Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Luke 5:17–20
“When [Jesus] saw their faith, he said, ‘Man, your sins are forgiven you’ ” (v. 20).
The leper whom Jesus healed in Galilee possessed great faith, knowing that our Savior was fully able to cleanse him of his disease (Luke 5:12–16). Not long after Jesus healed this man, He had an encounter with another group of men who evidenced strong, persevering trust in Him. This meeting is described in Luke 5:17–26, where we read about Jesus’ healing the paralyzed man who was lowered through the roof by his friends.
Verses 17–20 will be our focus today. Luke tells us that Pharisees and teachers of the law, men widely renowned for their expertise in the Scriptures, had come to see Jesus as He taught and healed people (Luke 5:17). While Christ was teaching in a house, a group of men came, carrying a bed on which a paralyzed friend of theirs lay (Luke 5:18; see Mark 2:1–3). The crowd was so great that they could not make their way in through the door, so they climbed onto the roof, removed a portion of it, and lowered their friend in so that he would be in Jesus’ presence, obviously in the hopes that our Lord would heal him (Luke 5:19). Here we should note the clear love that the group of men had for their paralyzed friend. They did not let the large crowd keep them from soliciting Jesus’ assistance but went to great lengths to see their friend made well. By their actions, they embodied Proverbs 17:17, which tells us that “a friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” Surely we can learn from their example.
Of course, Luke recorded this story not merely to give us a good example of brotherly love but to tell us something about Jesus and about our greatest need. We see in Luke 5:20 that when Jesus saw the paralyzed man lowered before Him, He forgave the man’s sins. This indicates that Jesus has divine authority to pardon transgressions, a point that we will consider in more detail in our next study. For now, let us note that Jesus’ first response to the man in forgiving his sins and not in providing physical healing indicates something important about the man’s greatest need. Our Lord would restore the man’s ability to walk (Luke 5:21–26), but He did not start there. While alleviating the paralytic’s suffering was important, his more fundamental need was to be reconciled to God. Receiving physical healing from the Lord is no minor thing, but without His forgiveness, eternal suffering will follow (Rom. 3:1–4:25; Rev. 20:11–15). Jesus forgave the man first because he needed that more than anything else.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
We should not treat the alleviation of physical suffering as a minor thing. At the same time, we should be careful not to make it the ultimate thing. The most important need of every human being is to be reconciled to God, to receive His forgiveness in and through the atoning death of His Son. True gospel ministry begins by proclaiming our need to be reconciled to our most holy Creator.
for further study
- Isaiah 1:18
- Matthew 9:1–8
- Luke 24:44–49
- 2 Corinthians 5:11–21
the bible in a year
- Deuteronomy 2–4
- Mark 11:15–33