Seeing their faith

Matthew 9:1-8 NASB

Getting into a boat, Jesus crossed over the sea and came to His own city.
And they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, "Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven." And some of the scribes said to themselves, "This fellow blasphemes." And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, "Why are you thinking evil in your hearts? "Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, and walk’? "But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"--then He said to the paralytic, "Get up, pick up your bed and go home." And he got up and went home. But when the crowds saw this, they were awestruck, and glorified God, who had given such authority to men.


My thoughts -

You can pull a lot of things out of this passage. You could look at how Jesus says "your sins are forgiven" to the paralyzed man as he heals him. What an interesting thing to say here. Is he saying that sin caused the man to be paralyzed?

You could also look at how, in response to a miracle, rather than be happy that a man has his life restored to him some people got hung up on what Jesus said (your sins are forgiven) and accuse him of blasphemy. The story here should be the restoration of this man's body, not some hang up on whether the man who did it made some claim you think is wrong. A man was given his life back. Rejoice in that!

There's a lot that could be said about these things. But every time I read this I get hung up on part of what verse two says:

And they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, "Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven."

Seeing their faith. Seeing their faith. Not seeing his faith, but their faith.

This man had some good friends. They brought him to Jesus. They had faith that Jesus could heal him and Jesus, seeing their faith, did just that. This is not to say that the paralyzed man did not have faith. I don't know that. It doesn't really say. I don't want to say that Jesus couldn't heal him if he didn't have faith because Jesus is Jesus, I won't say that he can't do anything. The normal healing story in the gospels generally deals with the faith of the one being healed, though. Here we see nothing about the paralyzed man's faith. Instead we see the faith of his friends.

Are we friends like that? Do we see our loved ones suffer? Do we break at the thought of their suffering and take them to Jesus? Do we have faith that Jesus can heal them, that Jesus can rescue them, that Jesus can restore them and redeem them?

Can Jesus see our faith?

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8