Summary
The Greatest Need
Throughout the Gospels, people seek out Jesus for many reasons. Crowds press in for healing, for bread, for spectacle, for argument. The wise men travel from afar because a star has risen Matthew 2:1-2. The disciples report, "Everyone is searching for you" Mark 1:37. Greeks at the festival say, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus" John 12:21. But seeking Jesus and knowing why we ought to seek Him are two different things. The account of the paralytic in Mark 2:1-12 cuts through every lesser motive and exposes the one need that lies beneath them all.
The scene is vivid. Jesus has returned to Capernaum, His Galilean home base, and the crowd is so thick that there is no room even at the door. Four friends, determined to bring their paralyzed companion to Jesus, climb the outer staircase to the flat roof, dig through it, and lower the man down on his mat into the center of the room. Surely the obvious request is healing. The man cannot walk; Jesus is known to heal; the conclusion writes itself. Yet when Jesus sees their faith, His first word is not "walk" but, "Son, your sins are forgiven." There is no protest from the paralytic. No friend objects that this misses the point. Jesus has named the deepest need they came to bring before Him.
This is the heart of the matter: the greatest need every human being carries is not physical, financial, or circumstantial, but the need to be forgiven of the sins that separate us from God. In our sinfulness we are tempted to mix up our needs—to treat lesser things as ultimate. The crowd of John 6 wanted to make Jesus king when He filled their stomachs, but melted away when He spoke of discipleship and the cost of following Him. We can be tempted, as one writer puts it, to treat God as a cosmic bellhop, or a genie granting our chosen wishes, expecting Him to exist for the repair of whatever we have decided is broken. The paralytic and his friends offer the corrective: they brought the whole man, body and soul, to Jesus, and Jesus addressed the soul first. This is The Need.
The word Jesus speaks—"forgiven"—carries the sense of being sent away. The sins are dismissed, removed, separated from the sinner. This is the very promise of God in Isaiah 43:25: "I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins." It is the comfort of Psalm 103:12: "as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." Luther rightly said: where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation. The Son who was born in Bethlehem grew up to bear our sins on the cross, was raised from the tomb as proof that the sacrifice was accepted, and now seeks the lost Luke 19:10 to grant the faith that grasps that victory.
The healing that follows is not the climax but the confirmation. When the scribes silently accuse Jesus of blasphemy—"Who can forgive sins but God alone?"—He answers their hearts directly. Which is easier to say: that sins are forgiven, or that a paralyzed man should rise and walk? To prove that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, He commands the man to stand, take up his mat, and go home. The visible miracle authenticates the invisible one. Whether Jesus would have healed the paralytic apart from the scribes' unbelief is hidden in God's wisdom; sometimes He heals on this side of heaven and sometimes He does not. But this much is certain: the man who came in faith would have been healed in heaven regardless, where there is no more grief, sorrow, death, pain, or paralysis.
That is why this was a good day for the paralytic, and why every day in which the absolution of Christ is heard is a good day for the believer. He came seeking forgiveness and received it; the healing of his body was an additional blessing laid on top. Hear the same word spoken now through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ: "Son, daughter, your sins are forgiven." Everything else God grants in His wisdom—health, provision, restoration, deliverance—is but additional blessing built upon the one need that has already been met.
Video citations
- "The Need" 1-9-22 — Would you open your Bible's please with me this morning to the gospel of Mark chapter 2, if you're using a few addition, you're going to find that on page 31 in the New Testament, mark the second…