THE PHYSICIAN PARDONS HIS PALSIED PATIENT – Charles Spurgeon
The Physician Pardons His Palsied Patient
“And, behold, they brought to Him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus, seeing their faith, said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you. And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This Man blasphemes. And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, 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, (then He said to the man sick of the palsy), Arise, take up your bed, and go to you house. And he arose, and departed to his house.” Matthew 9:2-7.
Introduction: Christ’s Royal Prerogatives
I remarked in the reading that the Gospel of Matthew is especially the Gospel of the Kingdom and of the King. All through Matthew’s writing, the title of King constantly occurs in connection with Christ, and His kingliness is prominent from the opening chapter to the close. Here we see the King exercising His royal prerogatives. In this passage, we have several instances of Christ acting as He could not have acted if He had not possessed a royal and Divine Power.
Jesus Dealt with the Palsied Man in a Truly Royal and Divine Way
The bearers of the man sick of the palsy had broken through the tiling, whatever that may have been, to get him near the Savior. They had dropped him down over the heads of the eager throng, and there he lay upon his pallet before Christ, unable to stir hand or foot, but looking up with that gaze of eager expectancy which Christ so well understood. You will notice that our Lord did not wait for a word to be spoken—He simply looked, and He saw their faith. Matthew writes, “Jesus, seeing their faith.” Who can see faith? It is a thing whose effects can be seen—its signs and tokens are discernible, and they were eminently so in this case—for breaking up the roof and putting the man down before Christ in such a strange way were evidences of their belief that Jesus would cure him. Still, Christ’s eyes not only saw the proofs of their faith, but the faith itself. There stood the four men, speaking with their eyes, and saying, “Master, see what we have done! We are persuaded that we have done the right thing and that You will heal him.” There was the man, lying on his bed, looking up and wondering what the Lord would do, but evidently cheered by the belief that he was now in a position of hope where, in all probability, he would be favored beyond everyone else. Christ not merely saw the looks of this man and his bearers, but He saw their faith. Ah, friends, we cannot see one another’s faith! We may see the fruit of it. Sometimes we think that we can discern the lack of it, but to see the faith itself—this needs Divine sight, this needs the glance of the eye of the Son of Man!
Jesus saw their faith and now, tonight, those same eyes are looking upon all in this audience, and He sees your faith. Have you any that He can see? “Oh, yes!” some of you can reply, “We have a humble, trembling faith—not such as it ought to be, but such as we are very thankful to possess.” Some of you, it may be, are conscious of your sin tonight, and all the faith you have is just a faint hope, a feeble belief that if He will but speak to you, you shall be forgiven. You believe that He is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him, but you have, in the background, a fear that you cannot come or that you may not come in the right way. Still, if it is ever so little faith in Him that you have, my Master sees it and, as in our early days we used to look for a single spark in the tinder that we might get a light on the cold mornings, so does the Lord look for the tiniest gleam of faith in any human heart, that out of it may come a flame of spiritual life! “Jesus, seeing their faith.” Now then, my dear hearer, Christ’s eyes are looking at you tonight. Whatever faith you have, exert it now! Believe in Jesus! He is the Son of God—believe in Him as able to save you, for He is able, and He is willing as well as able—and now trust your soul to Him, sink or swim. Determine that if you must die, you will die at the foot of Christ’s Cross, and you will go nowhere else for salvation! “Jesus, seeing their faith.” His royal and Divine sight could perceive that which was hid from all mere mortal men.
But then, when Jesus saw their faith, observe, next, that He dealt first with the chief evil which afflicted this man. He did not begin by curing him of the palsy. That was bad enough, but sin is worse than the palsy! Sin in the heart is worse than paralysis of every single muscle! Sin is death and something worse than death—therefore, Christ, at the very beginning of this miracle, to show His Lordship, His royal, His Divine Power, said to the man—“Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.”
