Who Is Jesus?နမူနာ

The Story of the Paralytic: Jesus is the Forgiver of Sins

If you could be a superhero what would your superpower be? This is an important question so think hard before you answer. 

Flight?

Invisibility?

Mind control?

Indestructibility? 

What if there was an “all of the above” option? 

On the surface, our fascination with superheroes is probably about our desire to be entertained and escape the everyday struggles of life. But on a far deeper level, maybe we are enamored with superheroes because of our innate human longing for rescue, and our hankering after power beyond what is normally possible. 

Now Jesus was not a superhero in the Marvel sense of the word, but when we read the Gospels we find that Jesus did possess miraculous ability beyond that which was normal, like healing the sick and casting out demons, and as a result, Jesus drew a crowd, and rumors of His power spread like wildfire. 

In this story four men get wind of this miracle worker, and make the trek to see Him. They are determined to bring their suffering friend to Jesus, but they quickly encounter a barricade of people.

“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” (vs. 4). 

Let us hit the pause button for a moment.

These guys literally vandalized someone's house!

Thankfully Jesus overlooks their destruction of property and says to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven” and then Jesus heals his legs. The crowd is in awe, but the religious leaders are questioning in their hearts, “Who can forgive sins, but God alone?” 

The only one who can forgive all sins is the only one who has been offended by all sins — that is God, Himself. 

Once again this story gives us a clue to Jesus’ identity. In this story Jesus is speaking and acting in the place of God without apology. Jesus even produces evidence of His divine authority to forgive sins by performing a miracle. In other words, this story tells us that Jesus is God! 

We may not be physically paralyzed like the man in this story. 

But on a personal level we have all made mistakes, and some of us feel paralyzed by our shame, our fears and our inadequacy. Our legs may work fine, but our lives still feel broken because our deepest problem is always spiritual before it is physical. 

Our deepest need is to be forgiven and reconciled to our maker — to experience the healing power of God’s love as it seeps into all of our insecurities and makes us whole.

Jesus is not a superhero from a movie. 

Jesus is real. 

And beautiful things happen when we get near Jesus: bodies are made well, hearts are healed, fears are stilled, hope is born, and shame is removed. 

So, will we name our sins and allow Jesus to forgive us and set us free? More than that, do we trust that Jesus could do this for our friends? And, if so, are we willing to do whatever it takes to introduce our friends to Jesus?