Jesus forgives, then cures, a paraplegic.

Mark 2.1-12, Matthew 9.1-8, Luke 5.17-26.

The story of Jesus curing the paraplegic lowered down through the roof, is one of the more famous stories in the gospels. Partly because the paraplegic’s companions were so eager to get him cured, so believed Jesus could cure him, they committed serious property damage. And partly because Jesus’s first act wasn’t to cure him—it was to forgive him.

That second thing is why bible scholars call this story a controversy pericope, which is a fancy way of saying it’s a story which provokes debate about who Jesus really is. Not among us Christians; we already know he’s God. Jn 1.14 But among Pharisees, Jesus’s fellow Galileans, and his new followers—who didn’t know this yet, and it’s because of these stories they figured it out. Jesus isn’t just a guru, just a prophet, just our king; he’s God-become-human.

But because people couldn’t fathom God becoming human (and a lot of people still can’t!), Jesus steps on a lot of toes. Pagans and heretics still try to explain his divinity away by claiming we Christians misunderstand him, and claim he’s God when he’s only a really enlightened human… or saying we’re all kinda God and Jesus is just better at it than average; or saying he’s a lesser god but not the God. Closed-minded folks firmly embrace any interpretation of Jesus which doesn’t offend them any, and we outrage them by showing them where the bible pokes holes in these wrong ideas. (Welcome to my world.)

Well. This story takes place in Mark and Luke right after Jesus cures a “leper,” and in Matthew after Jesus visits the Dekapolis and kicks 2,000 demons out of some guy. Various gospel synopses like to link this story up with a different paraplegic Jesus cured at a pool. But that happens in Jerusalem; this happens in Jesus’s home base of Capharnaum.

The gospels don’t say whose house it is, and a lot of Christians like to speculate it’s Simon Peter’s—for no good reason. Most likely it’s Jesus’s house. Yes, Jesus’s. People assume he had no house, ’cause he elsewhere says the Son of Man “had no place to lay his head,” Lk 9.58 but that’s because he traveled. When he wasn’t traveling, when he stayed in Capharnaum, he lived somewhere. Likely with family. James and John were Jesus’s first cousins, so likely he lived in their family home.

Who, I’m sure, were initially startled to find their home overrun with Jesus’s followers. Then horrified when a bunch of guys decided to bust through the roof and drop a paraplegic on ’em.

The paraplegic and his sins.

Παραλυτικός/paralytikós means one who’s παραλύω/paralýo, “part destroyed.” Most commonly, one’s legs won’t work; so paraplegic. But the word can mean any part of him was damaged—enough so he couldn’t get around. The ailment wasn’t due to age, ’cause in two gospels Jesus calls him τέκνον/téknon, “boy.” And no, this isn’t because Jesus is more spiritually mature, like those priests who call everyone “my child”: Jesus was in his thirties, and the paraplegic was younger. Maybe even a teenager.

Four guys were carrying this paraplegic on bench. Various translations say “couch” or “cot” or “stretcher,” but what we’re talking about is a κλίνης/klínis Mt 9.2 or its diminutive form κλινιδίῳ/klinidío, Lk 5.19 one of the cushioned benches round the dinner table. Galileans ate dinner Roman-style: Lying down on their bellies, shoveling in the food; then resting on their left sides to help digestion. This was not be the bed or couch the paraplegic usually laid on; this would be something the guys grabbed in a hurry, threw him onto, Mt 9.2 then rushed him to Jesus. The healer was in town, and here was their chance!

Well, till they saw the crowds round the house. Couldn’t get through them. Then one of them got the bright idea of taking him up the stairs to the roof of the house. Galilean roofs were tiled, ’cause people treated them like decks and would spend all day up there. These guys dug through the tiles over Jesus’s head—risking the possibility of bonking Jesus on the head with adobe tiles!—then lowered the man and his bench before Jesus.

Luke actually says καθῆκαν/kathíkan, “they drop” him. Lk 5.19 Most Christian artists depict ’em lowering the paraplegic on four ropes, but this was clearly a spur-of-the-moment decision; they did not come prepared with ropes. So they lowered him as best they could… but yeah, they dropped him.

Talk about not accepting no for an answer. And it demonstrates serious faith that Jesus would do something. So it’s for that reason Jesus… forgave his sins. Wait, what?

