And when he saw their faith, he said unto him, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.
When the helpless paralytic was brought into His presence at Capernaum, Jesus looked upon the determined faith of his friends and of the sufferer himself and assured him that his sins were pardoned. He spoke forgiveness first because cleansing of the soul had to come before healing of the body, and because relief from guilt was the man's deepest desire above even bodily cure. That word lifted despair and brought peace and joy, and the bodily restoration that followed stood as visible proof that the Son of man has divine power on earth to forgive sins. The pardon had already reached his repentant heart at home when he believed Christ alone could make him whole, and it is still offered freely and fully to every sin-sick soul who comes to Jesus in faith just as he is.
Setting of the Healing
Luke 5:20 belongs to teaching given in a crowded house at Capernaum, identified as Peter's house, where disciples were seated near to learn truths they would proclaim throughout the world and through the ages. A man helpless from palsy was brought there by friends and relatives who hoped Jesus would relieve him if he could be brought to His attention, having heard His teaching and seen His miracles. This establishes the setting and the man's need, but does not itself explain the words about forgiveness.
His palsy had followed a sinful life and dissipation as its penalty, leaving remorse, despair, and loss of all hope of recovery. Priests had suggested God had cast him off, while Pharisees and doctors pronounced him incurable and doomed to die under the wrath of God. He feared his sinful life and resulting affliction made him unfit and unwelcome to approach Christ, and longed above bodily cure to be freed from the burden of sin with assurance of forgiveness and peace with Heaven. His friends' hope in Jesus led them to bring him nevertheless, showing guilt and physical suffering do not put a person beyond mercy. The Pharisees had wrongly treated sickness as proof of God's anger and kept apart from the suffering.
The surrounding account joins this healing with that of the leper, presenting leprosy as the most dreaded disease in the East, incurable and contagious and horrible in its effect, regarded as judgment for sin called the stroke and finger of God, deep-rooted, ineradicable and deadly, and a symbol of sin. By ritual law the leper was pronounced unclean and shut out like one already dead from the habitations of men, whatever he touched was unclean and the air polluted by his breath. One suspected of the disease had to present himself to the priests to examine and decide his case, and if pronounced a leper he was isolated from family and cut off from the congregation to associate only with lepers. The law was inflexible with no exemption even for kings, who must yield the scepter and flee society, and the exile had to publish his calamity, rend his garments and sound the alarm crying Unclean, unclean to warn all to flee his contaminating presence.
The paralytic was a wealthy sufferer whose riches could not remove guilt from his soul or disease from his body. He was drawn by divine power to the Friend of sinners who alone could relieve him.
Faith That Jesus Saw
When he looked, what he saw was the faith of the friends who had carried the helpless man and broken through the roof to bring him in, a faith proved by strenuous effort under perplexing difficulties. That faith was enough to move his love and pity to act. Their hope and determination also encouraged the sufferer himself to believe that he could be helped and his request granted.
He saw the paralytic's own faith as well, not only the faith of those who bore him. It had begun when the man repented and believed that Jesus could make him whole, recognizing him as his only help and the sinner's only helper. That faith had grown stronger with each determined effort to reach his presence.
The pardon then declared aloud had already been bestowed in the man's home before he was brought into that presence. There, when he repented of his sins and believed in the power of Jesus to make him whole, life-giving mercy had blessed his longing heart.
Forgiveness Before Healing
Jesus forgave the sins first because the mind needed relief and the soul needed cleansing from sin before the body could be healed and its healing appreciated. Health of soul had to come first, and only when forgiveness lifted the burden of sin with its unrest and unsatisfied desires, which lies at the foundation of much physical disease, could health of body be appreciated. Thousands suffering from physical disease still need the same assurance of forgiveness, and they can find no relief until they come to Christ as Healer of the soul, whose peace alone restores vigor to the mind and health to the body. The words spoken to the paralytic were at the same time an invitation to all others present who were soul-sick and burdened by sin to receive the same relief.
