Get Up and Walk (Mark 1.40-2.12)

I love the show Survivor.

If you’ve never seen it, it’s almost always the same thing. A bunch of people get stranded on an island somewhere and have to survive for about a month. They play games to win rewards and immunity, and every other day they have to vote to eliminate someone from the team, until there is only one survivor left at the end.

In some ways, it’s very predictable, because it’s a game, and inevitably in a game, there is a winner, and there is a loser. You know what’s going to happen.

But how it happens is why it’s so fun. (I’m aware that what I’m saying is true about team sports too, but I hate sports and I like Survivor, so that’s the illustration I’m going with.) The “how” is what makes it great. The right bit of information, given at the right time, or the right challenge won at the right time, changes everything.

Essentially, in today’s text we see two very similar stories that play out in two very different ways. We see Jesus healing two different people: one is a leper and one is a paralytic. But how those two events play out could not be more different.

“He Began to Talk Freely” (1.40-45)

If you remember the context, Jesus is at the beginning of his ministry. He’s traveling through Galilee, preaching and healing and casting out demons. And people, as we’ll see, are starting to take notice of him.

V. 40:

40 And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.”

Leprosy, as we know, is a skin disease that is often highly contagious. The important thing to know is that lepers were ceremonially unclean, perpetually: they were outcasts from society, isolated from those who didn’t want to become unclean themselves. So this leper was bold for even coming close to Jesus—or perhaps he was just desperate.

But Jesus’s response is predictably compassionate. V. 41-42:

41 Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” 42 And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.

What we see here are Jesus’s compassion and Jesus’s power. He reaches out and touches the man with leprosy—which was unheard of—and then he explicitly tells him that he wants to heal him. And with two simple words, “Be clean,” the man is immediately healed.

It’s extraordinary, but for Jesus’s it’s actually fairly standard. Jesus does what he does: he sees a person in need, he is moved with compassion, and he comes to the person’s help.

What is interesting is what happens next. V. 43-44:

43 And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once, 44 and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.”

This is the first time in this gospel that Jesus tells someone who is healed to not say anything about it, but it won’t be the last. He tells the healed man to go to the priest and give the offering required (usually a pair of birds to be sacrificed). There was a process to follow for this man to become ceremonially clean again, and thus re-enter society. His coming to the priest would also serve as “a proof to them”, a way of showing the priests that Jesus hadn’t come to go against the law of Moses.

But the man’s joy supersedes Jesus’s command. V. 45:

45 But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places, and people were coming to him from every quarter.

This is usually why Jesus tells someone who is healed not to say anything. If someone runs up to you in the street and says, “That guy on the corner is giving out money!”, what will you want to do? You’ll want to go see that man, and maybe get some money. It’s not that Jesus doesn’t want to heal, but if he heals everyone, that’s all he’ll be doing, all the time. And he didn’t come mainly to heal; he came to preach the good news of the kingdom of God.

Because the healed man tells everyone what happened, Jesus can’t go into any town to preach the gospel, because people immediately swarm him.

Now, a couple of things before we move on. Mark doesn’t say that the healed man had bad intentions; he let his joy get the best of him. And Mark also doesn’t say that Jesus didn’t know what would happen. He knew perfectly well that the healed man wouldn’t listen to him.

Mark tells us about this exchange to show us one simple thing: that because this miracle is talked about in the wrong way, it makes Jesus’s primary mission to preach the gospel more difficult.

We know this because of what comes next.

“Your Sins Are Forgiven” (2.1-12)

At the beginning of chapter 2, several days have gone by, and Jesus decides to return to his home in Capernaum.

Chapter 2, verses 1-2:

And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2 And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them.

So this story starts off just as it was at the end of chapter 1: Jesus goes into a town—he goes home—but he can’t get any peace there, because people find out he’s at home and they swarm his house. There are people crammed in everywhere, even standing outside the door.

But Jesus is a glass-is-half-full kind of guy: he takes advantage of the opportunity and does what he came to do. He preaches the word. For whatever reason, the people flocking to Jesus here happens in such a way that he can preach to them, so that’s what he does. He stands in his house and preaches so that even those outside can hear him.