Mark 2.1-5 KWL

1 Some days after entering Capharnaum again,

people hear Jesus is in a house.

2 So many gather, the house has no more room,

not even around the door,

and Jesus is telling them the word.

3 People come, bringing Jesus

a paraplegic carried by four.

4 Unable to bring the paraplegic near Jesus,

because of the crowd,

they take apart the roof where Jesus is,

and on opening it up,

they lower the cot on which the paraplegic is laying.

5 Jesus, looking at their faith, tells the paraplegic,

“Boy, your sins are forgiven you.”

 

Matthew 9.1-2 KWL

1 Embarking into a boat, Jesus crosses the lake,

and comes into his own city.

2 Look, people are bringing Jesus

a paraplegic thrown onto a bench.

Jesus, looking at their faith, tells the paraplegic,

“Courage boy, your sins are forgiven you.”

 

Luke 5.17-20 KWL

17 It happens one day as Jesus is teaching:

Pharisees and Law-teachers are sitting there.

People had come from every village in Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem,

and the Lord’s power to cure is in Jesus.

18 Look, men bearing a person who’s paralyzed on a bench,

are seeking to bring him in,

to put him before Jesus.

19 Not finding a way they could bring him through the crowd,

going up upon the roof,

they drop him, with the small bench, through the tiles

into the middle, in front of Jesus.

20 Jesus, looking at their faith, says,

“Man, your sins are forgiven you.”

I don’t know what sins Jesus had to forgive. Nobody today knows; the gospels don’t say. Plenty of Christians speculate, of course. And I’m sure the homeowner was plenty annoyed about the sin of digging a hole through his roof.

Nevertheless, this is what fires up the controversy in this story. All too frequently I’ve heard Christians preach the paraplegic went to Jesus to be cured… and instead Jesus tells him, “Boy, your sins are forgiven.” Mk 2.5 (The Textus Receptus adds “you” to Mark and Matthew to make ’em match Luke.) So these preachers speculate the paraplegic’s next thought was, “What? My sins are forgiven? I came to get frickin’ cured. Who cares about my sins? Screw my sins.” Or some other bitter, thankless reaction.

Then, based on this reaction which they themselves invented, these preachers waste a few minutes of their sermon ranting about how the ungrateful paraplegic was only interested in getting cured, whereas Jesus is far more interested in the far more important issue of forgiveness. ’Cause it’s better to enter God’s kingdom maimed, than have perfect health but get tossed onto the fire. Mk 9.43-48

Yeah, there’s no evidence for this interpretation. But it’s popular, so preachers repeat it. Especially preachers who claim God doesn’t do miracles anymore, who wanna discourage their listeners from seeking supernatural cures, and want ’em to seek forgiveness instead.

But knowing Jesus and his kindness, the reason he brings up forgiveness is because the paraplegic needed to hear this. Y’see, Pharisees taught, so his culture believed, that illness is God’s judgment. Jn 9.2 He likely thought he was paraplegic because he’d done something to incur God’s wrath. His neighbors likely believed it too. He was suffering because he deserved it. He was cursed.

And maybe he became injured because he’d been doing something he shouldn’t. Picture a mom yelling at her kids to stop climbing the stone façade on their house: “I don’t care if the gym taught you how to climb their fake ‘rock walls.’ Our rocks aren’t bolted on, and you got no safety harness. Stay off the wall!” But they climb it anyway, and the glued-on rocks fall off, and they break their legs—and thank God, our doctors know how to set broken bones. But first-century witch doctors didn’t. It’s entirely possible the paraplegic was goofing off, fell, broke his legs… and thanks to first-century “medicine,” his legs were now useless. Never healed right. Can’t stand on them without tremendous pain. The rest of his life, he’d be forced to be supported by family… or resort to begging.

Even today, little errors of judgment can turn into lifetimes of pain. There’s every chance the paraplegic had done something to accidentally hurt himself. So he was beating himself up over it. His injury was “an act of God”—as the Pharisees taught him.

So Jesus began by rightly curing his mental pain.

Something we Christians should remember to do. Too often, we assume the reason God won’t instantly cure our every hurt is because he’s angry with us. Or we lack faith, or we sinned, or some other dysfunctional karma-based explanation which doesn’t reflect God’s character or Jesus’s compassion at all. God loves his kids. Through Jesus, he forgives all our sins. Sin has nothing to do with why he sometimes won’t cure people. But our culture still teaches us otherwise, and we need to learn better.

