to be

released. When Jesus looks at this man and says “Son your sins are forgiven” what

he is saying to that man is this; “Son you are released from your failures.” The

deeply life-changing good news for this man is that he is forgiven. His affliction is not

because God is angry at him. He no longer needs to be trapped in his failures. And

how does he know that’s true? Jesus is right there saying it to him. He’s human so

he has likely failed but God has released him from his failure. Tragedy and affliction

is not the confirmation that God hates you. We’re bad at being human, we fail

constantly. God is understandably grieved by the ways that we destroy ourselves,

his good world and each other. But what is God doing about our failure? Mark gives

us the answer “Son your sins are forgiven.” With those words Jesus redefined the

view of God that this man must’ve carried. Maybe they can redefine things for us as

well.

Whatever you think of yourself, whatever you believe your failures are, whatever

wreckage is in your life, where Jesus starts with you is forgiveness. God’s not angry

at you, he’s not looking to eliminate you, he wants to offer you release, a release

from your failure and pain, forgiveness of your sins, and that may offend some

people in your life and it may even offend you and we’ll talk more about that in the

next blog. But for now know that release is possible for you. May God have mercy on

us as we approach his throne with all of our failures and I pray that we see that

failure doesn’t have to be the thing that prevents us from thriving in our life and our

faith.