The Authority to Forgive

Luke 5:17 – 26

 

Authority matters. From legal authority to medical authority, governmental authority, employer authority, to even parental authority, we all live under authority every day. If you want to see an example of some of these, just watch what happens on the freeway when a CHP officer is parked on the shoulder, pointing his radar gun at traffic. The amount of brake lights suddenly lighting up is astounding.

 

Or perhaps try ignoring a doctor’s orders and see how that goes for you. Certainly most of us are experiencing the annoyance of governmental authority right now because it’s tax season. And well, if you don’t do what your boss or mom and dad say to do, let me know how that goes for you.

 

I had the misfortune, I mean privilege of, that for a significant time of my life, my dad was both dad and boss, he was the dad boss, ha-ha. And when I was a stubborn, pig-headed, petulant teenager and young adult (I got it from him anyway) working for him on the dairy, he often seemed to enjoy reminding me that it was -his- name on the sign, not mine.

 

It didn’t matter if my ideas were any good or not, in my humble opinion they usually were, he had the final say so. And if he ever felt that my speaking up and stating my opinion, or trying to direct traffic on the farm was a threat to his authority, he would quickly move to put me in place, in front of whoever was present.

 

I mean, eventually I understood, to an extent. He built that business from the ground up. He started in 1968 by walking into Bank of America with a distant relative who had a hay business to vouch for him to get his start up loan. Today banks, in their financial authority, demand a kidney and your first born as collateral for even the smallest of loans. It was easier back then I guess.

 

But regardless, my dad built his business, and kept it alive through not one, but two divorces, and the many, many, many ups and downs in the milk market. His insistence that it was his farm, and him having all authority was understandable. He didn’t have to wield the way he did, and if he truly had an eye for the future, he would have nurtured and developed his son to take over that authority. But old Portagee’s don’t like to share.

But there is one kind of authority that matters so much more than all the rest: the authority to forgive sin. In our passage from Luke 5 today, the question is not whether Jesus can heal a body, He’s already shown and proven repeatedly that He can. The question is whether Jesus has the authority to forgive sin, and if He does, then everything changes.

 

So, if you have your Bibles, open them up to Luke 5:17 – 26, or you can follow along on the screen or on your outlines. Let’s read God’s Word together.

 

Have you ever been doing something, either at home, at work, or out and about just doing your thing and you get this feeling that someone is watching you? If you’ve raised, or are currently raising young children you know exactly what I mean. You’d be lying in bed asleep and suddenly you wake up feeling a pair of eyes just glued to you that makes you jump.

 

But have you ever felt like you were being watched while you did the right thing? Maybe you helped a mom alone with her kids at the store load her groceries into the car and the person waiting for her spot is just glaring at you. Maybe you helped a person in a wheelchair, or with a walker, or a mom with a stroller navigate a difficult slope that didn’t have a ramp while people were waiting for them to get out of the way.

 

In our minds, doing right should be a no brainer, if we can get out of our own way, our preferences, and our own presuppositions. But when we do find ourselves doing right, it’s hard to imagine facing some sort of scrutiny for it, but that is precisely what happens sometimes.

 

It happens, especially when others are inconvenienced, or feel their own position and authority threatened by us doing the right thing. It’s what happened with my dad. Even if what I was doing on the farm had the right outcome, because it wasn’t done his way I often had to face the music afterwards.

 

In our passage today, Luke tells us that one day Jesus was teaching in a house. We know it’s in Capernaum in Galilee because even though it’s not mentioned here, it is said in the parallel story in Mark’s Gospel. In Mark, which tradition holds that Mark’s wrote down Peter’s account of Jesus life and ministry, it is said that Jesus came home. We know that Capernaum, not Nazareth in the hills became Jesus’ home base. Scholars think that the house might actually be Peter’s house.

This time, however, Jesus had more eyes on Him than just the crowd. Enter the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. This is their first mention in the Gospel of Luke, and it’s significant. The Pharisees were the most influential of the three major Jewish sects (the other two being the Sadducees and the Essenes). They first show up in recorded history in the second century B.C. in the Jewish historian Josephus’s historical work titled, Antiquities.

 

They viewed strict adherence to both the written Law and their oral traditions, of which there were hundreds, as the primary means of remaining faithful to God and safeguarding Israel’s spiritual purity.  As the religious rulers and elite, they sought to impose this standard on everyone, even when they neglected to meet it themselves.

 

Essentially, they functioned as the theological gatekeepers of Israel, if anything or anyone was making a stir from a religious and theological perspective, they were there to witness, evaluate, and pass their judgement on it.