Wait, isn’t forgiveness God’s job?

As Luke points out, νομοδιδάσκαλοι/nomo-didáskali, “law-teachers,” were in Jesus’s audience, Lk 5.17 which is another word for scribes, ancient Israel’s bible scholars. These guys didn’t just know their bible; they memorized it. They knew it as well as Jesus does. They also knew all the “proper” Pharisee ways to interpret the Law… and regularly butted heads with Jesus because he challenges those interpretations.

If you read the Mishna and other Pharisee literature, you immediately realize their teachings are largely based on loopholes which let ’em break the Law but look like they were carefully following it—so, hypocrisy. Other interpretations are mighty legalistic, and delete any of God’s grace which is meant to be practiced in the observance of Law. Since Jesus is God, he knows precisely what he meant when he handed down the Law, so his interpretations are infallible. But like I said, this is a controversy pericope: The scribes don’t know this. The very idea would never have occurred to them. “God is not a man,” Moses said Nu 23.19 —and true, he wasn’t one at that time. But he is now.

Mark 2.6-8 KWL

6 Some of the scribes are there,

sitting and debating in their minds:

7 “What’s this he says?”

“Slander!”

“Who can forgive sins other than the One God?”

8 Next Jesus, recognizing in his spirit

that this is what they debated among themselves,

tells them, “Why do you debate these things in your minds?”

 

Matthew 9.3-4 KWL

3 Look, some of scribes say among themselves,

“This is slander.”

4 Jesus, looking at their deliberations,

says, “For what reason do you ponder evil in your minds?”

 

Luke 5.21 KWL

21 The scribes and Pharisees begin to debate, saying,

“Who’s this man who speaks slander?”

“Who can forgive sins other than God alone?”

22 Jesus, recognizing their debate, tells them in reply,

“Why do you debate this in your minds?”

I translate καρδίαις/kardíës, “hearts,” as “minds” because I don’t want you to get the wrong idea: In western culture, we imagine we feel with our hearts, but think with our minds. In middle eastern culture, they believed they felt with their guts, but thought with their hearts. (The ancients believed, as the Greeks claimed, brains were only to cool down the blood. The bible’s not a biology textbook, y’know. Don’t let the young-earthers fool you.)

Jesus knows how people think, Jn 2.24-25 and might’ve used—but didn’t need—supernatural discernment to knew where the scribes’ thoughts were leading them: Nowhere good. They correctly realized it was inappropriate for a man to forgive sins, and quickly leapt to the conclusion there was something sinister about Jesus.

Yes, I said correctly realized. Jesus hadn’t yet told us we have the power to forgive sins like God does. Jn 20.23 And some Christians still claim we don’t have this power—that the scribes are still correct, and the only reason they were actually wrong is because they didn’t know Jesus is God. They teach we can’t forgive people unless they sin against us personally: If someone robs, cheats, injures, or murders me, I can forgive them; but if they do that stuff to anyone else, I have no right to declare Jesus atoned for them and they’re forgiven. Instead I have a duty to make sure society smites the perpetrators. And this is why these Christians are vengeful, instead of gracious like Jesus teaches us to be.

Anyway, these Christian principles were taught after this story took place. The scribes had no idea God issued any of his followers a license to forgive on his behalf. They were only going from the partial revelation they had. Where they went wrong—why we see Jesus rebuke them—is because they pessimistically presumed Jesus was doing this out of evil intent. They figured Jesus βλασφημεῖ/vlasfimeí “slanders” God, and that he means to slander God, by declaring this paraplegic forgiven when he’s so very clearly not. Because, y’know, he’s paralyzed.

We bible scholars are trained to be skeptics—to regularly ask, “Do the scriptures actually teach that?” instead of swallowing everything we’re told. But we have to be very careful lest our skepticism turn to cynicism, and as a result miss something God’s doing. Ever notice how few theologians you’re gonna find at the center of a revival? ’Cause we’re usually on the sidelines, explaining why it’s a God thing… or outside, condemning it because we’re entirely sure it’s not. More outside than in, because too many of us utterly miss God when he doesn’t neatly fit our worldviews. For every Martin Luther there are a thousand Hank Hanegraaffs.

