Giving glory to God
One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the healing recorded in Luke 5:17-26. Jesus was in a house, teaching to a large crowd. Some men wanted to bring their friend to be healed by Jesus but there were two problems. The house was packed! The second problem was that he was a paralytic. He couldn’t walk into the house. Carrying him through the crowd was impossible. What did they do? They cut a hole in the roof and lowered the man down before Jesus! It wasn’t exactly ingenious, but it was resourceful.
Why did they go to such lengths? I am sure that, in talking to various people about Jesus, you have heard something like this: “I believe that Jesus was a great man – a great teacher. Even a groovy guy. But divine? That is something he would never claim for himself.” This is a common way to try and be respectful of Jesus while disagreeing with those followers who believe that he is the only way, truth and life.
Jesus sees the lengths the friends have gone to, and he looks at the man and says, “your sins are forgiven you.” The people are startled, especially the religious leaders. Who is Jesus that he can forgive sins? The religious leaders of that day muttered, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” They understood the problem. If Jesus is merely a man, he is a blasphemous man who deserves condemnation.
C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity says, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”
Those who witnessed Jesus in his own day realized this choice probably better than people nowadays. Jesus claims divinity; he claims to be God and the message of these verses is that those who are forgiven their sins are called to glorify God. Once you understand who Christ is and what he has done. glorifying God is the only proper response.
What about the man who was forgiven? What happened to him? After the pharisees grumbled against Jesus, he said to them, “Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, your sins are forgiven you, or to say, rise and walk?” Jesus knows their hearts and he knows the answer to his question. If only God can forgive sins, that’s the harder one to say. At least it’s the harder one to say and it be true. Jesus then says, “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”- he said to the man who was paralyzed- “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” The man responded by doing just that! He got up, took up his mat, and went home, glorifying God.
Jesus must be more. Whatever you want to say he is, he cannot be simply a good teacher. The truth is, Jesus is fully God and fully man. He could declare the Father’s forgiveness upon that man because it is his to declare. This story also has a call to sinners in it. As a young person this story always meant a great deal to me. It’s not because I was paralyzed but it was because I came to Christ as a teenager and from the outside. Most of my friends had all grown up in the church. We would go to a Bible study, or a service and they knew all the hymns, they knew the answers to the Bible questions. I did not. I was the one who had a hard time pronouncing the Bible names because, in many cases, it was the first time I had read them. I always felt out of place, as though I was dropped into the middle of a room. Jesus saved me, and in response I give glory to God.
Pastor Everett Henes, the pastor of the Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church, can be reached at pastorhenes@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Hillsdale Daily News: Opinion
