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The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, \u201cWho is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?\u201d Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, \u201cWhy are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, \u2018Your sins are forgiven,\u2019 or to say, \u2018Get up and walk\u2019? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.\u201d So he said to the paralyzed man, \u201cI tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.\u201d Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God.\xa0Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, \u201cWe have seen remarkable things today.\u201d (Luke 5:21-26).

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Boy, which is easier to say?\xa0 With the medical technology we have to replace knees and reattach ligaments these days, it seems increasingly easy to say \u201cget up and walk.\u201d\xa0 And, with the stubborn determination we increasingly have to exact vengeance rather than restoration these days, it seems decidedly harder than it once was (if it ever was easy) to say \u201cI forgive you.\u201d\xa0

It really depends on how you take Jesus\u2019 rhetorical question, I suppose.\xa0 To think too hard about it is to miss the point all together, though.\xa0 The point is not about which is harder: the point is that Jesus can do both. \xa0Why?\xa0 He\u2019s God.\xa0

A lot of questions swirled about Jesus\u2019 authority to teach what he taught.\xa0 In those earlier occurrences of folks making reference to Jesus\u2019 authority in chapter 4\u2014Jesus never steps into the fray to defend himself.\xa0 He just keeps doing what he does.\xa0 But with the religious leaders in the room, now Jesus begins to address the question of authority directly.\xa0 Not his authority to teach, mind you, but something much more central: his authority to forgive sins.

This act of healing was a sign to the man, the leaders, the friends, the crowd, everyone that Jesus had the authority of God to set humanity free and make them well and whole again\u2014addressing not only the physical ailments that constitute the effects of sin on the created world and its creatures, but sin itself.\xa0

Sin is that deeper, relational ailment at the heart of all our ailments: whether the physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual.\xa0 When the right relationships of the Created world to itself and its Creator was broken by an act of two human creatures that stepped beyond the boundaries set for them, it knocked the whole thing off kilter in a way that imbalanced the relational world of the cosmos for generations to come: like a loose bearing that permits a wobbled spin that eventually serves to misshape the whole apparatus and all its connected components.\xa0

Jesus\u2019 forgiveness of sin is equally far-reaching though.\xa0 He does not only replace the initial loose bearings in the act of forgiveness, but he begins to restore the whole works.\xa0 Everything knocked out of whack by the counter-formation of sin is brought under Jesus\u2019 authoritative power to heal and make well.\xa0

And so Jesus forgives.\xa0 Firstly, he forgives: he deals with the initial problem, not just the symptoms.\xa0 But having done so, Jesus addresses the symptoms too.\xa0 He sets us free in every conceivable way that we might be bound\u2014in heart, mind, soul, or strength.\xa0 There is nothing in all our creational, creaturely experience that does not fall under Jesus\u2019 powerful word of healing.\xa0 So: what thing\u2014hard or easy\u2014might Jesus be healing within you today?

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