Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town. 2 Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” Matthew 9:1-2

This is one of those passages that you don’t even have to read to know that there’s trouble at the end. Jesus knew how to push the religious leaders’ buttons because He knew how they thought. It was entirely predictable that they would become upset at his statement – and we don’t even have to read it to know that.

People, though, had faith that He could, in fact, heal others. Perhaps the man’s paralysis was a direct result of sin; we don’t know. Was he crying out to Jesus for forgiveness? We don’t know.

What we do know is that Jesus solved the eternal problem this man had, which solved the temporal problem as well.

That’s not always the case in healing, but it can be.

The older I get the more I realize that the theology of forgiveness is much more significant than I first thought.

True, the vertical forgiveness of God to man is very important, but the horizontal forgiveness of man to man is very complex. Fortunately we are not privy to those relationships and the complexities therein.

The point of this whole teaching is that a man came to Jesus and He forgave him (and healed him). That story is played out thousands of times a day, every day.

It’s also a cue for us to come humbly before Him often.