Then the interesting thing happens—it’s a story people know well. V. 3-4:

3 And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. 4 And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay.

This was less violent than it might seem—often roofs were made of simple thatch and could be easily removed. But picture the scene: Jesus is in his house preaching, and suddenly sun is shining down through a hole in the roof, and a man on a bed is being lowered down through the hole in the roof. Of course, the paralytic coming down through the ceiling is essentially an interruption. Jesus stops his preaching and looks at the man, and then he looks up and sees the other men, these four friends who had lowered him down.

V. 5:

5 And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

This is a really fascinating twist. First, because Mark doesn’t talk about the paralytic’s faith, but the faith of his friends. The believed Jesus could heal their friend, so they brought him to Jesus’s house, and Jesus responds to that. Compassion calls to compassion.

The second thing is that we don’t hear anything the paralytic says to Jesus. We don’t hear him asking to be healed, much less asking for forgiveness. Jesus is the one who decides what he’s about to do.

The third thing is that when Jesus makes that decision, he jumps from point A all the way to point Z. He doesn’t immediately say what he said to the leper—he doesn’t say, “Be healed”—but instead, he says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

This statement was shocking for a number of reasons. This man didn’t know Jesus at all—it’s not as if he had offended Jesus earlier and Jesus is forgiving him for something he did. He’s saying, more generally, “Your sins”—as in, all your sins—“are forgiven.”

The most basic definition of sin is disobedience against God, and not a single man or woman who has ever lived, besides Jesus, has not sinned. We have all rejected God in favor of our own desires.

And Jesus says that he is forgiving this man for his disobedience against God.

He knew exactly what he was doing. Before that man was lowered down, he was preaching the word to the crowd, and the good news of the gospel is that proclamation: “Your sins are forgiven.” He’s been saying that the kingdom of heaven is near, and although the people may not have realized it yet, the kingdom of heaven isn’t displayed through physical healing, but through forgiveness of sin.

It’s a shocking statement. V. 6-7:

6 Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 7 “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

“Blasphemy” in the Bible is, in a strict sense, speaking evil of God, or defaming God. This blasphemy can be either direct or indirect—it can be directly speaking evil of God, or it can be implying a link between something evil and God. The scribes accuse Jesus of blasphemy here in this second, indirect sense, because Jesus (a human being) is claiming to do something that only God can do—that is, forgive sins.

The thing is, they wouldn’t be entirely wrong…if Jesus was anyone else. But Jesus is who he is. And he’s not only going to say it; he’s going to show it.

V. 8-9:

8 And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? 9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?

Jesus’s response to the scribes is genius; it’s a pretty classic argument of “greater to lesser”, of harder to easier. If you can do the harder thing, then obviously you can do the easier thing.

So look at Jesus’s question in v. 9: “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?”

How would we respond to that question?

In a strict sense, saying “Your sins are forgiven” is easier. Anyone could say that, and you wouldn’t be able to prove them wrong, because there wouldn’t be any visible proof one way or the other. Saying something is not difficult.

So Jesus does the “harder thing”. V. 10-12:

10 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— 11 “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” 12 And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”

In v. 10, we see the first time that Jesus refers to himself as “the Son of Man”—it’s his favorite title for himself, and it’s a provocative one. It’s a reference to a prophecy in Daniel 7, in which a hero comes, and God grants him dominion and authority over all peoples and nations. The Son of Man is the Lord of all things, and the people listening to him were all Jews. Every single person within earshot would recognize that title—the Son of Man—perfectly well.

This is the first time Jesus has gone this far in identifying exactly who he is. He says, “I am the Son of Man; I have the authority to forgive sins (an authority that—you were right—only God has)!”

It’s a pretty bold thing to say about oneself, but after what just happened, who could argue with him?

The Greater Miracle

Let’s take a step back and look at this passage as a whole.

