Maskepetoon Understood Forgiveness
When the first missionaries arrived in Alberta, Canada, they were opposed by a young chief of the Cree Indians named Maskepetoon. But he eventually responded to the gospel and accepted Christ. At one point, a member of the Blackfoot tribe killed his father. Maskepetoon rode into the village where the murderer lived and demanded that he be brought before him. He confronted the guilty man, saying, “You have killed my father, so now you must be my father. You shall ride my best horse and wear my best clothes.” He invited him into his lodge, gave him clothes fit for a chief, and forgave him. In utter amazement and remorse his enemy said, “My son, now you have killed me!” What did he mean? He meant that the hate in his heart had been killed by the forgiveness of Maskepetoon.
An Innate Need for Forgiveness
Forgiveness is an unusually powerful force in human relations. It seems that we have an innate sense that tells us that we need to be forgiven. Novelist Marghanita Laski, a well-known secular humanist, said not long before she died in 1988, in a moment of surprising candor on television, “What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me.”
R. C. Sproul tells a story about a psychiatrist in South Florida who wanted to hire him and pay him a hefty salary. R. C. told him that he didn’t have a degree in psychiatry and asked why he wanted to hire him. The psychiatrist said, “R. C., 95 percent of my clients do not need a psychiatrist. They need a priest, because their lives are being destroyed by unresolved guilt.”
Our unresolved guilt is why we long for forgiveness. We want restitution, absolution, pardon, and peace. Using the language of the Bible, we know that we’ve rebelled against the love and authority of God and that we’ve not loved or served our neighbors as well as we should have. So we long for the forgiveness of our sins and the clearing of our conscience.
Confusion in the Church about Forgiveness
There’s been some confusion throughout church history about how forgiveness happens. Roman Catholics developed a complex doctrine of penance. Part of the sacrament of penance is confession and absolution from a priest. The penitent person would go to the confessional and say, “Father, I have sinned,” and then tell the priest all their sins. Then the priest would say, “Te absolvo,” or, “I absolve you.”
The Roman Catholic Church has been careful to say that the earthly priest has no power to forgive sin and that only God can forgive sins. The priest merely reminds the penitent that their sins are absolved in the name of Jesus Christ. Though he had other problems with the Catholic understanding of penance, Martin Luther actually kept the confessional because he felt that people needed assurance that they were forgiven. One can understand how this practice could lead to confusion nonetheless.
Another Christian tradition that begins this time of year can lead to confusion about forgiveness. Many Christians began the observance of Lent last Wednesday, or Ash Wednesday. Lent is the forty days leading up to Easter. Many Christians will fast from various things and devote themselves to prayer during Lent in order to prepare their hearts for Easter. If not careful, people can think that their religious rituals during Lent gain them favor with God or even clear the ledger of their sins.
Here at Preston Highlands, I haven’t emphasized or promoted Lent. Not because it’s wrong, but because it could lead to understanding our Christian discipleship as a seasonal, rather than a daily and weekly, activity. Practicing Lent is a matter of Christian freedom. There’s nothing wrong with periods of extended fasting or seasons of focused prayer. But I agree with Jonathan Leeman, who says, “The Christian life is a daily activity – a long obedience in the same direction. Therefore we want to promote daily and weekly discipleship, not a boom-or-bust spirituality…In other words, we don’t want Christians who know how to be generous just at Christmas or live self-sacrificially just at Lent, but who practice generosity and self-sacrifice as a daily normal. We’re trying to cultivate a new culture, not sponsor exciting events.”
If not careful, Christians can start to think that religious acts like confession of sin to a priest or fasting during Lent, or coming to church, or trying really hard to be a good person, can take care of our guilt and cancel out our sins. But none of these things can undo our failures or deal with our unresolved guilt.
If religious ritual doesn’t forgive our sins, what does? If we can’t remove our sins, who can? Our text this morning from the Gospel of Mark tells us who. In an account about the healing of a paralyzed man, we learn that Jesus has the power to forgive our sins and what it takes to secure his forgiveness (2:1-12).
Jesus and the Paralytic
Verse 1 says that Jesus returned from his preaching tour around Galilee and came back to Capernaum, to his home base. He was likely staying with Simon Peter’s family. When people found out that he was back home, they crowded in and around the house to hear him teach. Notice in verse 2 that preaching the word was the primary focus of Jesus’ ministry.
