God’s faithful pattern of forgiveness

Sermon for Trinity 19

Isaiah 44:21-23  +  Ephesians 4:22-28  +  Matthew 9:1-8

We have before us today a lesson on the teaching that lies at the heart of the Christian religion: the forgiveness of sins. It’s a word that gets tossed around a lot. What does it mean? It means that God absolves a sinner or grants him a pardon, not counting his sins against him, removing from him the condemnation he deserved because of his sins and accepting him into eternal life. Forgiveness is just another word for justification.

God is the One, of course, who has to forgive sins, because God is the One who has been sinned against, no matter what the sin. And, of course, God is the Judge. It’s His courtroom that matters. He is the One who has the power to open heaven or to damn sinners to hell.

No one—no one at all, since Adam and Eve—can stand before God or enter heaven without the forgiveness of sins. As the Psalm says, If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But the Psalm goes on, But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared.

So God does forgive sins. But the all-important question is, how does God forgive sins? On what basis? And to whom? Those are questions that no one can know the answers to apart from God’s revelation. No one knows by nature how to make things right with Him. He has to tell us that.

And He did tell us that in the Old Testament. Through Moses, God set up a whole system, a pattern for forgiving sinners. You remember what it was? The sinner was to bring a spotless animal to the priest. The priest, as the mediator between God and man, was to make atonement for the sinner by killing the animal in the sinner’s place. As a result, the one who brought the sacrifice was given the assurance that God forgave him his sin, for the sake of the sacrifice he had brought. As the writer to the Hebrews says, According to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

Sacrifice. Mediator. Blood. Forgiveness. That was the pattern for forgiving sins that God Himself had set up. There was no other. That’s why the events of our Gospel are so striking. In it, we see a new system, a new pattern of forgiving sins being followed by Jesus. Or at least, it appeared to be new. We see Jesus forgiving the sins of the paralytic, apparently without the sacrifice, without the priest as mediator, and without blood. Was this “new” pattern of forgiveness legitimate? That was the question. Let’s look at how Jesus answered it in the Gospel.

Jesus had come back to the city of Capernaum. He was already well-known there, so lots of people crowded into the house where He was preaching the Word of God—so many people that, as Mark and Luke inform us, the entryway to the house was blocked.

That didn’t make it easy for the four men in the Gospel to carry their paralytic friend on his stretcher to Jesus. But they found a way. They hauled him up to the roof, made an opening in the roof, and lowered the man down through the opening, right in front of Jesus.

And then Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us what happened, using almost exactly the same words: When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.”

Now, that raises a few questions. Had the paralyzed man come for forgiveness, or for healing to his body? You might assume the latter, but are you sure about that? Do you know? You may assume he came for physical healing, but it doesn’t say that. And there’s no indication that the man was disappointed when Jesus forgave him his sins. So why do we often assume that he didn’t come for forgiveness? Probably because we’ve been programmed by our world to believe that physical health is the most important thing, that the material world is the end all be all, that comfort and ease in earthly life is the most important concern anyone could possibly have.

We should rethink that. The world hasn’t always been as materialistic as it is now. Fixing things with God before you die has always been on the mind of man, even though it seems like it’s now becoming an afterthought for many people. So let’s not make any assumptions about the paralytic.

The more pressing question before us is, how does Jesus dare to simply pronounce forgiveness on this man? That was the question that burned in the minds of the scribes. They thought to themselves, “This Man blasphemes!” That is, this Man is mocking God, robbing God of the authority that belongs to Him along, changing the Word of God that spells out how God wants to forgive sins: through a sacrifice, a mediator, and blood. He has no right, they thought.

But Jesus knew their thoughts. That phrase alone should make us sit up and pay attention. There is only One who knows the thoughts of a man. He calls them out for their thoughts: Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins… Jesus then goes on to tell the paralyzed man to get up, take his bed, and go home. And he does. But that miracle of healing was simply the divine seal and proof that Jesus, the Son of Man, had power on earth to forgive sins.

That demonstrates His divinity. The sins were committed against God and against other men. You may well forgive someone for a wrong they did to you. But no one can go around forgiving people for crimes they’ve committed against other people. No one, except for God. But Jesus is God, God the Son of God and the Son of Man. The paralytic had sinned against Him. We all have. Every sin is against Jesus. So He does have the power to forgive.

As for His method of forgiving—without a sacrifice, without a priest, without blood—well, was it really without a sacrifice, without a priest, and without blood? It’s true, no one had brought a sacrifice along. But God had sent one anyway, His own beloved Son, whose entire life was an offering to God. And it’s true, there was no Levitical priest and mediator present that day. But there was a Priest there, Jesus, a high Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek, as we’ve discussed in Bible class. He is the one true Mediator between God and man. And there was no bloodshed that came before the forgiving of the paralytic. But there would be. The Son of Man would shed His blood on the cross, and that bloodshed would be so precious and so valuable before God that it would be able to make atonement for all sins, past, present, and future.

As for the four men and the paralytic, they brought no sacrifice and they brought no good works with them to earn Jesus’ forgiveness or His healing. All they brought with them was faith—faith that had come from the Holy Spirit’s own working through the good word they had heard about Jesus. And here we see illustrated for us the pattern of forgiveness that God has chosen to follow: God, in His grace, gave Jesus to be the atoning sacrifice for mankind’s sins. Christ, the Mediator and High Priest, offered Himself as that sacrifice. He shed His blood as the price of atonement. The sinner flees in faith to Christ. And God, in His mercy, counts faith in Christ for righteousness, and pronounces the believer “forgiven.”

You can’t go to a house to find Jesus anymore, as the five men in our Gospel did. But what did He say after He was crucified and risen from the dead? All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Go and preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins to all nations. Forgive sins to the penitent! Use the loosing key! You have My permission! You have My command!

So what would Jesus have you know and believe from our Gospel? First, that He has the authority to forgive sins, as true God and true Man, as the One Mediator who shed His own blood as the atoning price so that you can be forgiven. Second, He wants you to know to whom He grants forgiveness: to the believer in Christ, to the one who recognizes his great need and flees in faith to Christ for mercy. Third, that He has given this authority within His Church, so that all ministers are authorized to forgive sins in His stead. And fourth, He wants you to know what forgiveness means. It means, “Son, be of good cheer!” It means peace with God. It means heaven is yours. It means that one day Jesus will stand beside your body, paralyzed with death, and will tell you to arise and go home to live with Him forever. And you will.

And what would He have you do? First, recognize your sin and come to Him in faith as His Word convinces you that He is good and merciful and powerful to forgive. Come, not only in your heart, but come to the place where Jesus is with His forgiveness, to His holy Church, to His Means of Grace. Come, not for a one-time forgiveness, but over and over again, as long as you carry your sinful flesh around with you. Second, no longer paralyzed by fear of judgment, now able to move your spiritual muscles, your joints, your hands and your feet, you’re free to serve Him without fear. Forgiveness is what frees you to love God and to love your neighbor and especially to love your fellow, forgiven Christians.

The forgiveness of sins is at the heart of the Christian religion, and as we’ve seen, there’s a new pattern for it in the New Testament, but it isn’t entirely new. It’s still the old, faithful pattern of a sacrifice, a Mediator, and blood.

In the words of St. John, If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world. Rejoice in God’s faithful pattern of forgiveness! Amen.