Healing a Man with Palsy - Matt 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26

 

I was thinking about Jesus healing the leper yesterday and it occurred to me that he didn’t just heal this man’s physical pain, but he gave him his life back, he let him go back to his family and a profession and abundant living. I thought, how is that man like us? Many times we have physical pain that might not be healed until the resurrection, but we are all spiritual lepers. We are afflicted with the sores of addiction, habits, loneliness, and our innocence falls away, we are cut off from God the same way that the lepers were cut off from society. Jesus can heal us physically, but that is subject to his will. But Jesus will heal us spiritually, and that is subject to OUR will. If we fervently pray for physical healing, he may or may not grant it to us, but if we fervently pray for spiritual healing, he always will grant it to us, always, every time. And really if you think about it, we don’t know how Jesus physically heals, he works some biological “magic” and it works for us and we love it and don’t ask how. But when it comes to spiritual healing, we don’t really understand how that works either, but we have a problem with that, we always ask how and why and sometimes that gets in our own way.

Jesus and his disciples go back to Capernaum, which is the home of most of his disciples, and I feel that the Savior was very aware of the need of his disciples to be with their families as much as possible, especially considering what was going to happen to them after His death. While Jesus was in Capernaum, the house he was staying at was overwhelmed with people, “insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them.” It was really crowded, and there was a group four men who carried a stretcher like bed with one of their friends on it coming for Jesus to heal the man. Because it was so crowded, they couldn’t bring their friend through the door to Jesus so they went up and “uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay.” The IM comments, “We gain a great appreciation of the faith and determination of the man who was ‘sick of the palsy’ and his friends when we consider what would have been involved in their gaining access to the Savior. (The word palsy in this context means ‘paralysis,’ so the man could not walk to the Savior but had to be carried.) First-century houses in Capernaum were constructed of stone walls that were topped by a flat roof made from wooden beams, thatch, and packed earth. The four persons carrying the paralytic on a stretcher found that the house where Jesus was teaching was too crowded to enter by the door. They gained access for their friend by climbing up to the roof, tearing a large opening through the mud-and-thatch construction (or perhaps through a palm-leaf-covered awning), and lowering the stretcher down to where the Savior was. The statement that ‘Jesus saw their faith’ refers to the combined faith of all five, as demonstrated by their unusual persistence and united effort in striving to reach the Savior.” While I was reading this all I could think was “I hope that they fixed the roof before they left.” This is an excellent example of people helping others. That man couldn’t have gotten to Jesus by himself because he couldn’t walk, he needed other people to help him. I thought while reading this account that I wonder if these men were the paralytic’s ancient equivalent of home teachers. We have to help each other come unto Christ.

Jesus is moved with compassion on the man because of his faith and that of his friends and “he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” I always wondered why Jesus forgave the man’s sins first, if I was the man I would have thought “I don’t care about my sins, help me stand up!” But I think looking at it now that there is a very good reason that Jesus forgave the man’s sins initially, he was demonstrating the importance of spiritual healing above physical healing. Through the resurrection we will all have perfected bodies, but we aren’t guaranteed perfect spirits. We must work to perfect our spirits through the atonement, and that’s what grants us salvation. It is much more important to have a clean and perfect spirit than to have a perfect body. In this life, I think it’s hard because we are surrounded by the physical, we are in bodies, we interact with other people in bodies, our bodies require constant care and attention, down to the second. Try going without oxygen for a few minutes and see how dire your circumstances become. Try going without food for a few days and see how the body reacts. Our spirits are eternal and cannot die in the sense that their existence cannot end. Our bodies are temporal and can stop existing even in the space of a few seconds, it’s really interesting the fragility of our bodies and the transient nature of this life. But that is all we know because of the veil, so that’s all we focus on. Of course I would have focused on my inability to walk over my sins because that was what would have been the most impactful at the time, but in reality, in the eternal perspective, my sins being forgiven was hands down more important than an insignificant things such as being unable to walk.

On another note, I always wondered if maybe Jesus was forgiving that man’s sins because he had done something stupid that put him in that position of not being able to walk. He was obviously mentally clear enough to have friends, so I thought maybe he was doing trick off the roof or something and became paralyzed through his actions, though I’m beginning to doubt that theory.

Jesus forgiving the man’s sins was met with surprise and disdain because Luke tells us, “The scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?” The question then remains, why did the scribes and Pharisees, who hate Jesus so much, follow him around all the time? It would make sense to me that if I don’t like someone then I would just do something else. It’s a testament to me of the divinity of Christ that those who threatened by him spent so much of their time and energy trying to destroy him. The IM notes the increasing opposition to Christ, noting, “Opposition to the Savior is one of the themes in the Gospel of Mark. Mark 2-3 presents Mark’s account of the beginning of opposition to the Savior’s ministry. Mark records that the Savior healed and forgave the man with palsy, called Matthew to the ministry, ate with sinners, and healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. The scribes and Pharisees opposed each event, increasing their opposition from skeptical thoughts to plotting to destroy Jesus.”

The wisdom of God is greater than the cunning of the devil because they set Jesus up to answer the question and teach doctrine. Jesus “perceived their thoughts, he answering said unto them, what reason ye in your hearts? Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins, (he said unto the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house.” First, Jesus knew their thoughts, which alone should have been there “this guy is a big deal” moment. Second, he unapologetically forgives the man’s sins. Third, he commands this guy to stand up, carry his bed, and walk home, and he does. There are three instances in this encounter when all these people should have stopped and thought, “hmmm…. This sounds like something bigger going on here that I’m not aware of.” It takes real corruption and evil to say, “wow, look at this guy with supernatural power doing good and helping people… let’s kill him.” Crazy.

The IM quotes Elder Bruce R. McConkie as teaching why the Savior’s response was so profound, saying, “This even in the life of our Lord was visible and irrefutable proof that he was the Messiah; and it was so recognized by those among whom he ministered. He had borne frequent verbal testimony that God was his Father and had supported that personal witness with an unparalleled ministry of preaching and healing. Now it was his purpose to announce that he had done what no one but God could do and to prove that he had done it by a further manifestation of his Father’s power. Both Jesus and the ‘doctors of the law’ who were the present knew that none bug God can forgive sins. Accordingly, as a pointed and dramatic witness that the power of God was resident in him, Jesus took (perhaps sought) this appropriate occasion to forgive sins. Being then called in question by the scripturalists who know (and that rightly) that the false assumption of the power to forgive sins was blasphemy, Jesus did what no imposter could have done- he proved his divine power by healing the forgiven man. To his query, ‘Does it require more power to forgive sins than to make the sick rise up and walk?’ there could be only one answer! There are as one; he that can do the one, can do the other.” It’s like the saying, “no bad man could have written the Book of Mormon, and no good man would have.” No evil man could have healed the paralytic, the power of God wouldn’t have been in him to do so, and the devil doesn’t have the power to heal. On the flip side, no righteous man worthy of wielding the power of God would have lied about being the Son of God. Like when you go to shake a spirit’s hand, a real spirit, there manifested by the power of God, will not reach out his hand to shake your because to do so implies that he can, even though he cannot as he doesn’t have a body. But the evil spirit can’t resist trying to be real so he will reach out to shake your hand even though he cannot. I don’t know if that makes sense, it’s just a couple of examples of evil trying, and failing, to imitate something real.