 

And so here’s Jesus, in a house, teaching and preaching the Word of God, the good news of the kingdom of God with the eyes of the Pharisees locked on him, watching, waiting, listening because despite Jesus doing good and right, they’re not happy about Him and His work.

 

To this point, Jesus has already done some mighty works and signs. He’s already demonstrated His authority over demons by driving out the demon in the man in the synagogue. He’s demonstrated His authority over sickness by rebuking and driving out the fever in Peter’s mother-in-law.

 

He’s demonstrated His authority over nature by causing the miraculous catch of fish that led to His calling His first disciples, and He’s demonstrated His authority over ritual impurity by healing the leper. What else does He have the authority to do?

 

Word about Jesus had certainly spread far and wide. Luke writes that the Pharisees and the teachers of the law had come from “every village of Galilee and from Judea and from Jerusalem.” His mighty works, His power, and His authority in His teaching and all those things He had done had reached the ears of the Pharisees in all of 1^st century Israel, and their hackles were up.

The truth is that religious knowledge does not guarantee spiritual insight. I want you to understand that you could have all the religious head knowledge, and not know Jesus, or recognize His authority, in your heart.

 

Then Luke adds that the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. Despite the added scrutiny from the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, those who claimed to know and follow precisely what the Lord commanded, the power of God was active and on display in that house. The power of the Lord God was with Jesus to do everything He was doing because Jesus is in perfect unity with the Father and the Spirit.

 

So this is the scene we find Jesus in. He’s teaching and preaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were there watching Him closely, and it is a packed house. So packed, that when some men, four guys, came along bringing their paralyzed friend on a mat, or stretcher, to lay him at Jesus’ feet they couldn’t even get in.

 

I mean look at the house. This is how houses were built in 1^st century Israel. Square, stairs along the outside of them, with flat roofs that were usually made of something like mud and thatch where the homeowners would actually spend time up there working, or drying a crop, or something like that.

 

Can you imagine this scene? The crowd flowing out the door, four guys carrying their paralyzed friend on a mat and no one lets them in. Of course no one lets them, everyone wants to see Jesus, everyone wants their bit of healing and seeing the mighty work Jesus has been doing. So instead of throwing in the towel, saying forget it, and going home, they go and get creative.

 

Verse 19 tells us that when they couldn’t find a way in because of the crowd, that they carry their buddy on the stretcher up those narrow stairs to the roof, where they set him down and begin making a hole in the roof! And then they lowered him on his mat through the hole they just made in the roof into the middle of the crowd, right – in front – of Jesus.

 

Can you imagine the scene below? Jesus is teaching and preaching, Pharisees are watching closely, the crowd is expectantly listening and receiving healing, and suddenly there’s a hole in the roof and a guy being lowered through it. I bet the homeowner was a little peeved.

 

And when Jesus saw the lengths that these guys went through to get their friend at the feet of Jesus, the amazing happens. Luke tells us in v. 20 that when Jesus saw their faith… Jesus saw their faith, and was moved to do something. He saw the faith of the paralyzed man’s friends.

 

Nothing stopped those guys from getting their friend to Jesus. That’s persistence, that’s the draw of Jesus, that’s faith in what Jesus can do. Get yourself some friends like these guys, who will stop at nothing to bring you to Jesus. Better yet, you be a friend like these guys.

 

Be a friend like these guys because they wouldn’t stop at nothing to get their friend who needed healing to get to the man that they heard could make the lame walk again. This guy probably didn’t have much hope left that he’d ever walk again, but his four friends had enough hope for him, that’s real friendship right there. The friends’ bold, persistent faith demonstrates that true faith acts, and God honors it.

 

Make note of that because it’s important. Those friends quite likely had a very incomplete faith because no one truly realized at this point who Jesus truly was, God incarnate. Even the disciples struggled to grasp that reality. And yet, Jesus saw them, He saw their faith, as incomplete as it was, and He acted on it, He honored their faith.

 

So don’t ever think that your faith can’t impact the life of someone else because you think it’s lacking. Even when life gets hard and you feel like your faith just isn’t there, God honors what faith you have. And when you feel like you just don’t have enough, know that your church family and friends have enough faith for you.

 

 Let me tell you, when those women and men sit at the table in the hall on Thursday mornings for prayer group, they storm heavens gates. Their faith is tearing holes in roofs and bringing the needs of everyone they can think of to the feet of Jesus, and it’s powerful and it’s moving. And trust that God hears them all and acts according to His sovereign will.