The man's palsy followed a life of sin and dissipation as its penalty, and left him in remorse deepened by suffering. More than physical healing, he longed to be freed from the burden of sin and guilt and to receive assurance of forgiveness and peace with Heaven. Relief from guilt mattered to him even more than bodily cure, and he feared his sins would bar him from Jesus' presence. If Jesus pardoned him, he would be content to live or to die according to God's will.
Jesus recognized his faith in the determined, strenuous effort to reach His presence, and answered his deepest need by forgiving his sins. He had already repented and believed that Jesus could make him whole as his only help, and his faith had grown with each effort to reach Him, while the faith of those bringing him encouraged him to believe his request would be granted. The word of cheer and pardon rolled the burden of darkness, guilt and despair from the soul and brought peace, hope, joy, and the peace of perfect love and forgiveness resting on the spirit. That assurance relieved the man's deepest distress, shone on the countenance, removed physical pain, and transformed the whole being before the astonished multitude, so that the helpless paralytic was healed and the guilty sinner was pardoned. He accepted the words in simple faith as the gift of new life.
The visible bodily healing that followed was evidence and confirmation of the mercy already received in forgiveness. His spiritual healing came first in the renewing of the heart, and the restoration of the body was performed to demonstrate and prove Christ's power to forgive sins.
Divine Power to Forgive
The word to the paralytic displays authority to pardon wrong, and the bodily cure that follows is given on purpose so that all watching may know that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins. The religious leaders standing by treat the word as blasphemy, because they hold that God alone can forgive sins. Yet the recovery itself, which awes the people and renews the man in mind and body unto righteousness and peace, shows Christ exercising the very power they supposed belonged to God alone, though they will not confess His superior authority.
The One who speaks is the Son of the living God, one with the Father, Christ in the Father and the Father in Him, so that God who alone can forgive is present forgiving on earth with the same divine power He has in heaven. He reads the heart, and His word of forgiveness has power to pardon sin in a way no mere human forgiveness can, for pardon comes through Him as the one Mediator and the only open channel of divine mercy through whom God forgives, reaching even the greatest criminal. Full, personal pardon is spoken to the sinner who lays the soul open, tells all in confession, and then believes the promise, and it is received not by keeping mistakes and errors continually before the mind but by looking constantly to the Lamb of God and drinking from that never-failing fountain. Through that one channel, accessible to all, rich and abundant forgiveness awaits the penitent contrite soul who rests in sincere faith, with no sins too great or small or dark to be forgiven in Christ, full and free. Such pardon is not at the expense of justice, holiness, and truth, for while justice demanded the sufferings of man, Christ rendered the sufferings of God, needing no atonement for Himself, and all His sufferings for us with all His merits and holiness stand open to fallen man as a gift.
This miracle of mercy is the most convincing and unquestioned proof that Jesus is the promised Saviour, given to meet the sufferer's deepest need for relief from the burden of sin and peace with Heaven. The stronger this evidence of forgiving power, the more opposers arm themselves with hatred and unbelief, until they are left to forge chains that bind them in hopeless darkness, since there is no reserve power to reach hearts so hardened by malice and skepticism. Bodily sickness is not always proof of God's anger or of greater guilt in the sufferer, which rebukes the judgmental belief that affliction is certain evidence of divine displeasure and retribution.
Healing and Its Aftermath
The man took the declaration of pardon in simple trust as the gift of new life, making no further request but remaining silently joyful. The light that shone on his face showed the peace those words had brought, lifting despair and replacing pain with relief. The marks of sin and suffering gave way to peace and to an expression of purity, with hope and relief written where gloom had been.
He rose completely restored in the full vigor of manhood, walking with a firm, free step and carrying with ease the couch on which he had been slowly borne away. His lifeless arms became quick to obey his will, and his shrunken, leaden-hued flesh was made fresh and ruddy with healthy blood flow. Hope was written on his face, and all gloom was gone.
