The Power of Jesus over Sin and Sickness

And they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, “Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven.” And some of the scribes said to themselves, “This fellow blasphemes.” And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, “Why are you thinking evil in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—then He said to the paralytic, “Get up, pick up your bed and go home.” And he got up and went home. But when the crowds saw this, they were awestruck, and glorified God, who had given such authority to men.

— Matthew 9:2-8 (NASB)

I’ve been reading through Matthew on an unofficial read-through of the New Testament this year. Since I haven’t read the Gospels in a while, I decided to start with them. So Matthew it was. 

The Background

As I’ve been reading it, I’ve been trying to see the main point that Matthew is attempting to get across. What is the main subject for the whole book? I had come to the conclusion before getting to this section in Matthew 9 that the main point Matthew was attempting to do was to demonstrate all the Old Testament passages that Jesus was fulfilling. And that is true. Matthew is writing primarily to the Jews. His purpose is to show them that Christ is the Messiah and King that was long ago promised to the people of Israel. We see this in that Matthew “quotes more than 60 times from OT prophetic passages, emphasizing how Christ is the fulfillment of all those promises”.¹ 

But there are two other main points that I have seen. (Most likely there are many more, but these are the two that I have been excited to see for myself.) 

The first is this. The purpose of the book is summed up by this verse at the beginning of the book.

“She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”

— Matthew 1:21 [emphasis mine]

From the very beginning, Matthew, under the power of the Holy Spirit, is moved to write of the purpose of the coming of Christ. He has come to “save His people from their sins”. In a way, I see this as the topical sentence of the whole book. The purpose of the book of Matthew is to show that Jesus has come to save His people from their sins. And He “will” do it. He will not be impeded from that purpose. That is His mission and it will be accomplished. (Matthew 4:17, Matthew 9:13, Matthew 26:28, Mark 10:45) 

In light of that, all the other things that happen in the book, from the miracles, to the healings, to the parables; those are all side issues with the one purpose of showing that He is able, and WILL save His people from their sins. (I said two main purposes of this book, and I will get to the second point soon.) 

So we see this main point above come to the forefront in Matthew 9. 

Jesus is surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of people that long to hear Him preach and/or to experience true physical healing by His hand. As is seen in all the Gospels, they all wish to be healed, fed, and taken care of. But there are a few that long for true healing, that is spiritual healing. These few long for forgiveness, and they know (by the gift of faith from God [see Eph. 2:8]) that this is what He is willing and able to do. This is why He is here.

The Paralytic 

 

So enters the paralytic and his four friends. And what an entrance it was. Jesus is preaching the word to the people when the ceiling of the house begins to give way (Mark 2:4, Luke 5:19). The four friends have dug through the roof! As the crowd looks on and Jesus looks up, the men lower down their friend down directly in front of the Lord, all believing that Jesus will heal him of his physical infirmities. 

But is there a more particular faith in the heart of the paralytic? I think there is. For it is to him that Jesus says, “Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven”. Why would he say this instead of, “get up and walk, your faith has made you well”? This seems to be what the man’s friends had faith for. It is because, I think, there’s a special, saving faith that this man has. His friends believed that Jesus could make him physically well. This man, from the way that Jesus addresses him (“take courage”), shows that his greatest fear, his greatest need was that of a sin-sick soul and he believed that Jesus could address that problem. The man feared for his soul. The man knew in his heart that he was a vile sinner. He knew his sin was far worse than a mere physical infirmity. 

Jesus always forgives those that come to Him with a broken and contrite heart.  

The man isn’t even able to speak in the presence of Jesus. He looks into the face of the Son of God and sees His holiness and then knows his utter sinfulness. But look at the words of Jesus to the silent paralytic. “Son, [or “child”] take courage”. Do not be afraid. Do not fear.  Jesus speaks tenderly to him. It’s as if he says to him, “Do not be afraid, I am here to take that fear away”. 

As John MacArthur so succinctly puts it: 

“The man is afraid because he’s a sinner. But how wonderfully does the Lord say to him, ‘Child,’ a word of tenderness. How thrilling to face the Holy One, conscious of your sickness, conscious of your sin, in grief and terror and fear and hear Him say, ‘Child.’ That’s the tenderness of Christ, to love the sinner, even though He was offended by his sin.” ² 

Among the Jewish people there was a belief, or a stigma, that if someone was sick it was because they had sinned. The sickness was a judgment from God. We see this belief played out in the account of the man born blind in John 9. The disciples ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” (John 9:2). Of this particular man, Jesus replies and says, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3). 

So, we see that this stigma of sickness being because of sin would have been close on the mind of this paralytic. He knew better than anyone, except Jesus, how sinful he really was. And he knew that, because it was a stigma of the time, the people attributed the cause of his sickness to sin. He would have lived with that reality. But beyond that, he himself knew in his heart the sinner that he was. And it was by God’s grace that he had the faith to believe that Jesus could save him from his most serious, eternity-affecting need—being dead and lost in sin and an enemy of God. 