When we read the Bible, we need to pay attention not just to what it says, but how it says it. When Mark wrote his gospel, there were no chapter or verse numbers; chapter 1 just immediately flowed in to chapter 2. And he says that “some days” have passed between the time that Jesus healed the leper and the time that Jesus healed the paralytic. Surely lots of things happened during those days, things he could have reported.

But Mark is very intentional: he puts these two stories back to back for a reason.

Jesus heals two people: a leper and a paralytic. And in both cases, there is a message communicated.

The first message is communicated by the leper, who goes out and tells everyone what happened. And that message is, “Wow, this man can heal diseases!” As it turns out, that message, even if it was well-intentioned, is counterproductive, because people from all over flock to him, to the point where he can’t preach the gospel effectively—he can’t go into the towns where the people are and proclaim the good news to them, because every time he does, he’s overrun with people coming to him for healing.

It’s easy to understand why some people would be more interested in being healed than in listening to Jesus preach. When you’re sick, it’s difficult to think of anything else other than your illness; so when you hear of a cure, it’s difficult to think of anything besides the cure. And what if the doctor with the cure wanted to talk to you, for a long time, about something else that seemed unrelated to your illness? You may listen to some of it, but it will be difficult to concentrate, because you just want to feel better.

We understand why people who are ill would come to Jesus, but coming to Jesus for that reason makes it more difficult for them to hear what Jesus is trying to say. The testimony of the healed man is counterproductive, even if his intentions were good.

Now, compare that to the second healing. There is a message communicated when Jesus heals the paralytic too. It is not only, “Wow, this man can heal diseases!” but also, “Your sins are forgiven.” You see, it’s basically the same message, but with one vitally important piece of information added: “This man can heal diseases, and therefore, this man has the authority to forgive sins.”

That final piece of information produces an entirely different sort of response. The first time, the people started to come to him from every quarter, to the point that his preaching of the gospel was hindered. This time, when the paralytic picked up his bed and walked out, what was their response? V. 12 tells us that “they were all amazed and glorified God.”

The first miracle produced spectators and consumers; the second miracle produced worshippers. The first miracle hindered the preaching of the gospel; the second miracle helped the preaching of the gospel.

And the only substantial difference between the two events was this declaration: “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

That was Jesus’s point to the scribes: it’s easier to say this man’s sins are forgiven than it is to heal him. So I’ll heal him so that you might see I can not just say his sins are forgiven, but that I can actually do it: that I really do have the authority on earth to forgive sins.

That changes everything, because even if saying “Your sins are forgiven” is easy, actually doing it is far more difficult.

Already it’s difficult on a simple, relational level. Imagine someone who has hurt you badly. How difficult was it, or how difficult would it be, to truly forgive a person who has wounded you? It is never easy to forgive, because there is a deep-seated desire for justice in the human heart, and forgiveness means accepting to not see justice done against someone who has committed wrong. Forgiveness requires us to take the pain that the guilty person deserves, and in a sense, accept to suffer pain ourselves—the pain of not seeing justice done. It’s far easier to punish than to forgive.

And that’s the simplest kind of forgiveness: very basic, relational forgiveness.

But that’s not even the kind of forgiveness Jesus is talking about here. Sin isn’t a simple offense against another person; it is divine treason. It is spitting in the face of a good, loving Creator, who made us to find our joy, to find our humanity, in him. It’s not about what the offense is, but rather against whom we have sinned. The only proper justice for all sin is eternal judgment, because all sin is committed against an infinitely righteous God.

What would it take for this infinitely just and worthy God to be able to actually “forgive” us our sins? Justice still needs to be done, otherwise God is not just. No—to forgive our sins, it would require a perfect human being to take the place of sinful human beings, and bear our punishment in our place. The only being perfect enough to do that would be God himself, made man.

That is the forgiveness Jesus is talking about here: he has the authority to forgive sins because he is the perfect God, the Creator of all things, come to earth to take our place and suffer our punishment, in our place. It is far more difficult to forgive sins; forgiveness is by far the greater miracle.