His return home brought great rejoicing, tears of joy, and glad thanksgivings glorifying God through His Son who restores hope to the hopeless and strength to the stricken and brings light into the darkened home. His family gathered round scarcely daring to believe their eyes, and glorified God through Jesus for the healing of body and the relief from sin and suffering. He and his family became fully devoted and faithful to Christ who had brought light into their darkened home, with a faith no doubt could dim and a loyalty no unbelief could mar, ready to lay down their lives for Him.
Ministry and Personal Call
The saying joins proclamation of truth with healing of the sick, showing true medical missionary work in which soul and body are healed together. It reveals the great Medical Missionary and Restorer speaking with compassion to relieve the sin-sick sufferer by pronouncing forgiveness, with mercy ruling in His breast to bring relief to guilt. His life in this work enfolds the love, pity, compassion and joy of heaven. He perfectly understood the sufferer's condition, knowing the sickness of soul was far worse than bodily suffering and that for months the heaviest burden had been guilt over sins. By declaring forgiveness He lifted that oppression of sin, giving the most precious relief that could be received, replacing dark despair with hope and distressing doubt and gloom with peace and joy, so that with the mind restored to peace and happiness the suffering body could then be reached. Successful treatment is to follow this order, with physicians acting as spiritual fathers who first minister to the diseased mind, point the sin-sick soul to Christ the never-failing remedy, relieve mental suffering and violated conscience through Bible religion, and then treat the body.
Care for the sick is to minister to mind and soul as well as body, addressing the deepest need first as forgiveness lifted the heavy burden and replaced despair and distress with hope, peace and joy that prepared the restored mind to receive bodily healing. Bodily relief itself can at times make a person more receptive to conscience and spiritual truth. Healing of the soul is of far greater importance than healing of the body, and forgiveness of sins is central to it. Work for the sick and afflicted is therefore to do all possible for bodily healing yet be planned so those helped receive spiritual help, are shown the way of salvation, are led to repent and receive forgiveness with assurance of peace, and hear the charge to go in peace and sin no more.
Forgiveness is available personally to the penitent who comes to Jesus in faith, so that even a sinful and unholy person may be forgiven without making long pilgrimages to holy shrines. The word is spoken directly to young men and to all whose souls are diseased and disordered by sin, whatever their sins have been, when they come just as they are repenting of their sins. No special agony of soul is required and no feeling to be waited for that they think they must have, for as they advance to Him He advances to them. He sees their condition, knows how to deal with every sin, and as the great Physician saves to the uttermost all who look to Him and believe in Him as personal Saviour. Delay and refusal to come leaves them without the life they would not come to receive.
Full, personal pardon is given to the sinner who lays the soul open, tells all in confession, and then believes the promise. It is not gained by continually keeping mistakes and errors before the mind but by constantly looking to the Lamb of God and drinking from that never-failing fountain. There are no sins He will not forgive in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, whether great or small, even the darkest sins, reaching even the greatest criminal, and pardon is full and free. Unlike human forgiveness, which cannot remove sin, His word has power to pardon, coming through the one Mediator and only open channel of divine mercy through whom God forgives. God cannot forgive at the expense of justice, holiness and truth, yet while justice demanded the sufferings of man, Christ rendered the sufferings of God, needing no atonement for Himself, with all His sufferings for us and all His merits and holiness open to fallen man as a gift. The forgiven are given as full assurance of forgiveness and as clear a command to sin no more as if Christ spoke in person, and are called to leave sin behind.
The words are an invitation to all others who are soul-sick and burdened by sin to receive the same relief of mind and cleansing of soul. They present compassionate love toward the guilty and afflicted, bringing healing and peace by life-giving power as a message of salvation that should not be rejected. The forgiveness that brings light into the heart is to be kept alive by helping people in need. Those who have received this grace of mercy and peace, with its call to turn from sin, are to help and encourage others who have fallen rather than reject them. Following this way means cooperating with God, who alone can mold the mind He made, and when His Spirit works on the afflicted mind and leads to inquiry for truth, working for the precious soul by pointing sufferers to Jesus as the sin-pardoning Saviour rather than urging any special doctrine.
