Encounters with Jesus - Pt 6

And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, “Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.” (Luke 5:21-26 ESV).

The people who opposed Jesus Christ were always asking questions of Jesus. Their accusations toward Him were rooted in the claim he made to forgive sins. Our reading today points us in that direction. He does so by asking a question of the Pharisees. In the synagogue there was a man with a withered hand. Jesus told him to stand up in front of everybody. Then he turned to the Pharisees and asked: “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” Not waiting for their answer he turned to the man and said “Stretch out your hand!” Immediately the hand was completely healed. The Sabbath was supposed to be a day dedicated to God, an acknowledgment and reminder that a right relationship with God was the result of God's action, not man's goodness. The Pharisees had turned it into a day by which they affirmed their own righteousness, a righteousness by which they assumed they merited God's favor. Jesus, by his question, spotlighted their self-centered error. In their efforts to affirm and maintain their own righteousness they were actually exhibiting the opposite of true godliness. They were doing evil by refusing to do good, destroying life by refusing to save it. By using the Sabbath as a meritorious human means of gaining and maintaining God's acceptance, they were completely misreading the deep significance of the Sabbath. They could not believe that we cannot merit God's acceptance, or make ourselves his people, but are his people by sheer grace, by his will and his choice and his action, not ours. The physical Sabbath rest is a symbolic shadow of the permanent, perpetual, spiritual rest we find in Jesus Christ, by whose merit alone we are accepted with God. To prove his point even further as they accused him of blasphemy, he asked them which was easier, to forgive sins or make the lame walk. Then he healed the lame man and he jumped for joy! Jesus does that to all of us. He heals us through the forgiveness of our sin and the guaranteeing of our ultimate eternal life!