 

And so in our passage today, Jesus sees the faith of the paralytic’s friends, and he acts. But he does something shocking on a few different levels. Again in v.20, He says to the man, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

 

What? They weren’t asking for the forgiveness of sins, why does Jesus forgive the man his sins?

I bet the friends up on the roof having lowered the man in there are like, umm… Jesus, that’s not what we brought him here for. In case you didn’t notice Jesus, he’s paralyzed, he can’t walk. You’ve been in here healing people; this guy needs healing too Jesus.

 

What many of us today fail to understand is that during in 1^st century Judaism, many, including the Pharisees and teachers of the law, believed that there was a general connection between sin and suffering, including having a physical disability. The idea stemmed from OT passages where sin sometimes resulted in physical judgement from God.

 

Mind you, the belief was not universally absolute, but it was common. By the time of the NT, many Jes still assumed a direct connection between sin and physical affliction. You can see this assumption on display in John 9:1 – 3 when Jesus’ own disciples ask Him about a blind man: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

 

Now Jesus rejects that simplistic cause-and-effect idea there, showing that not all sickness is the result of specific personal sin. The truth is that sickness is in the world as a result of Adam & Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden. There is sickness in the world because we live in a fallen world.

 

But God has a purpose for sickness, and there indeed was a purpose for the paralytic in our passage today, even if it isn’t expressly stated. Jesus knew exactly what that man needed, and He knew exactly what He was doing.

 

He knew that the man’s greatest need was not physical healing, but the forgiveness of sins. That the man certainly was sinful is a biblical truth because we all are. As Scripture teaches “There is none righteous, not one,” and “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

 

But that does not mean that his paralysis was a result of his own personal sin, it just means that the man, like you and I, lived in a fallen world full of affliction.

 

What it does mean, is that despite his desperate physical condition, what he desperately needed most was the forgiveness of his sins, whether he recognized it or not.

God draws people to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, and that faith then pursues Christ, and spiritual needs take priority over visible ones. Don’t get me wrong, Christ cares about our physical wellbeing.

 

Understand that we’re embodied souls, Scripture lays out how we’re supposed to care for these bodies God has given us. But Christ’s primary concern is our soul, our spiritual needs. That always comes first.

 

But when we open our eyes, when God opens the eyes of our hearts, we see not only our own spiritual paralysis and desperate need for forgiveness, but we see the same desperate spiritual need in others. And that’s when we move in faith like the paralytic’s friends, or we pray for friends like his. Spiritual needs take priority over visible ones.

 

Now, beyond knowing what the paralyzed man needed most, Jesus also knew exactly what He was saying, and the stir it was about to cause. Remember the last time Jesus knew the thoughts of people it was the crowd in Nazareth, His hometown. It was what led to them trying to throw Jesus off a cliff.

 

Here it’s the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. They waited, watched, and listened and witnessed Jesus say out loud that this man’s sins were forgiven. They knew the Law inside and out, even if they were hypocrites who didn’t really keep it or twisted it to suit their needs.

 

They immediately begin thinking to themselves, v.21, who is this guy who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins except for God alone? You see, the Pharisees may have missed or ignored much, but this part of their theology was spot on. Who can forgive sins except God alone?

 

This is the theological center of our passage; this reveals the truth about God in our Scripture today. The Pharisees are right, only God alone can forgive sins, so who does Jesus think He is saying to this man that his sins are forgiven? Well, we know who Jesus is even if the Pharisees here don’t, and ultimately refuse to believe. We know that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, the second person of the Trinity, God the Son.

 

But Jesus perceives their thoughts, He knew what they were thinking, so He calls them out, “Why are you thinking these things in your heart?” And then He poses a question, a riddle really. Verse 23, “Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk?”

Which is easier to say? Well, forgiveness is invisible, no one could disprove if your sins are forgiven or not. But physical healing is visible, quite visible, and anyone could disprove healing if no healing actually took place.

 

But, since only God alone can forgive sins and since many people have performed healings, both in and out of the Bible, forgiving sins is much harder to actually do. It’s harder to do because only God alone can do that.

 

The truth that’s being revealed here, don’t miss this, is that Jesus has the divine authority to forgive sins because Jesus Christ is fully God, in perfect unity with the Father and Spirit, and His forgiveness brings true restoration.

 

When the Pharisees think to themselves that only God can forgive sins He doesn’t argue with them. Rather, He agrees with them. He basically says, yeah, you’re right, only God can forgive sins, and Jesus reveals to them precisely who He is truly is, God the Son.