When the helpless paralytic was brought into His presence at Capernaum, Jesus looked upon the determined faith of his friends and of the sufferer himself and assured him that his sins were pardoned. He spoke forgiveness first because cleansing of the soul had to come before healing of the body, and because relief from guilt was the man's deepest desire above even bodily cure. That word lifted despair and brought peace and joy, and the bodily restoration that followed stood as visible proof that the Son of man has divine power on earth to forgive sins. The pardon had already reached his repentant heart at home when he believed Christ alone could make him whole, and it is still offered freely and fully to every sin-sick soul who comes to Jesus in faith just as he is.
Setting of the Healing
Luke 5:20 belongs to teaching given in a crowded house at Capernaum, identified as Peter's house, where disciples were seated near to learn truths they would proclaim throughout the world and through the ages. A man helpless from palsy was brought there by friends and relatives who hoped Jesus would relieve him if he could be brought to His attention, having heard His teaching and seen His miracles. This establishes the setting and the man's need, but does not itself explain the words about forgiveness.
His palsy had followed a sinful life and dissipation as its penalty, leaving remorse, despair, and loss of all hope of recovery. Priests had suggested God had cast him off, while Pharisees and doctors pronounced him incurable and doomed to die under the wrath of God. He feared his sinful life and resulting affliction made him unfit and unwelcome to approach Christ, and longed above bodily cure to be freed from the burden of sin with assurance of forgiveness and peace with Heaven. His friends' hope in Jesus led them to bring him nevertheless, showing guilt and physical suffering do not put a person beyond mercy. The Pharisees had wrongly treated sickness as proof of God's anger and kept apart from the suffering.
The surrounding account joins this healing with that of the leper, presenting leprosy as the most dreaded disease in the East, incurable and contagious and horrible in its effect, regarded as judgment for sin called the stroke and finger of God, deep-rooted, ineradicable and deadly, and a symbol of sin. By ritual law the leper was pronounced unclean and shut out like one already dead from the habitations of men, whatever he touched was unclean and the air polluted by his breath. One suspected of the disease had to present himself to the priests to examine and decide his case, and if pronounced a leper he was isolated from family and cut off from the congregation to associate only with lepers. The law was inflexible with no exemption even for kings, who must yield the scepter and flee society, and the exile had to publish his calamity, rend his garments and sound the alarm crying Unclean, unclean to warn all to flee his contaminating presence.
The paralytic was a wealthy sufferer whose riches could not remove guilt from his soul or disease from his body. He was drawn by divine power to the Friend of sinners who alone could relieve him.
Faith That Jesus Saw
When he looked, what he saw was the faith of the friends who had carried the helpless man and broken through the roof to bring him in, a faith proved by strenuous effort under perplexing difficulties. That faith was enough to move his love and pity to act. Their hope and determination also encouraged the sufferer himself to believe that he could be helped and his request granted.
He saw the paralytic's own faith as well, not only the faith of those who bore him. It had begun when the man repented and believed that Jesus could make him whole, recognizing him as his only help and the sinner's only helper. That faith had grown stronger with each determined effort to reach his presence.
The pardon then declared aloud had already been bestowed in the man's home before he was brought into that presence. There, when he repented of his sins and believed in the power of Jesus to make him whole, life-giving mercy had blessed his longing heart.
Forgiveness Before Healing
Jesus forgave the sins first because the mind needed relief and the soul needed cleansing from sin before the body could be healed and its healing appreciated. Health of soul had to come first, and only when forgiveness lifted the burden of sin with its unrest and unsatisfied desires, which lies at the foundation of much physical disease, could health of body be appreciated. Thousands suffering from physical disease still need the same assurance of forgiveness, and they can find no relief until they come to Christ as Healer of the soul, whose peace alone restores vigor to the mind and health to the body. The words spoken to the paralytic were at the same time an invitation to all others present who were soul-sick and burdened by sin to receive the same relief.