Try to picture yourself in the house that day listening to Jesus preach about the kingdom of God. As Jesus is preaching, you start to see some dirt fall from the ceiling. Your first thought is that it must be some little rodent on the roof. But then bigger pieces start to fall. Then you see daylight. Then you hear voices and see hands pulling away large chunks of clay and thatch.
In that day, houses around Galilee were one story with a flat roof. The roof consisted of wooden beams laid across the walls. Between the beams were smaller sticks and reeds and thatch, or straw. On top of the sticks and thatch was several inches of dried mud. It was packed in tight and smoothed out so that the roof was hard and very stable. Stairs were used to access the roof so that people could eat, receive company, or even sleep on their roofs. The roof functioned like a patio or a deck does for us. It wasn’t uncommon for people to be on the roof of a house. It was, however, uncommon for strangers to start digging through the roof of your house.
That’s what four men did that day. They carried their friend on a mat, or mattress, to the roof because they couldn’t get through the crowd at the door of the house. Then they proceeded to dig through and dismantle a section of the roof in order to lower their friend down into the main room where Jesus was teaching.
Their persistence in bringing their friend to Jesus is amazing. Their plan was to bring their friend in through the front door, but when they realized that wasn’t going to work, they didn’t just give up and take him home. They came up with a new plan. They were desperate to get their friend to the one person who could help him. They were willing to interrupt the teaching and even damage someone else’s property to bring relief to their friend.
Friends Help Each Other
How do you respond to your friends when they need help? Do you quietly hope that they’ll leave you alone about their problems? How do you respond to those who’re suffering around you? Do you only help the people who’ve helped you or who you think can help you later?
Sometimes we need help and yet people don’t know that we need help. It was obvious that the paralytic needed help. But it’s not always so obvious that we need help. God made us as dependent creatures. We’re wired to depend on God and on others. It’s therefore God’s will that we say “help” both to him and to others. Even the great King David was willing to admit his need for help. He prayed in Psalm 86:1, “Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.” Paul told Timothy to bring John Mark with him because “he was very useful to him for ministry” (2 Tim. 4:11). Pride often leads us to hide our need for help. Humble people ask for help. Proud people try to do everything on their own.
If you struggle with doubt or fear or anxiety or guilt or lust or relationships or money or old-age or retirement or school or work or child-raising or marriage or infertility or singleness or debt or greed or laziness or grief or health issues or reading God’s word or prayer, and you’re a member of this church, you’re surrounded by brothers and sisters who also struggle and can help you. Our church covenant tells us to “exercise an affectionate care and watchfulness over each other….and with tenderness and sympathy to bear each other’s burdens and sorrows.” Christ does not intend his people to struggle alone. Pretending like you’re ok when you’re not is going against God’s will for the church. One of the reasons Jesus established the church is because he knows we need each other.
One of the most practical ways to ask for help is to ask for prayer for specific things. When we ask for prayer we’re walking in humility. One of the best ways we can help people is to pray for them in specific ways. Nick and I are trying to model this as your elders. Until we see Jesus face-to-face, God uses his Spirit and his people to do his work.
Friends Don’t Let Friends Miss Jesus
God used these four men to bring their friend to Jesus. By the way, the pattern of the New Testament and the bulk of church history is individuals bringing other individuals to Jesus. Many think that we need to do big programs and events to get people to Jesus. Programs and events aren’t necessarily bad, but they can indirectly undermine relationships as the normal way that people come to Jesus. This man wouldn’t have come to Jesus without his friends. Friends don’t let friends miss Jesus. Many of your friends and family will likely never darken a church door so you must take them to Jesus or take Jesus to them.
In a similar way, the unreached people groups of the world aren’t going to stumble across Jesus – that’s why they’re unreached. We must engage them and bring them to the Savior through gospel preaching and prayer and church planting.
He Got What He Was Not Looking For
It may’ve been the friends who brought this guy to Jesus, but it was what Jesus did that was truly remarkable. Notice what happens after they lower him through the ceiling (v. 5). There’s nothing here in the text that suggests that this man was looking for forgiveness. Jesus looks past his paralysis and sees an even deeper need, a need for relief from guilt. He saw a spiritual need.
