Week 38 Luke 5
A paralyzed man came to Jesus and Jesus told him your sins are forgiven. If Jesus had just healed the man that would have been one thing. But he told him your sins are forgiven. That was a problem.
In the OT only God could forgive a person’s sins (a regular person couldn’t). That’s why the religious teachers said to Jesus who but God can forgive sins? Everyone knew the answer: nobody can.
This created a dilemma for Jesus since it’s very difficult for a person to prove that he’s God (in fact it might be impossible to prove in a formal or – let’s say – scientific way).
So Jesus used an indirect proof. He illustrated his hard-to-prove & invisible divineness by using his super-normal power in a visible way (his method was based on the principle: if I can’t prove something absolutely I’ll try kind-of proving it).
He explained the logic like this: I’m going to do Impossible Thing #1 (a miracle) so you’ll have a reason to believe I can do Impossible Thing #2 (forgive sin).
Jesus did Impossible Thing #1 (healed the man). The audience now had a real event to mull over: since he did Impossible Thing #1 does it stand-to-reason that he can also do Impossible Thing #2? Decision-time.
Impossible Thing #1 didn’t absolutely prove Impossible Thing #2. But Luke does confirm that when Impossible Thing #1 happened everyone was gripped with great wonder and awe and they admitted that we have seen amazing things today.
Note: quotes from Luke 5: 20 21 26 (NLT)