The Scribes

And some of the scribes said to themselves, “This fellow blasphemes.”

— Matthew 9:3

And so enter the scribes. As seen in all the Gospels, the Pharisees and Sadducees are always watching Jesus very closely, hoping to see Him make a mistake worthy of death. In their self-righteousness they think to themselves, “this is blasphemy”. And as is seen in Luke’s account of this miracle, they know that only God can forgive sin (Luke 5:21). All sin is ultimately against our most Holy God and only He can wash us clean of our sin. 

But Jesus knows their thoughts. That, in and of itself, is proof of His deity. Yet, they miss that point. Jesus responds to them with a rhetorical question: “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, and walk’?” (Matthew 9:5). 

So which is easier? Forgiving sin, or telling a paralytic, “get up and walk”? If we get into a quandary in an attempt to answer this question, I think we’ve missed the point. 

Here we now get to what I see as the second main purpose of Matthew’s gospel. That is, to show the deity of Jesus Christ the Messiah, the Son of Man. All throughout the book, Matthew demonstrates that the prophecies of the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus. Here’s a few for your consideration:

• His birth (Matthew 1:22-23, Isaiah 7:14, 9:6-7) 

• His calling from Egypt (Matthew 2:15, Hosea 11:1, Numbers 24:8) 

• He would be called a Nazarene (Matthew 2:23)

• His ministry to the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, Galilee (Matthew 4:13-16, Isaiah 9:1-2)

• Jesus Himself explicitly states that He came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 5:17)

• He came to take our sicknesses and diseases ³ (Matthew 8:17, Isaiah 53:4) 

• He came as the Father’s Chosen and Beloved Servant, the hope of the Gentiles (Matthew 12:17-21, Isaiah 42:1-4) 

• He will speak in parables (Matthew 13:34-35, Psalm 78:2)

• He would enter Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt (Matthew 21:1-5, Zechariah 9:9)

• His betrayal, His arrest, and His disciples’ desertion (Matthew 26:54-56.)

(I’m sure there are more illustrations of fulfillment of prophecy in the life of Jesus. But, again, here are just a few to think on and hopefully look into for yourself. All of these things have been fulfilled and completed by His earthly life and death.) 

Matthew shows quite convincingly that Jesus Christ has fulfilled all the prophecies. He is the promised Son of God Who is foretold in Isaiah 7:14 and Isaiah 9:6-7. He is the Chosen of God Who is spoken of in Isaiah 42:1: 

“Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold;

My chosen one in whom My soul delights.

I have put My Spirit upon Him;

He will bring forth justice to the nations.”

— Isaiah 42:1

As well as: 

“He will not be disheartened or crushed

Until He has established justice in the earth;

And the coastlands will wait expectantly for His law.”

— Isaiah 42:4

The Purpose 

So what is the purpose of this miracle in the paralytic’s life? This is the point and answer to the question, “which is easier?”:

Both are easy for Jesus because He is God. 

There is no difficulty for Him in either of these two miracles of spiritual healing and physical healing. And the purpose of Jesus following up the spiritual healing with a physical healing is this—to prove that Jesus has the power to forgive sins. 

But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”⁠—then He said to the paralytic, “Get up, pick up your bed and go home.”

— Matthew 9:6

That is the point of the healing.

God’s own glory is His utmost desire and pleasure. He does all things for His own glory, but especially in saving us from sin.

“I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake,

And I will not remember your sins.

— Isaiah 43:25

Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Your name;

And deliver us and forgive our sins for Your name’s sake.

— Psalm 79:9 

...“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

— Romans 3:23-26 

I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name’s sake.

— 1 John 2:12 ⁴  

[All italics mine]

Just from a few sample verses you can see that He forgives for His glory alone. Not for us. It is for His own eternal glory that He has saved us and brought us into the kingdom of His Beloved Son (Colossians 1:13). 

That is what Jesus is doing here. Bringing glory to His own name by proving once again that He is God and He, as God in human flesh, is most able to forgive sins. And as a great gift to the man himself, He not only heals him of the worse condition of a sin-sick soul, He also heals the forgiven man of his physical ailment, as only God can do.  

Because, in the words of the scribes and Pharisees, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Luke 5:21, Mark 2:7). 

¹. Grace to You, Introduction to Matthew: https://www.gty.org/library/bible-introductions/MSB40/matthew

². Sermon, “Jesus’ Power over Sin”, Nov. 23, 1980, https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/2262/jesus-power-over-sin

³. This article was very helpful in my understanding of this subject. The author even touches on our passage in Matthew 9: https://www.knowableword.com/2019/02/01/context-matters-with-his-wounds-we-are-healed/ 

⁴. For a bit more on God seeking His own glory above everything else, see this article: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/why-it-matters-that-god-does-everything-for-his-own-glory