By Not Known
Mark 2:9 raises the question – Which is easier, to forgive sins or to heal the paralyzed man with a mere word? Sin is paralyzing. It renders people unable to have a close relationship with God. It prevents people walking in His ways and moving beyond their present circumstances.
Rather than healing and then forgiving, Jesus first pronounced forgiveness for the paralytic.
The tense in the Greek used here for “forgiveness” indicates the “actual” forgiveness of sins and not a mere possibility. It is also in the “passive” voice indicating that the paralytic was “acted upon” in this forgiveness and contributed nothing of his own merit.
The answer to the question is that both are equally easy for God. But, both are equally hard (and impossible) for a mere man to do.
To know God, one must know God’s forgiveness in its entirety. There is no need to hope that Jesus will forgive your sins. His sacrificial blood is a promise that He will. It is a covenant between God and mankind that the debt for their injustices has been paid in full with no further requirement.
God’s forgiveness is encompassed by His hand of healing. It is a process of submitting to the Lord by faith those things that are crippling one’s ability, to seek the Lord in exchange for His strength and power and to work out one’s salvation (Philippians 2:12). However, once we do experience God’s gracious forgiveness, it is imperative that we exercise our newly acquired faith to walk out of our old life and way of doing things crippled by sin, to enter into the glorious freedom offered by God’s healing and to experience a heart set free.
Forgiveness enables us to make a fresh start. It is also the grace by which one enables the other person to get up with dignity, and begin anew. It all begins with the blood of Jesus. Are you living as one set free today?
Michele Tang