Today’s passage: Mark 2:1-12
Helpful thoughts:
- Only God has the authority to forgive sin like this. When Jesus forgave the paralytic’s sin, He was letting the people know who He was.
- The scribes were not necessarily wrong to be shocked by this declaration of forgiveness. Jesus had been teaching the word, and now He had just done something that would have been blasphemous…if He wasn’t God!
- Jesus refers to Himself in verse 10 as the “Son of Man.” This is a name for the Messiah taken from Daniel 7:13-14. Again, Jesus was letting this crowd know who He was.
- The preaching of the Word of God, the forgiveness of sins, and the revelation of the Messiah were the most important activities in this passage. The healing was simply a sign to point to the truth of Christ’s identity and ministry.
Questions to consider:
- What might the scribes have been thinking after these events? How did Jesus know what they had been thinking?
- In what way would it have been easier to say, “your sins are forgiven” than to say, “take up your bed and walk?” Which one was immediately verifiable? Why did Jesus heal the paralytic?
- How did the actions of the paralytic and his friends display the faith that Jesus saw? What is the result of saving faith in the life of a believer?