Who Can Forgive Sins but God Alone?

The house in Capernaum is packed. The rumor that the rabbi is back has emptied the village; people are standing all the way to the doorway and crowding into the street, and no one else can get in. Then four men arrive carrying a fifth on a stretcher: a paralyzed man, someone who cannot move himself and is entirely dependent on whoever carries him. They cannot get in. The door is blocked with people. Instead of turning back, they carry their friend up the outside stairs onto the flat roof, and they start digging. They break open the roof, through clay, branches and reeds, right above the spot where Jesus is sitting, and the debris falls onto the heads of the crowd. On ropes they lower the mat with their friend on it, straight through the broken-open ceiling, until it comes to rest right at Jesus' feet.

It is a wild scene. A host watching his own roof rain down. A room full of people ducking falling debris. A paralyzed man being lowered out of the air on ropes. And four friends peering down through the hole, out of breath, filthy from the digging, with a faith that no roof could stop. Jesus sees their faith, Mark writes, the faith of the men carrying him, and He turns to the man on the mat. Everyone knows what the man came for: his legs. Jesus says something entirely different. Son, He says, your sins are forgiven.

A silence falls, and then comes the shuffle of discomfort. In the room sit scribes, men who know the law by heart, and a thought runs through their minds that they don't dare say aloud. What is He saying? This is blasphemy. Who can forgive sins but God alone? They are right. In all of Scripture there is no one who can carry away sin but YHWH. Through Isaiah He says it Himself: I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake. No priest, no prophet, no king could ever manage it on his own. The scribes are defending, without knowing it, the right doctrine. They simply don't see that the doctrine is, at that very moment, sitting across from them.

What they are thinking is in fact a quotation from the closing hymn of Micah. Centuries earlier Micah had lifted, over the rubble of Jerusalem, the question that carries this whole book: who is a God like You, who carries guilt and passes over transgression? No one forgives the way YHWH forgives; that was the very sign of His incomparability. The scribes are now thinking it through, in their own words.

Jesus does not let the claim hang in the air. He knows what they're thinking, and He brings the matter to a head. Which is easier, He asks, to say "your sins are forgiven," or to say "get up, take your mat, and walk"? It is a clever question. Anyone can say the words "your sins are forgiven"; no one can check them, and nothing visible changes. A paralyzed man who gets up on command is something everyone sees instantly. Therefore, Jesus says, so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He finishes the sentence with an act. Get up, He tells the man, take your mat and go home. And the man gets up. In full view of everyone he rolls up his mat, the legs that were dead now carry him, and he walks out through the stunned crowd. The visible miracle is the signature under the invisible one. The One who heals the paralysis of the legs with a word is telling the truth when He says that He also takes away the paralysis of guilt with a word.

In that crowded house the God who carries guilt (nosé ʿawon, the heart of Micah's song) has been given a face: the face of the Son of Man, bending over a paralyzed man and calling him son. The scribes asked the right question, who can do this but God alone, and got an answer they couldn't handle.

The sharp edge, and at the same time the comfort, lies in the order. The man came for his legs; Jesus began with his sin. We would do it the other way around, with the visible problem first and then perhaps, later, the deeper one. Jesus sees that a person can be more paralyzed than in his legs, and He goes first to the paralysis no one sees and no one else can heal. He also heals the legs, because He is good and He loves whole people. Up on the roof four friends lean over the edge of the hole and watch their friend roll up his mat. What they see is legs that walk again. What they do not see is greater: guilt carried away by the only One who can. That is what heaven came down to earth for.

*A note on the source text. The healing of the paralyzed man: Mark 2:1–12 (cf. Matthew 9:1–8; Luke 5:17–26). The breaking open of the roof: 2:4; "your sins are forgiven": 2:5; "who can forgive sins but God alone?": 2:7; "so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority": 2:10. Micah 7:18 (nosé ʿawon); Isaiah 43:25; Psalm 130:4 (forgiveness as a divine prerogative). The Son of Man: Daniel 7:13–14. The carrying of sickness and sin: Isaiah 53:4, 12; Matthew 8:17. The divine Name as YHWH.*