The man's palsy followed a life of sin and dissipation as its penalty, and left him in remorse deepened by suffering. More than physical healing, he longed to be freed from the burden of sin and guilt and to receive assurance of forgiveness and peace with Heaven. Relief from guilt mattered to him even more than bodily cure, and he feared his sins would bar him from Jesus' presence. If Jesus pardoned him, he would be content to live or to die according to God's will.
Jesus recognized his faith in the determined, strenuous effort to reach His presence, and answered his deepest need by forgiving his sins. He had already repented and believed that Jesus could make him whole as his only help, and his faith had grown with each effort to reach Him, while the faith of those bringing him encouraged him to believe his request would be granted. The word of cheer and pardon rolled the burden of darkness, guilt and despair from the soul and brought peace, hope, joy, and the peace of perfect love and forgiveness resting on the spirit. That assurance relieved the man's deepest distress, shone on the countenance, removed physical pain, and transformed the whole being before the astonished multitude, so that the helpless paralytic was healed and the guilty sinner was pardoned. He accepted the words in simple faith as the gift of new life.
The visible bodily healing that followed was evidence and confirmation of the mercy already received in forgiveness. His spiritual healing came first in the renewing of the heart, and the restoration of the body was performed to demonstrate and prove Christ's power to forgive sins.
Divine Power to Forgive
The word to the paralytic displays authority to pardon wrong, and the bodily cure that follows is given on purpose so that all watching may know that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins. The religious leaders standing by treat the word as blasphemy, because they hold that God alone can forgive sins. Yet the recovery itself, which awes the people and renews the man in mind and body unto righteousness and peace, shows Christ exercising the very power they supposed belonged to God alone, though they will not confess His superior authority.
The One who speaks is the Son of the living God, one with the Father, Christ in the Father and the Father in Him, so that God who alone can forgive is present forgiving on earth with the same divine power He has in heaven. He reads the heart, and His word of forgiveness has power to pardon sin in a way no mere human forgiveness can, for pardon comes through Him as the one Mediator and the only open channel of divine mercy through whom God forgives, reaching even the greatest criminal. Full, personal pardon is spoken to the sinner who lays the soul open, tells all in confession, and then believes the promise, and it is received not by keeping mistakes and errors continually before the mind but by looking constantly to the Lamb of God and drinking from that never-failing fountain. Through that one channel, accessible to all, rich and abundant forgiveness awaits the penitent contrite soul who rests in sincere faith, with no sins too great or small or dark to be forgiven in Christ, full and free. Such pardon is not at the expense of justice, holiness, and truth, for while justice demanded the sufferings of man, Christ rendered the sufferings of God, needing no atonement for Himself, and all His sufferings for us with all His merits and holiness stand open to fallen man as a gift.
This miracle of mercy is the most convincing and unquestioned proof that Jesus is the promised Saviour, given to meet the sufferer's deepest need for relief from the burden of sin and peace with Heaven. The stronger this evidence of forgiving power, the more opposers arm themselves with hatred and unbelief, until they are left to forge chains that bind them in hopeless darkness, since there is no reserve power to reach hearts so hardened by malice and skepticism. Bodily sickness is not always proof of God's anger or of greater guilt in the sufferer, which rebukes the judgmental belief that affliction is certain evidence of divine displeasure and retribution.
Healing and Its Aftermath
The man took the declaration of pardon in simple trust as the gift of new life, making no further request but remaining silently joyful. The light that shone on his face showed the peace those words had brought, lifting despair and replacing pain with relief. The marks of sin and suffering gave way to peace and to an expression of purity, with hope and relief written where gloom had been.
He rose completely restored in the full vigor of manhood, walking with a firm, free step and carrying with ease the couch on which he had been slowly borne away. His lifeless arms became quick to obey his will, and his shrunken, leaden-hued flesh was made fresh and ruddy with healthy blood flow. Hope was written on his face, and all gloom was gone.