This was laying the axe at the root of the man’s evil nature! This was hunting the lion, the biggest beast of all the foul creatures that lurked in the dense forest of the man’s being. Christ’s words drove the unclean animal from his lair and, by His Almighty Power, tore him as though he had been a kid! Now, at this time, you may have many troubles and, perhaps, you are eager to spread them before the Lord. That sick child. Your dear husband who is at home ill. That business which is flagging and likely to fail. That disease of yours which is weakening you and which makes you scarcely fit to be in the Lord’s House tonight. Now, waive all those things, for heavy as they are, they are inconsiderable compared with sin! There is no venom as poisonous as that of sin! Sin is the wormwood and the gall—this is the deadly fang of the serpent whose sting infects and inflames our whole being! If this evil is removed, then every ill has gone and, therefore, Christ begins with this, “Your sins are forgiven you.” Breathe a prayer to Him now for the forgiveness of your sin—“Jesus, Master, forgive me! With a word You can pardon all my sin. You have but to pronounce the absolution and all my iniquities will be put away at once and forever. O my Lord, will You not put them away tonight?” Notice, also, that Jesus did absolutely forgive that man—“Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.” He did not say, “They shall be forgiven,” but, “They are forgiven; I absolve you from them all. Whatever they may have been, your youthful sins, your manhood sins, your sins before the palsy laid hold upon you, your sins of murmuring since you have been upon that bed—put them all together into one great mass and though they be multitudinous as the stars of Heaven, or as the sands on the seashore—Son, your sins are forgiven you.” And the man felt that it was so. He believed that it was so—a load was taken from his heart and his whole spirit was lifted up by that gracious word—“Be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.”
I pray my Master to deal thus with some who are sitting in these pews who are very heavy at heart. May He speak right into the depths of your spirit, “Son, Daughter, your sins are forgiven you! They are blotted out, they are all gone.” Oh, what a dreadful time that is to a man when first he sees his sin! It is the darkest moment of his life, but it is a blessed moment when he sees that Christ has put away his sin and has said to him, “You shall not die in your iniquities; for they are all forgiven.” Everything grows light and bright round about him! He, himself, is like one who comes up out of a well, or out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, yes, out of the very belly of Hell! He seems to leap, all at once, up to the Throne of Heaven as he sings, “My sins are all forgiven! I am a miracle of Grace!” Wonder not if the man can scarcely contain himself—marvel not if he runs and leaps, and dances for very joy! This is how Christ behaves towards poor, palsied, sin-bound men and women. He sees their faith and then puts their sin away where it shall be seen no more, forever, for He is King, He is God, and He is able to forgive and blot out all iniquity. I have heard of one who, having been under a great sense of sin and being relieved of it, could, for a long time, only cry out, “He is a great Forgiver!” When there were other things to be attended to, he could not see to them, nor speak of any other kind of business but this, “He is a great Forgiver!” I do not feel as if, tonight, I need to say anything else to you but this, “He is a great Forgiver! I have found Him so. Many here have found Him so and all who will trust His great atoning Sacrifice shall also know that He is a great Forgiver.”
Christ Read and Judged Men’s Thoughts
The second division of my subject diverges a little from the first, but it follows the text, and so it is no real divergence. By His royal and Divine Power, Christ read and judged men’s thoughts. See those scribes, those students of the letter of the Word, who know how many letters there are in every Book of the Old Testament and have counted them so accurately that they can tell which is the middle letter! Wonderfully wise men, those! Do you see them? They are very vexed and angry and they think hard thoughts of Christ. They did not dare to speak out what they thought—the people would not have listened to them just then if they had spoken, so they held their tongues, but they did not hold their hearts. But there was a thought-reader there—not one who professed the art, but One who possessed it—and He heard where the quickest ear would have failed to detect the faintest sound! Jesus heard the scribes mentally say, “This.” If you look at your Bibles, you will find that the word “Man” is printed in italics, and that the scribes said within themselves, “This,” they meant, “fellow”—they meant any evil name that you like to put in—“This blasphemer.” They would not say what they thought of Him—they did not like to call Him anything but just, “This. . . This offscouring.” Thus, Christ read their contempt of Himself. They had not uttered it, but He had heard it. It is an awful thing to have a silent contempt of Christ. You may pride yourself on saying, “I have never spoken anything against religion. I have never used a profane expression.” No, but if you do not call Jesus your Lord. If you do not acknowledge Him as your Savior, He knows what the contemptuous omission means! What you do not say, though you only say “This …” and leave a blank space, He reads it all. If there are any here who have such thoughts of my Lord and Master, I do not wish to know them—and I hope that they will never let any other creature know them—but let them remember that Jesus knows all about them, for He is a King who reads the secrets of all hearts and, in due time, He will lay them bare.