As we go about helping people, we need to always keep this principle in mind: spiritual needs are more important that physical needs. Jesus says in Mark 8:36-37, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul.” The soul is more valuable than everything else on earth. What’s going on inside of us is more important than what’s going on outside of us. Though we should help people address the difficult circumstances that they’re in, we should also point them to the goodness of Jesus in the middle of those circumstances. People need prayer and Scripture, not just healing and food.
Jesus’s declaration that this man’s sins were forgiven was so radical that the scribes were incredulous (vv. 6-7). The scribes were the theologians of the day. They had their eye on Jesus ever since his authoritative teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum (1:21-27). When they heard what he said to the paralytic, they were enraged. They essentially thought, “Who does this man think he is? Only God can forgive sins.”
This is why they accused him of blasphemy. Every scribe knew the Old Testament principle that no man had the authority to forgive peoples sins. They interpreted Jesus’ words to mean that he was claiming to have the authority of God himself. Some groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons argue that the New Testament doesn’t teach that Jesus was God. But a clear implication of Jesus’ words here is his claim to deity. The Jehovah Witnesses may fail to see this, but the scribes sitting there that day didn’t fail to see it. They were upset because they knew that Jesus was claiming divinity for himself.
A Question for a Question
Another subtle way that this account reveals Jesus’ deity is in verse 8. Jesus read their minds. His power is on display in many ways in this account. Like a good Jewish rabbi, Jesus answered their unspoken question with a question (v. 9). The question is not about which phrase is easier to say, but which is easier to claim to do. It’s easier to claim to forgive sins because no one can test whether sins are really forgiven. But if Jesus says, “Get up and go home,” everyone will know whether he had the power to heal or not.
On the surface, it would’ve been easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” But in that moment, with his enemies right in front of him, it would’ve been easier for Jesus to say, “Get up and walk” because he knew that by saying “Your sins are forgiven” he was claiming to be divine. He didn’t choose the easy way out. He said the hard thing, then did the hard thing. His point in this whole exchange was to reveal his authority to forgive sins (v. 10). He backs up his claim by healing the man (v. 11).
Jesus did not take the easy way out of this situation. He purposefully said the hard thing and then did the hard thing in order to prove that what he said was true, that he did indeed have power to forgive sin.
The Son of Man
Notice in verse 10 that Jesus refers to himself as the “Son of Man.” Mark has already introduced him as the “Son of God” in 1:1. The most frequent title for Jesus in the New Testament is Christ. The second most frequent is Lord. The third is Son of Man. But “Son of Man” was Jesus’ favorite title for himself. The title occurs more than eighty times in the New Testament, and all but two times Jesus uses the title for himself.
We might be tempted to think that “Son of God” refers to Jesus’ divinity and “Son of Man” to his humanity. But both in fact refer to his divinity. The Son of Man was a divine figure described in Daniel (7:13-14). The “son of man” was presented before God, given glory and dominion, served by all the nations, and given a kingdom that will never be destroyed.
When Jesus uses this title to refer to himself, he’s not just being humble. The title is pregnant with theological significance concerning Jesus’ divinity and power. He uses it here to explain why he has authority to forgive sins. He can forgive sins because the Ancient of Days has given him power and authority on the earth to forgive sins.
What Only God Can Do
Back to my initial question. If we can’t remove our sins, who can? Jesus can. How can we be so sure? Because he said so and his word is true and he backed up his words with acts of power, most importantly his resurrection. Jesus has power to forgive sin because he’s the Son of Man who lived a perfect life, died on the cross, rose from the dead, and has been exalted at God’s right hand. As God’s right hand man, he has authority to do what only God can do. He has authority over demons, sickness, disease, paralysis, death, and even sin.
What does it take to secure Jesus’ forgiveness? How can we receive forgiveness from Jesus? Verse 5 gives us a clue. Jesus is always looking for what he saw in these four friends: faith. His power went to work for those who knew they had none. When Jesus saw their faith, his power to forgive sins was unlocked and unleashed. Faith always precede forgiveness.
All those who come to Jesus in desperate faith and turn from all their attempts to fix themselves will receive forgiveness from the only One authorized to grant it. Acts 10:43, “Everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” God no longer holds our sins against us when we put our trust in Christ.
Jesus, the authoritative and divine Son of Man, offered himself on the cross as a substitute and sacrifice for everyone who submits to his loving rule and gracious authority. His power to forgive is employed toward those who admit their weakness and cry out for his help. He came to do what no man can do. He came to do what only God can do. He came to forgive sins. Have you received his forgiveness?