When I think about Jesus’ forgiveness, there are a number of stories that come to my mind, but the one that stands out is the story of the paralytic let down through the roof (Mark 2:2-12; Luke 5:18-26). The story is so well known that I won’t retell it here except as the details contribute to the theme at hand.

Perhaps one of the reasons I find the story so intriguing is that it challenges me. There are things about it that I don’t understand fully and I think they underline the heart of the gospel. One question seems difficult to answer: How could Jesus’ saying, "Your sins are forgiven" make a person whole? I could see how they might make the paralytic feel better inside, give him inner peace, and maybe motivate him to seek healing, but make him whole?

Another question relates to the telling of the story. Some friends bring a paralytic to Jesus presumably to be healed and Jesus forgives the man’s sins. If I were paralyzed, I probably wouldn’t seek help from an attorney but from a physician. What does forgiveness have to do with getting well?

Of course, we could spend the rest of this essay talking about the health benefits of forgiveness, but somehow I don’t think that is what Jesus intended by his equation of forgiveness with healing. Certainly, the Pharisees did not see this as a health-related issue. They jumped all over him for daring to do something they ascribed only to God: forgive sins.

In one sense, they were right. Only God can forgive sins; he asks us to forgive sinners, not sins. In another sense, they were clueless (and perhaps I have been also!), because Jesus perceives something in their objections that indicated a lack of understanding about the nature of divine forgiveness. He asks a rather odd question: "What is easier, to say to the paralytic, ’Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ’Get up and take your sleeping mat and walk about’?" (Mark 2:9).

In the Greek, the first option (including the article) is just four words; his second option is eight words, twice as long. What Jesus finally says to the paralytic—"I say to you, Get up, pick up your mat and go unto your house" (v. 11)—is fully thirteen words.

This is lawyer’s language, but the meaning belongs more to that of a physician than to an attorney. The idea of Jesus taking the shortest route to the man’s healing by saying as few words as possible is only surface. What Jesus seems to be saying is that to him there was no difference between forgiving someone and healing them. That is, Jesus deliberately chose the words he did, not merely to indicate his divinity (only God can forgive sins), but also to equate forgiveness forever with healing.

This is reinforced in the next two stories in which he first calls a tax collector, Luke, to be a follower and next eats dinner at his house with many tax collectors and sinners. When Pharisees object to his actions, Jesus responds with a curious play on words, "Those who are well do not need a physician but those who are ill; I did not come to call the righteous but sinners" (Mark 2:17).

When Jesus forgives our sins, he makes us whole. Sin is sickness; forgiveness is restoration. When Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery, he set her free to live a new life. When he forgave the demoniacs, he freed them from their demons.

But doesn’t God forgive everyone in Christ?

This is where the distinction made by the Pharisees is helpful: Jesus forgives every person in the world. This is his attitude. But forgiving people is not the same as forgiving their sins. Jesus forgave both thieves but only one submitted to his kingdom of forgiveness. Jesus prayed for his murderers, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34); how many of them accepted his forgiveness? Jesus forgave both Peter and Judas and the choices of each are revealing: one became a new person, the other hanged himself.

The Pharisees were right—only God can forgive sins. They were even right to equate sinfulness with sickness. But they distorted both truths by two misunderstandings: (1) they saw sickness as a divine judgment for sin instead of a consequence; and (2) they saw sinfulness as a legal problem with God instead of an internal sickness.

God did not send his Son into the world to be its Judge but to be its Physician (John 3:17). The word "to save" is nearly always used in Hellenistic literature in the context of saving or keeping or preserving or healing someone from something. Indeed we call his name Jesus because we believe he will save us from our sins.

As I said earlier, if I were paralyzed, I would seek a physician—one that could really make me whole—not a lawyer. Lawyers can help me out in all kinds of legal difficulties, but when it comes to sin, I need a Savior, one who asks me, as he asked another paralytic, "Do you want to be made whole?"

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