But, next, Jesus marked their charge of blasphemy. They said in their heart that He blasphemed, for He had taken to Himself the prerogative of God. According to Mark and Luke’s accounts, they asked, “Why does this Man thus speak blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God only?” Now, mark you, we who worship Christ as God can never have any fellowship with those who deny His Godhead, nor can they have any fellowship with us, for if He is, indeed, the Son of God, then they blaspheme Him who deny it! And if He is only a man, then we are clearly idolaters and man-worshippers and He did blaspheme. We are obliged to confess that, and we do confess it—if He was not the Son of God, if He had not power to forgive sins—then they rightly judged that He was a blasphemer. Ah, my Hearer, when you are afraid that Jesus cannot forgive your sins, you are trembling on the very verge of blasphemy!
There is such a crime as constructive treason and there is such a sin as constructive blasphemy. To deny Christ’s power to save is to make Him but a man—and if you put Him down as only man, you blaspheme! Even though you may not intend to utter blasphemy, there is the shadow of its dark presence even in that unbelief of yours. Notice, also, how Jesus judged their thoughts. He said to them, “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” It was their hearts rather than their thoughts that were evil! Intellectual error generally springs from an unrenewed heart. And what evil had these men thought? They had thought Him a blasphemer! They had also thought contemptuously of Him. But the greatest evil of all was that they had limited His power—they did not believe that He could forgive. They thought it blasphemy on His part to profess to have the power to forgive the sins of men! Now, my dear Hearer, I know that you would shrink from openly blaspheming Christ, that is, if you are the person I think you are. Then, however great your sin at present is, do not make it more by insinuating that He cannot forgive you, for of all sins, this must be the most cruel—to think that He is unable to forgive. This stabs at Christ’s Saviorship, which is His very heart! If you say, “I am very guilty,” say it again, for you say the truth. But if you say, “I am so guilty that He cannot forgive me,” I pray you to withdraw that wicked word lest you should limit the Holy One of Israel and He should have to say to you, “Why do you think evil in your heart?” It is thinking evil of Christ to imagine that He cannot forgive! I mean this word for the very worst man in the world. If you are now the blackest soul out of Hell, if you are at this moment the most guilty and the most condemned of all the myriad offenders of our ruined race, yet I charge you not to add to your past sin this further evil of doubting Christ’s power to save even you! But come as you are and cast yourself at His feet, and say, “Let all Your power to save be shown in me. I am the chief of sinners and here You have an opportunity of showing the greatness of Your power to pardon.” And observe, once more, that, in dealing with these scribes, our Lord spoke right royally and Divinely to them, for He revealed the unreasonableness of their thoughts. He said to them, “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” I ask you who are here, tonight, if you know any reason why Christ cannot forgive sin? Will anyone here who doubts His power to pardon, find a reason for that doubt? If you believe (and I will assume that you do believe), that He is the Son of God, can He not forgive sin? If you believe that He did heal the lepers, the paralyzed, and even raised the dead, can He not forgive sin? Further, if you believe that He died for sin—that on the Cross He offered no less a victim than Himself—why do you think that He cannot forgive? If you believe that He rose again from the dead—and I know that you believe this—if, indeed, He rose again from the dead for the justification of the ungodly, how is it that He cannot forgive? And if He has gone into Glory, and you know that He is at His Father’s right hand, and is there making intercession for the transgressors, how can you say that He cannot forgive you? “Why do you think evil in your hearts” in limiting my Master’s power? He can forgive everyone here present! He can forgive every soul in whom He sees faith in Himself, whoever He may be and however dire his guilt!
Jesus Exhibited His Credentials
Now we come back to the palsied man and our Master and notice, in the third place, that right royally Jesus openly declared His commission. He seems to me to read the letters patent which His Father gave Him when He sent Him on His errand of love and mercy—“The Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins.” First, Jesus is the Son of Man. He does not conceal that fact. One would have thought that He would have said, “I am the Son of God,” but here He still chooses to hold His Godhead in abeyance, so He says, “The Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. I, the Son of Mary. I, the carpenter’s Son. I who dwelt at Nazareth 30 years. I who have gone up and down among you, worn with sufferings, pained by your hostility, wearied by labor for you, I, the Son of Man, have power to forgive sins.” Think of that! He puts Himself on His very lowest standing and declares that as the Son of Man there is bestowed upon Him, by reason of His Godhead, the power to forgive sins! And having thus declared His title, He goes on to say that He forgives sins as the Son of Man on earth. He was on earth and He had power on earth—that is, in His earthly life, in His humiliation when He had made Himself, for a while, to be less than the Father, so that He could say, “My Father is greater than I”—higher in office, just then, when He had humbled Himself and taken upon Himself the form of a servant, He could say, “The Son of Man has power on earth, at His lowest, divested of Glory, here as a Man among men—the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins.” Oh, how I love this word, for if He had power on earth, what power He has in Heaven! And if He had power as the Son of Man, what power He has as God and Man in one Person! Oh, how fully you may trust Him! Even the Christ whom they could see, the Son of Man—for you know that there was a Christ whom they could not see—that Son of God whom carnal eyes could not behold, who must reveal Himself spiritually or be unperceived by mortal sense.