 

Jesus wants the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law to know that the He is the Son of Man, v.24. He wants them to know that He does indeed have the authority to forgive sins, that He has the authority to actually do the thing that only God can do but no one can see.

 

He does this by demonstrating His power by also doing the thing that can be seen, by healing the paralyzed man. To prove His authority, Jesus says to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” And immediately the man stood up in front of God, the pharisees, and everyone, picked up his stuff, and went home, praising God.

 

And the crowd is just amazed. Out of all the healings and teaching Jesus had been doing in the house, this amazes them, and they praise God for it too, and they can’t help but admit that they had indeed seen something remarkable that day.

 

This mighty work, this healing sign of Jesus’ authority validates His invisible, divine authority. The forgiveness that was unseen is now confirmed by what everyone can see – full restoration of the man.

 

 

Sin is humanity’s greatest problem. The deepest paralysis you will ever face is your sin. Forgiveness is your greatest need, and Jesus poses the divine authority to grant it. The healing is not the ultimate work, forgiveness is. Jesus proves His divine authority to forgive sins by demonstrating a power that only God possesses.

 

Because Jesus has the divine authority to forgive sin, you can bring all of your sins to Him and lay them down at His feet and experience the spiritual healing that only Christ’s forgiveness can bring.

 

Notice what our passage does not say. It does not say: try harder. It doesn’t say: clean yourself up first. It doesn’t say: earn your restoration. It shows a helpless man carried to Jesus who addresses deepest needs first.

 

We all face the paralyzing effects of sin and doubt, and we often seek healing or help without acknowledging our desperate need for God’s grace and forgiveness. Like the paralytic, you might often try to solve your problems on your own or focus on your perceived, visible needs.

 

But Jesus demonstrates His divine authority to forgive your sins, proving that restoration begins with spiritual healing. True restoration begins when you bring your sins to Jesus, the one with the authority to forgive and make you whole.

 

So I want you to ask yourself this question, who truly has authority in your life? Not just part of your life, but in all of your life? Is it you yourself? Society? Or is it Christ? If anyone other than Jesus Christ sits on the throne of your life, you have a sin problem.

 

Can you imagine the paralytic man walking home, fully restored and praising God? So, where in your life do you need Jesus’s authority today? Wherever in your life that is, take heart, because as you’ve seen today, Jesus has the authority to forgive your sin and take His seat on the throne of your life.

 

And just in case you needed further proof of Jesus’ authority beyond this passage, I want you to look at this with me for just a second. The Greek word Luke uses in v.25 to say that the paralytic stood up is the same word Luke uses later in Acts to say that Christ had risen from the dead.

 

I want you to make note of this: the objective, verifiable demonstration of God’s power and forgiveness for sins is the resurrection of Christ; the standing up again of Jesus from the dead.

 

So trust Him completely. Not partially, not as a backup, not as an advisor or good teacher, but fully and completely. Because authority determines trust. That day, a man walked home. But something greater walked out into the open: The authority of heaven had been exercised on earth.

 

The authority to forgive was standing in the room. And He still is. Jesus alone has the authority to forgive – therefore He alone deserves your trust. So there’s four things I want you to do in response to this message today.

 

First, I want you to bring your deepest needs to Jesus. Not just the surface level struggles and sins, but your deepest, darkest, most difficult and paralyzing sins. Bring them all and lay them down at the foot of the cross.

 

Second, I want you to act boldly in faith. You need to trust that Jesus can indeed heal and restore you spiritually, as well as physically and socially. Jesus wants to heal your deepest spiritual needs first, and when that’s being done, the rest follows. The stress of guilt stops wreaking havoc on your body, and you can experience honest and open fellowship with your brothers and sisters in Christ.

 

Third, I want you to recognize and submit to Christ’s authority over your life. Too often we’re quick to receive Jesus as Savior, but we’re much slower to receive Him as Lord. But He is both, and as such you must recognize and submit to His authority.

 

And lastly, I want you to live a restored life, glorifying God with every part of it. You are not defined by your sins, if you believe in Christ He has removed your guilt, so don’t keep yourself paralyzed by it. Live restored, obedient lives, and always give glory to God because He has made you whole.

 

Your greatest paralysis is not physical, it is spiritual. Like the paralytic, you cannot walk toward restoration on your own. And no priest, no ritual, no out of this world moral effort can remove your guilt.

Only Jesus, only the One with authority to forgive can make you whole. Only He alone can remove your guilt. Only He alone can lift your burden. Only He alone can restore you to God. Come to Him, He still forgives.

 

Let’s pray.