September Reading from The Message
When Christ is your king he is concerned with your whole life. He wants our soul healthy and, whether we like it or not, he plunges into the depths to confront the sins of our flesh. But as we see here in the second chapter of Mark, forgiveness and love are ever present when we belong to Jesus.
1-5 After a few days, Jesus returned to Capernaum, and word got around that he was back home. A crowd gathered, jamming the entrance so no one could get in or out. He was teaching the Word. They brought a paraplegic to him, carried by four men. When they weren’t able to get in because of the crowd, they removed part of the roof and lowered the paraplegic on his stretcher. Impressed by their bold belief, Jesus said to the paraplegic, “Son, I forgive your sins.”
6-7 Some religion scholars sitting there started whispering among themselves, “He can’t talk that way! That’s blasphemy! God and only God can forgive sins.”
8-12 Jesus knew right away what they were thinking, and said, “Why are you so skeptical? Which is simpler: to say to the paraplegic, ‘I forgive your sins,’ or say, ‘Get up, take your stretcher, and start walking’? Well, just so it’s clear that I’m the Son of Man and authorized to do either, or both . . .” (he looked now at the paraplegic), “Get up. Pick up your stretcher and go home.” And the man did it—got up, grabbed his stretcher, and walked out, with everyone there watching him. They rubbed their eyes, stunned—and then praised God, saying, “We’ve never seen anything like this!”
Scripture Insight
Concerned with Our Whole Lives
The injection of forgiveness into this story shows us something about the rule of God in Christ; namely, that it’s an aggressive, penetrating rule. It isn’t content to let sleeping dogs lie . . . or sleeping sins, for that matter. It isn’t satisfied with simply an external manifestation of authority. It isn’t willing to rule on the surface. It penetrates, goes deep into the character of its subjects. And when it gets there, it heals, restores, and redeems.
Christ as our King is concerned with our whole lives—with our spiritual paralysis as well as our physical paralysis. He wants us healed in our bodies and healthy in our souls. This is where the reign of God goes beyond what we normally experience. We treat symptoms; he heals diseases. We analyze effects; he deals with causes. We live on the surface of life; he plunges to its depths. And he will plunge to the depths in us when we open our lives to his rule.
As we look back these two thousand years and see these energetic and determined men lowering their paralyzed friend through a hole in the roof in a crowded Palestinian house, Mark’s concern is that we would see something significant about the reign of God breaking into our lives—that we would see Jesus as the first ray of light in the dawn of God’s kingdom. That reign is eternally present, which means it is present right now, penetrating deeply into us without passing over anything peripheral.
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