So if you aspire to be a bible scholar, be careful of pride; of thinking you know God so well. Never put the infinite God in a box, then fight him when he kicks your box open. The God these scribes worshiped was standing in front of them—teaching them personally!—and the instant he started acting like God, they were too small-minded to recognize him. It’s a scary thing when our great learning leads us so far astray. Yet it’s an easy trap for scholars. So as you learn more about Jesus, stay humble.

Jesus’s response to the scribes was to use a basic Jewish logical argument, “What’s easiest?” In essence, if one is able to do the hard or impossible thing, one should also be able to do the easy thing. So if God empowers the Son of Man to cure paraplegics, he should’ve empowered the Son of Man to forgive sins. Nu?

Mark 2.8-12 KWL

9 “What’s easier?—

to tell the paraplegic, ‘Your sins are forgiven’?

Or say, ‘Get up, pick up your cot, and walk’?

10 So you might know the Son of Man

has power to forgive sins on earth,”

Jesus tells the paraplegic,

11 “I tell you get up, pick up your cot,

and go to your house.”

12 And he gets up. Next, picking up his cot,

he goes out in front of everyone.

So everyone is astounded and glorifying God,

saying this: “We’ve never seen this before!”

 

Matthew 9.5-8 KWL

5 “For what’s easier?—

to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven’?

Or say, ‘Get up and walk’?

6 So you might know the Son of Man

has power to forgive sins on earth,”

Jesus then tells the paraplegic,

“Get up, pick up your bench, and go to your house.”

7 Getting up, he went to his house.

8 Seeing this, the crowds are afraid,

and glorify God who gives such power to people.

 

Luke 5.23-26 KWL

23 What’s easier?—

to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you’?

Or say, ‘Get up and walk’?

24 So you might know the Son of Man

has power to forgive sins on earth,”

Jesus tells the paraplegic,

“I tell you get up and pick up your small bench,

and go to your house.”

25 Instantly getting up in front of them,

picking up what he laid upon,

he goes to his house, glorifying God.

26 Astoundment grabs hold of everyone,

and they are glorifying God.

They’re filled with fear, saying this:

“We saw a paradox today.”

I should point out this is the first time Jesus calls himself the Son of Man in the gospels—a loaded term which merited its own article. It’s an End Times figure found in Daniel, Dn 7.13-14 which was written in Aramaic not Hebrew; and if you called yourself ܒܪ ܐܢܫ/bar enáš, “son of man,” you could debatably claim you only meant “human,” in case any Romans or Herodians worried you were plotting against them.

But to prove he is this Son of Man, Jesus cured the paraplegic.

And there was much rejoicing.

To describe the people’s reaction, Mark and Luke used the verb ἐξίστημι/exístimi, which literally means “to stand outside oneself.” It evolved into our word ecstatic, but that’s not an accurate translation. These folks were out of their minds with shock, joy, or any other emotion which pulls people out of reality.

The ancient Greeks used exístimi to describe people whose entire universe had just been upended. Sometimes by new, mystical knowledge from pagan prophets. Sometimes by getting blitzed on drugs, alcohol, fumes, and freaky hallucinations which they interpreted as revelation. But this was no hallucination: Jesus had just claimed to be a heavenly character from the bible, cured a guy who absolutely couldn’t walk, and forgave sins. This undid everything the people thought they knew.

Remember, it was only just recently Jesus cured an entire town. The people of Capharnaum saw him cure people before. Their response, “We’ve never seen this before!” Mk 2.12 makes no sense if they were only reacting to just another faith-healing. But this wasn’t that: What they’d never seen before was Messiah, come to prepare his kingdom.

Probably the more obvious description comes from the response in Luke: “We saw a paradox today.” Lk 5.26 Most translations skim past παράδοξα/parádoxa by rendering it “strange things” (KJV) or “amazing things” (NLT), but like I said: Their whole world was undone. Jesus blew their minds. They thought men couldn’t forgive sins; Jesus totally proved he could. God had granted this ability to humans. Mt 9.8 That was new.

But let’s not snipe at the scribes too much. You realize Jesus had just revealed to them three things they hadn’t even imagined: The Son of Man is a human being; the Son of Man is Messiah; and the Son of Man is him. And when the gospels say everyone was astounded, they don’t say “everyone but the scribes.” The scribes changed their tune too. Because everyone can change. Even know-it-alls.