Mat 9:7-8 | KingComments | STEP | While in the previous chapter the dignity of the Person of Christ comes more to the fore, in this chapter we see more the characteristics of His service . Here too, in each of the events the reaction of the religious leaders to the presence of the Lord and to what He does becomes visible. After the Lord has been declared an unwanted Person by the people of Gerasa, He leaves there. He gets into a boat and goes to the other side and comes to Capernaum, where He lives ( ). There they know Him. There He performed His miracles and they saw Him more than anywhere else. One of these miracles, the healing of a paralytic, is described here. In the deliverance of the demoniacs in the previous chapter we see His power over the devil and His angels. In the healing of the paralytic we see how He breaks the power of sin, forgives sins, and takes away the consequences of sins. The paralytic is brought to Him by four friends. He sees their faith, both that of the friends and that of the paralytic. He responds to that. His first words, however, do not relate to the body of the paralytic, but to his soul. With the words “have good courage” the Lord encourages him. Perhaps the paralytic was desperate. The words ‘take courage’ or ‘have good courage’ appear seven times in the New Testament ( ; ; ; ). After these words, the Lord deals with the cause of all sickness and pain: sin. He knows the sins that burden the paralytic. He must first be freed from this before he can get up and walk. First the conscience must be relieved of its burden, then there is power to live for the glory of God. The words “your sins are forgiven”, must have been an enormous relief for the paralytic. A burden has fallen off his shoulders. He could not live on with this burden. It pushed him down, paralyzed him. The Lord delivers him from it; He relieves him of that burden. On the cross He will take that burden upon Himself. In view of what He will do on the cross, He can forgive the paralytic his sins. What sounds like music to the ears of the paralytic, sounds like blasphemy to the ears of some of the religious leaders. It is precisely these leaders in whom, in this chapter and the following chapters, feelings of hatred are rising as a result of all the gracious works carried out by the Lord. They do not express their accusation of blasphemy out loud, but He sees their thoughts and the evil they think in their hearts. He is God to Whom all things are naked and open, He searches every man ( ; ). He asks the leaders what is easier: to forgive sins or to heal? They do not answer. The answer is that both things are equally easy for God and equally impossible for man. The Lord does not wait for an answer either, but provides proof that He has the power to forgive sins by healing the paralytic. He heals with a word of power, without prayer to God. He Himself is God. He is also the Son of Man. As such He forgives sins. As the Son of Man, He is the Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus ( ). Yet He can only do that because He is also God. He also forgives sins “on earth”. The earth is the area where sins are forgiven, not heaven or hell. A person must confess his sins on earth during his life in order to receive forgiveness of his sins. By both – first – forgiving sins and – then – healing, the Lord Jesus proves that He is Yahweh , the God of the covenant with His people Who came to them as Messiah ( ). Through the word of Christ, the man receives strength to rise up and go to his home. The crowds see what happened. They see only the outer miracle. This leads them to glorify God. There is also fear. What they have seen does not lead them to bow down before Christ to accept Him as their Messiah with confession of their sins. They see that He is Man and they also recognize the power of God in Him as Man. But they don’t know how to unite these two thoughts in His Person. They see in Him only an instrument of God’s power, no more.