Sally steals Billy’s apple, but Johnny forgives Sally for stealing Billy’s apple. Johnny is a pretentious imbecile.
Man sins against God, Jesus forgives Man. But Jesus is neither pretentious nor an imbecile. He is fully God and fully man.
Mark 2:7 ESV
“Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
There’s a story in Mark 2, where a group of bros decides to help out their paralytic friend. They are trying to reach Jesus, who has become quite the celebrity among the common folk. People are thronging to hear him teach. The guys are having a hard time getting Jesus’ attention, so do they what anybody would do, they vandalize the building. After removing tiles from the roof, they lower their friend through the ceiling. Impressed by their perseverance and ingenuity and with particles of roof stuck in His rabbinical beard Jesus tells the friend, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
The religious leaders are in an uproar. Joseph’s son is one cheeky “fellow”. Jesus is pretty cheeky and responds by healing the friend,
“Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.”
Mark’s passage is a forceful Christological statement, a demonstration of Christ’s dual nature: the Divine and the natural. Jesus identified Himself as the Son of Man exercising the right of God to forgive, because He is also the Son of God. Then to add insult to the religious leaders’ injury, Jesus proves He is who He says He is by healing the lame man.
But it is tantamount that the Christian Believer understands that in all that Christ did, He did as a man and as God. In the history of His time on earth with us, never were His divine nature and human nature not occurring at the same time. It is important to see this because Christ is our example! He has shown us what is to be a part of the normal Christian life: signs and wonders (John 14:12-13). When He heals, Jesus didn’t hit the “human”-switch off and turn the “God”-switch on. When He prayed to the Father, He approached the Throne as His Son and as a man, when He healed the mute it was as a man and as God.
It sounds something like this, “Yeah I’m human, but I am a man empowered by the fullness of the Spirit, and I can do this because I’m also God.” (Luke 4:1 & 14)
Read the entire blog series “Who Is He?” HERE.
Theology Cake 