(Text and Audio)
Title: Which is Easier?
Some of the great teaching of Jesus come from what he says in a particular context. When Jesus is brought the woman caught in adultery and the Pharisees are requesting stoning, Jesus replies with a word, “He who is without sin, cast the first stone.” And he stuns and silences the crowd.
Just two weeks ago we saw Jesus, to the amazement of the disciples, actually rebuke the wind and waves and they obeyed him, causing the men to wonder, “Who is this man, that even the wind and seas obey him?”
Today we will look at a passage where Jesus teaching something quite phenomenal by speaking and doing, and yet not spoon feeding his audience the conclusion. In essence, makes a statement, then asks a question, then performs a miracle, and leaves the audience to make sense of it all.
Sound like fun?
Let’s get to it then.
(read/pray)
- The Conditions of Jesus Crossing the Sea Yet Again
The first thing I want to briefly touch on goes back to last week’s lesson. We see that just after the people in the Gadarenes begged Jesus to depart from their region he obliges them. He’s just arrived after the storm in the boat at this side of the lake, and now he gets right back in an returns to Capernaum.
(We know from the parallel account of the paralytic in Mark 2:1 that “his own city” refers to Capernaum, Jesus’ base of ministry operations during the early years, and not to his hometown of Nazareth where Jesus would later refuse to do miracles-Mark 6:4-5)
What’s the subtext here? I think it’s this: Jesus will not stay where he is not welcome. He leaves the Gadarenes to return to a place where his ministry will be received and appreciated. We never read in any account of Jesus’ attempt to reconcile or reason with the people of Gadarenes. All we read is that he arrives there, has the one incident with the demoniacs and the swine, the people beg him to leave, and he does.
My Point: Sometimes we behave like we want nothing to do with Jesus and then we are surprised when it’s hard to hear his voice. We expect Jesus to tolerate our indifference toward him. We may not mind if he’s in our lives, but we’re not going to treat him like a God or anything. That simply won’t do. Don’t fool yourselves: either Jesus is Lord of your life, or he’s not in your life. (More on that in a moment.)
II. Your Sins are Forgiven You
-v2 “Your sins are forgiven you.”
Why does this make the scribes so angry? (Take answers)
They most likely recalled a verse like Isaiah 43:25 “I, even I, am He who blots your your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember you sins.” In other words, the scribes knew that forgiveness was the right of the offended party, since this man had apparently NOT offended Jesus it was highly inappropriate for Jesus to forgive his sins.
Unless, the man HAD offended Jesus, because Jesus was divine and all sins were offenses against Him. The scribes caught this subtle teaching of Jesus and judged him for it…but they were lacking one crucial piece of information: Jesus was divine, these sins were under his dominion, and he did have authority to forgive them.
- Which is easier?
Jesus makes a good point with his question. Which is easier? To perform a miracle is certainly amazing, but it is not a new concept. God had been granting certain people (namely the prophets) the ability to perform miracles throughout Jewish history. But no one, up until now, had dared to claim to have dominion over sin itself. That is a claim to be divine, and that is blasphemy…unless you happen to be the Son of God.
When Jesus asks the scribes “Which is easier” in essence he’s saying: which will prove my divinity more? To do a miracle, or to forgive sin? To do something amazing, or to do something only God can do? If I simply do miracles you might say, “truly this prophet is a man of God.” But if I can forgive sins you must say, “This man is more than a man of God, he’s divine. He must be the Messiah, the son of God.”
Then Jesus says and does something very interesting in verse 6. “But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins, Arise, take your bed, and go to your house.”
Jesus is proving the greater ability of forgiving sins by performing the lesser ability to heal someone. Why? Because one cannot see Jesus forgiving the man. They can only hear the claim. They can see him heal the man. So he establishes the witness of what’s unseen by performing the miracle of what can be seen.
Example: Steve, I’m going to give you the opportunity to do something that hundreds before you have desired to do. You ready?
Call me a jerk.
No, really, call me a jerk.
I forgive you.
Have I forgiven you?
How can you be sure?
How can you know?
Could you be wrong?
Now, Steve, ask me for a pen.
Jim, have I given Steve a pen?
How do you know?
And there it is. In order to remind the audience, including the scribes, that Jesus has the dominion, the authority to forgive sins as easily as he can perform miraculous healings, he does the lesser, visible wonder, to prover the greater, invisible wonder.
The subtext to the audience would have been quite clear. I can heal people. I can forgive sins. What does that make me?
The reason that scribes are mad is because they catch this right away, they know the law and they know O.T. They know that any claim to forgive sins when you are not the offended party is a claim to divinity. The one thing they didn’t stop to consider was this: maybe this Jesus is divine.
Today many people make the same mistake when it comes to Jesus. They sit by and quote his teaching, they have expectations of Christians based on what Jesus taught, but then they think we’re crazy to believe this man was divine, was anything more that just a great teacher.
The tragic problem for these people is the same as it was for the scribes: If you do not believe that Jesus has the power to forgive sins, you don’t really believe in Jesus.