Even He whom they could see, the Christ whom you poor weeping ones can see, though you cannot see the half of Christ, no, you cannot see the hundredth part of Christ—the Christ whom you poor doubters can see, the Christ whom you who are all but blind can only see out of the corners of those eyes of yours when you see men as trees walking—even that Christ, the Son of Man, in His weakness on earth, was able to forgive sins! I do not seem as if I ought to try to preach about this glorious Truth of God, but I feel that I ought to state it and leave it as a solemn fact for you to reject at your peril if you dare—or to receive with glad joy—for, believe me, your only hope lies here! O guilty sons of Adam, here is the way of escape for you! Your father, Adam, has ruined you, but the Son of Man has come to seek and to save you—and He declares that He has power on earth to forgive sins!
Conclusion: The Best Evidence is at Home
Now, notice, in this blessed unrolling of His commission as the Son of Man, how Jesus cheers the sad. He said to the poor palsied man, “Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.” How this should comfort you who are sad on account of sin! It is the Son of Man who can forgive you! You tremble at the greatness of God. You are afraid of His Majesty. But this Son of Man, your Brother, whose hands were pierced with the nails and whose feet still wear the nailprints—whose side has the gash that the spear of the soldier made—He it is who can forgive sins! How tenderly He comes to you! How gently does He deal with you! Here is a hand fit for a surgeon of whom it is said that he must have an eagle’s eye and a lion’s heart, but a lady’s hand. Here is a hand of flesh—a dainty, tender hand of love that brings pardon to you! You have not to encounter God, absolutely, but the one Mediator between God and men. He who is bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh, says to you, “The Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins.” And this makes our hearts cheer up when they are sorrowing on account of sin! Beside that, Jesus assures the forgiven that He has forgiven them. How I love to think of that blessed fact, that Christ does not forgive us and keep His forgiveness in the dark, but He says, “Son, your sins are forgiven you,” giving the assurance of forgiveness to the sinner whom He forgives! The realization of pardon is a delightful feeling. It is not worthwhile to sin, whatever comes of it.
I cannot say, with Augustine, “Beata culpa! Blessed fault!” but oh, if there is a joy outside of Heaven that is higher than all others, it is the joy of a sinful soul when Divine forgiveness is granted, making the forgiven one whiter than the driven snow and fresher than the morning dew! I am a forgiven man, wonder of wonders! I, who have broken all God’s Laws and brought upon me Jehovah’s wrath, am pardoned for all my transgressions! God’s Son has said it and His Word is sure and steadfast, “Son, your sins are forgiven you.” I think that men would readily give up all the pleasures of this world and count them as nothing if they could but know the bliss of forgiven sin. Oh, if any man who says that he loves a merry laugh, did but once know what it is to be reconciled to God, he would count that he never, before, enjoyed real merriment, or understood true mirth! Our Lord Jesus Christ, as I have said, makes us drink of the sweetness of forgiveness. It is not merely that He burns the books that recorded our indebtedness, but He tells us that He has done so! He says, “Your sins are forgiven you.” Thus it was that Christ publicly unrolled His Divine commission, declaring that He had power on earth to forgive sins. He came here on purpose to forgive human guilt—not to condemn, no, not even to condemn her who was caught in the act of adultery—“Neither do I condemn you,” He said—“Go, and sin no more.” Jesus came not to condemn the thief who was dying on the Cross and confessing that He deserved to die. No, He said to him, “Today shall you be with Me in Paradise.” It is Christ’s business to pardon! It is His bliss to pardon! It is His glory to pardon! He came here on purpose that He might pardon the guilty. Oh, that all sinful ones would go to Him for forgiveness!