How Jesus used the Pharisees' doubts to make his point
Christ's answer to the Pharisees acknowledges the main plank of their reservations as a means of proving his divine power.
Christ’s answer to the Pharisees acknowledges the main plank of their reservations as a means of proving his divine power.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr Coleridge shows us…
That the scribes’ hidden thoughts reveal a truth about sin and forgiveness
Why only God can forgive sins, yet he may communicate his divine powers to men
How Christ’s knowledge of their hearts corrected their misconception and proved his divinity.
He shows us that Christ’s reading of their thoughts was itself the first miracle of the scene: a sign that the same divine power which knows the heart also forgives sin and heals the lame – and that unbelief begins not in ignorance but in refusal to see what such knowledge implies.
For more context on this chapter, see Part I.
The Healing of the Paralytic
The Training of the Apostles, Part I
Chapter IV
St. Matt. ix. 1–9; St. Mark ii. 1–14; St. Luke v. 17–29
Story of the Gospels, § 139
Burns and Oates, London, 1884
Why Jesus’ timing in healing and forgiving the Paralytic was important
Who was in the crowd of religious leaders when Jesus healed and forgave the Paralytic?
Why Jesus said ‘Thy sins are forgiven’ before healing the Paralytic
Thoughts of the scribes
‘And there were some of the Scribes and Pharisees sitting there and thinking in their hearts, Why doth this Man speak thus? He blasphemeth! Who can forgive sins, but God only?’
In truth, the objection which these Pharisees made in their thoughts had a foundation. For sin being an offence against God, which cannot be done away with unless God restores to the offender His grace and favour, and removes the sentence of eternal damnation which He has passed upon it, there can be no forgiveness of sin except by an act of God’s mercy.
The very idea of sin as such rests upon the rights and the character of God, and upon nothing short of these. In a system of morality in which God is set aside and denied, there can be no true sin, and in the same way, there can be no true forgiveness of sin except by God. Thus much was true, and the truth which was contained in their thoughts was wholesome and necessary for a right appreciation of sin.
Thus the model of all penitents, the blessed David, had said in his great confession, ‘Against Thee alone I have sinned’—my sin is nothing short of an attack on Thee, an insult and injury to Thee, a rebellion against Thee, a defiance of Thee, involving, if such were possible, Thy destruction and Thy murder.
Power to forgive sins unprecedented
In the second place, it is clear that this power of forgiving sins, which is inherent in God alone, had not hitherto, in the dealings of God with man, been committed to others than Himself.
There was no ordinance or commission in the Old Law by which priest, or saint, or prophet could forgive sins.
But, at the same time, these Scribes must have known that many things which belong essentially to God can be and had been committed by Him to men. God alone is to be adored, but they honoured saints and prophets and angels, and in an inferior sense, those who represent God on earth.
God alone can know the future or the hearts of men; but He had committed the revelation of the whole scheme of His designs in the world, in the Incarnation and otherwise, and also the knowledge of men’s thoughts, to His prophets and saints, though ‘in part,’ as St. Paul says, and at certain times, and in a certain measure, according to His own wisdom in each case.
In the same way it belongs to God alone to work miracles, that is, to suspend or go beyond the laws of the natures which He has made, and yet this power of miracles, even the raising of the dead to life, had been sometimes communicated to His saints and prophets.
Not impossible
In the nature itself of the case, therefore, there could be nothing to prevent the communication even to man of the power of forgiving sins on the part of God, although there had not as yet been any instance of this communication in the history of His dealings with mankind.
Nor had our Lord said in so many words, ‘I forgive thee thy sins,’ but only, ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee,’ using the more reserved and modest way of speaking of Himself which He usually followed.
Our Lord’s answer to the thoughts of the Scribes was in itself, apart from the words which He used, an explanation of their difficulty in grasping the truths which have just been set forth. For it does not seem that a word had passed their lips, or reached His ears, and yet He spoke as knowing the thoughts of their hearts. This is perhaps what He had done in the case of Nathanael, when He spoke to him about what had passed in his mind under the fig-tree.
It was in itself an exercise of a power which belonged to no one but God Himself. Thus it implied an argument of the same kind as that which our Lord immediately went on to use from the exercise of miraculous power. It implied that, at least, God must be with Him, if it did not necessarily imply that He was Himself God.
But if God was with Him, as was shown by His knowledge of their hearts and thoughts, then He could not have been acting without the authority of God when He had told the palsied man that his sins were forgiven him. It was not true that to say this was to blaspheme; it was true that to say it was either to blaspheme, or legitimately to claim Divine power. And the display of Divine power in reading their hearts was enough to show that the last of these two alternatives was true, and not the first.
His remonstrance to them
And Jesus presently knowing in His spirit that they so thought in their hearts, answering, said to them, ‘What is it you think in your hearts? Why think you these things in your hearts?’
For, even if He had not gone on in any way to confirm by a display of supernatural knowledge or power the claim which had been implied in His words about the forgiveness of sin, still there was, as has been shown, an alternative open to them other than that condemnation of Him for blasphemy, to which their thoughts inclined. They might at least have suspended their judgment, or they might have felt bound, from all that they already knew or had heard concerning Him, to think that it was the most probable supposition that He had any power of this kind which He claimed.
They were, therefore, in danger of passing a rash and severe judgment, even if they did not express it. Then, having modestly reproved them for this, and also rebuked them by showing His knowledge of their hearts, which was enough to convince them as to His power, He went on to argue formally in the manner which has just been mentioned:
‘Which is it easier to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee, or to say, Arise, take up thy bed, and walk?’
The meaning of the question
This is often understood as if our Lord had meant to urge on them, not so much the comparison between the powers which might be claimed in these two cases respectively, as the truth that in both cases the words implied a power which was altogether above man.
He says, as it seems, that it is as easy to say one of these things, as to say the other, because the fault which had been found with Him in the hearts of His hearers was that of blasphemy, which consists in speech—in His claim to a power which belongs to God alone. As to the two things to which His power refers in these two cases, both are above man, though perhaps it might be said that the forgiveness of sins belongs to a higher order than the healing of a bodily disease or infirmity.
There is, however, a contrast between the two cases, to which perhaps our Lord’s words refer; for it is easier, in a certain sense, to claim a power our possession of which cannot be tested, than to claim a power as to which it can be immediately seen whether we possess it or not.
In this sense it is easier to say, ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’—as a false teacher, or a pretended priest, may go through the form of absolution or of consecration in the sacred Mass, and the like, and no human power can discern his imposture—than to say to a man sick of the palsy, ‘Arise, take up thy bed, and walk’; for in the latter case the result will not only not follow, but it will be clear to the eyes of all that it does not follow, and so the imposture will be detected.
The force of the argument
This being the case, the force of the argument on which our Lord insists is easily apprehended. He had used words which claimed Divine power in the spiritual world, and now He uses words which claim the same power in the world of sense.
‘But that you may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins (He saith to the sick of the palsy), Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thy house. And immediately rising up before them, he took up the bed or pallet on which he lay, and he went away to his own house, glorifying God.’
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The Healing of the Paralytic
Why Jesus’ timing in healing and forgiving the Paralytic was important
Who was in the crowd of religious leaders when Jesus healed and forgave the Paralytic?
Why Jesus said ‘Thy sins are forgiven’ before healing the Paralytic
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