2nd Week of Advent, Monday – 5th December 2022 — Gospel: Lk 5,17-26
Basic need for Forgiveness
In healing the paralytic, Jesus emphasizes on the importance of forgiveness of sins, which is the basic need of every person. Probably the paralytic’s friends were motivated by their friend’s physical need rather than his spiritual need. In fact their actions in getting round this crowd by letting the paralytic down through the roof is a great illustration of the same. However, Jesus used this miracle to prove his claim to have authority to forgive sins. His power in the visible realm over paralysis is manifested in his authority to forgive sins in the spiritual realm. From a human point of view, it’s easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven,” since there’s no way to verify it. From God’s perspective, to forgive sins is more difficult, since it involved the sacrifice of his Son. Jesus took that which is humanly more difficult – healing the man- and used it to verify his claim to forgive his sins. His forgiveness of sins explain two great truths: 1) Only God can forgive sins and Jesus is God; 2) Only man can bear man’s penalty for sin and Jesus is man.