But he can do it—and the first proof that he can do it is this paralytic, lowered down through a hole in the ceiling, picking up his bed and walking.

That is the point.

The goal of Jesus’s ministry was the proclamation and understanding of the good news. The good news of the kingdom of God is the good news that finally, once and for all, our sin can be forgiven. That paralytic leaving Jesus’s house is a picture of the good news of the kingdom of God: it is a full-on renovation of humanity—new creatures, made whole, reconciled to God.

And that is why Mark tells us about these two miracles back to back. Without forgiveness of sins, his miracles are still good, but they’re only a temporary Band-Aid. Every single person whom Jesus healed still died one day. Jesus does it anyway—he keeps healing people, because he has compassion on those who suffer. But miracles in themselves get the people no closer to the heart of the kingdom. What gets people to the heart of the kingdom is the knowledge that we are sinners in need of a Savior, and that Jesus Christ has the authority to forgive our sin.

Conclusion

Now, it’s very easy to read these stories as stories, to read them and dissociate them from our own lives. We can not, we must not, do that. Because these stories aren’t just tales of something that happened a long time ago—nothing, nothing, concerns us more than what we see here.

Think about it for a minute, especially if you’ve grown up in church. We so often come to God differently than the way Mark invites us to come to Jesus in this text. All too often, we come to God because we want something. We want power, or we want joy, or we want healing, or we want an emotional high. Some will come to God the way we go on roller coasters: we come to God because we want to experience something we don’t get to experience in our day-to-day lives. Others will come to God the way we go to the doctor—we have something we feel is wrong, so we go to the doctor to get it fixed. I really like my doctor, but I don’t think about her during the week. I don’t have a relationship with her. Our interaction is purely transactional.

And without the forgiveness of sin, that is exactly what any “experience” of God becomes: it becomes transactional. If it does not drive us to repentance and a recognition of the forgiveness we have in Christ, any spiritual “experience”, even a good experience, even a healing experience, is a spiritual Band-Aid: it may feel good, and it may do us good, but it gets us no closer to the heart of the kingdom.

So this text invites us to ask ourselves a very serious and a very simple question: What are we looking for when we come to Christ?

Are we seeking experience, or are we seeking forgiveness?

Are we seeking relief, or are we seeking reconciliation with God?

Are we seeking a better quality of life, or are we seeking union with Christ?

We have to understand this. In this text we’ve seen leprosy, and we’ve seen paralysis. But sin is the greater sickness. A leper was outcast from society; sin separates us from God. A paralytique was forced to beg because he couldn’t work; a sinner is forced to work, to try to earn his worth.

In any illness, in a sense, our bodies turn against us; our physical weakness becomes a weapon that is wielded against us, and we feel very keenly. Ask anyone who has been sick for a long time. We should feel the illness of sin much more deeply, because sin is a corruption of our nature. It separates us from our humanity. What is worse, it is a voluntary illness. We have all chosen sin. Our cancer is a cancer we preferred over glory.

If we feel the horror of our sin as keenly as we ought, what should we feel when we hear our Maker say, “Son, daughter…your sins are forgiven”?

Mark wants us to seek forgiveness, reconciliation, union with Christ, because Jesus came not to bring temporary healing, but permanent healing. Sin is the greater illness, and forgiveness is the greater miracle.

And if Jesus stopped there—if he only died to forgive our sin—that would be quite enough. So it’s amazing, isn’t it, that Jesus doesn’t stop at forgiveness. He doesn’t just forgive; he also heals. He doesn’t just bring reconciliation with God; he also brings eternal joy in his presence.

He doesn’t just say, “Your sins are forgiven.” He also says, “Now get up and walk.”

And if we know that our sins are forgiven, we walk very differently. We walk, not out of a desire to get something new from God, but out of gratitude for what we already have in him. We walk, not out of a sense of obligation or duty, but out of a sense of awe, that God would be good enough to save someone as wretched as me. We walk, not to enter into a transaction with God—“I’ll do this if you give me this”—but to know the God who saved us.

Your sins are forgiven, Jesus says. Now, get up and walk.