His return home brought great rejoicing, tears of joy, and glad thanksgivings glorifying God through His Son who restores hope to the hopeless and strength to the stricken and brings light into the darkened home. His family gathered round scarcely daring to believe their eyes, and glorified God through Jesus for the healing of body and the relief from sin and suffering. He and his family became fully devoted and faithful to Christ who had brought light into their darkened home, with a faith no doubt could dim and a loyalty no unbelief could mar, ready to lay down their lives for Him.
Ministry and Personal Call
The saying joins proclamation of truth with healing of the sick, showing true medical missionary work in which soul and body are healed together. It reveals the great Medical Missionary and Restorer speaking with compassion to relieve the sin-sick sufferer by pronouncing forgiveness, with mercy ruling in His breast to bring relief to guilt. His life in this work enfolds the love, pity, compassion and joy of heaven. He perfectly understood the sufferer's condition, knowing the sickness of soul was far worse than bodily suffering and that for months the heaviest burden had been guilt over sins. By declaring forgiveness He lifted that oppression of sin, giving the most precious relief that could be received, replacing dark despair with hope and distressing doubt and gloom with peace and joy, so that with the mind restored to peace and happiness the suffering body could then be reached. Successful treatment is to follow this order, with physicians acting as spiritual fathers who first minister to the diseased mind, point the sin-sick soul to Christ the never-failing remedy, relieve mental suffering and violated conscience through Bible religion, and then treat the body.
Care for the sick is to minister to mind and soul as well as body, addressing the deepest need first as forgiveness lifted the heavy burden and replaced despair and distress with hope, peace and joy that prepared the restored mind to receive bodily healing. Bodily relief itself can at times make a person more receptive to conscience and spiritual truth. Healing of the soul is of far greater importance than healing of the body, and forgiveness of sins is central to it. Work for the sick and afflicted is therefore to do all possible for bodily healing yet be planned so those helped receive spiritual help, are shown the way of salvation, are led to repent and receive forgiveness with assurance of peace, and hear the charge to go in peace and sin no more.
Forgiveness is available personally to the penitent who comes to Jesus in faith, so that even a sinful and unholy person may be forgiven without making long pilgrimages to holy shrines. The word is spoken directly to young men and to all whose souls are diseased and disordered by sin, whatever their sins have been, when they come just as they are repenting of their sins. No special agony of soul is required and no feeling to be waited for that they think they must have, for as they advance to Him He advances to them. He sees their condition, knows how to deal with every sin, and as the great Physician saves to the uttermost all who look to Him and believe in Him as personal Saviour. Delay and refusal to come leaves them without the life they would not come to receive.
Full, personal pardon is given to the sinner who lays the soul open, tells all in confession, and then believes the promise. It is not gained by continually keeping mistakes and errors before the mind but by constantly looking to the Lamb of God and drinking from that never-failing fountain. There are no sins He will not forgive in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, whether great or small, even the darkest sins, reaching even the greatest criminal, and pardon is full and free. Unlike human forgiveness, which cannot remove sin, His word has power to pardon, coming through the one Mediator and only open channel of divine mercy through whom God forgives. God cannot forgive at the expense of justice, holiness and truth, yet while justice demanded the sufferings of man, Christ rendered the sufferings of God, needing no atonement for Himself, with all His sufferings for us and all His merits and holiness open to fallen man as a gift. The forgiven are given as full assurance of forgiveness and as clear a command to sin no more as if Christ spoke in person, and are called to leave sin behind.
The words are an invitation to all others who are soul-sick and burdened by sin to receive the same relief of mind and cleansing of soul. They present compassionate love toward the guilty and afflicted, bringing healing and peace by life-giving power as a message of salvation that should not be rejected. The forgiveness that brings light into the heart is to be kept alive by helping people in need. Those who have received this grace of mercy and peace, with its call to turn from sin, are to help and encourage others who have fallen rather than reject them. Following this way means cooperating with God, who alone can mold the mind He made, and when His Spirit works on the afflicted mind and leads to inquiry for truth, working for the precious soul by pointing sufferers to Jesus as the sin-pardoning Saviour rather than urging any special doctrine.