Mark moves at a pretty fast pace. From His first short itinerant trip around the region, Jesus returned home to Capernaum, and we will see that in the text. The happenings in this text raise some serious questions about our Lord Jesus, and thankfully, He answers those in stellar fashion. That said, let’s look at the text. I broke it down as follows:

KV11: A Teaching Meeting Where A Healing Broke Out
11: “I say to you, get up, pick up your pallet and go home.”
1-4: He Went Through The Roof
5-8: Why Do You Reason This Way?
9-12: We Have Never Seen Anything Like This

In this study, we encounter the Lord Jesus, four really good friends, a hole in the roof, and a healing with the forgiveness of sins like had not been seen before. There are some things to notice, and I will try to zero in on those things. The gospel is a strong component here, with Jesus forgiving the sins of the paralytic. For those who think something else is the main point of the passage, I submit that the gospel is the whole point of Christianity. The forgiveness of our sins is always among the most important thing in any given passage. I know, I know, I’ve heard that it is man’s sinfulness is critical to the whole plot also. But consider this. It isn’t sin that will condemn you to hell. It is specifically UNFORGIVEN sin that does that. No religion other than Christianity makes provision for the forgiveness of our personal sins in full measure. What that means is that all other religions are simply collecting souls for hell instead of showing people how to participate in Christ’s forgiving of all our sins.

KV11: A Teaching Meeting Where A Healing Broke Out

11: “I say to you, get up, pick up your pallet and go home.”

The title is a little tongue in cheek, in that I had in my mind that old line about going to the Saturday Night Fights, and a hockey game broke out. The Lord Jesus has returned to Capernaum, and people show up at His house just to hear what he’s going to say.

I’m very glad I do not have that problem, because you just never know who is in that kind of crowd, these days especially. In modern society, we call that “doxing,” and it’s usually a bad thing. Besides, I live with four other adults in a 1200-square-foot house, and we have three pets. And the Lord Jesus watched as four guys did property damage to His roof so a friend could get the help he needed. Personally, if someone had knocked a hole in my ceiling, I would have gone through the roof, but that was not Jesus’ response.

It must be understood that healing was not the main benefit of Christ or His followers i n this section of text. Ity was not the self-sacrificial love of others that Jesus very often displayed, it was not the high moral standard of life, nor was it a sense of purpose or satisfaction in life. All of those are what Dr. MacArthur calls “by-products” of biblical Christianity. The most important thing is the gospel itself, that is Jesus came to forgive the sins of a morally helpless and hopeless humanity. Without this aspect of the narrative, what we have is just a moral lesson, something that we were taught in Bible College to avoid like the plague. (If the sermon won’t get you unceremoniously tossed out of a synagogue or mosque, it isn’t a Christian sermon.) The main component of the story is the authority of Jesus, the Christ, on Earth to forgive sins.

Other components were there also; for example, Jesus heard the innermost thoughts of the hearts of the religious practitioners, without them speaking it. Is there better proof of divinity? Maybe, but that’s strong proof right there. Anyway, it all ended with the lad picking up his own bed and walking home with his friends. Let’s examine the details, line-by-line, one verse at a time.

1-4: He Went Through The Roof

As I said, I honestly don’t think I would have been able to allow damage to my roof like this. I have enough problems and a small enough house and matching bank account that this would not sit well with me, But I’m not Jesus. Of course I am referring here to the paralytic going through the hole in the ceiling that his friends dug for him. There is some debate over whether this was Jesus’ own house or Peter and Andrew’s house, but I think that detail is immaterial to the story. Let’s get into the text.

1: When He had come back to Capernaum several days afterward, it was heard that He was at home.

The point of the text here is to tell us that Jesus had returned to Capernaum. There is a small debate about whether it was His own home or if He was staying with Peter and Andrew, but that is rrelevant to the point. At firstt, I had thought that it read like it was at Jesus’ own home, but the more I thought about the idea, I think the story may work better if He was staying with the family of Peter. If it was indeed their home, it has a very inimate flavour to discipleship, and that seems to me to be the way it should be; He was teaching and healing in the place where His disciples lived. He came and found us, not the other way around. However, it doesn’t matter in terms of context or meaning of the narrative here. He was back in Capernaum, and at a known location, regardless of whose home it was.

2: And many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room, not even near the door; and He was speaking the word to them.

The crowd described here not only filled the room, but likely the street around the door and by open windows. Although this text as a whole shows our greatest need, that is, the forgiveness for our sins, most of them were gathered not for other reasons. Without a doubt, many were likely curious, to be a part of or witness the sideshow that healings and demon-casting would have been then and to an extent are now, or there would, in my opinion, not be nearly as much grift as there is around the topic today. Others (like the Pharisees, for example) were there to find fault with Jesus or His work as a way to invalidate it so they could morally ignore the displayed power of God the Son, come to do the will of the Father. Some were likely true disciples like Peter and Andrew. Most of the disciples were called by this point, and Matthew was called very shortly after this. As far as the text says, only one of them was there for the most important reason of all, the forgiveness of his sins by God. The ones gathered here did have the opportunity to see and hear the Saviour. The one there for forgiveness is just about to arrive. Next verse.

3: And they came, bringing to Him a paralytic, carried by four men.

There he is! Wait, he can’t even walk by himself! He’s being carried by four of his friends. His condition made him completely dependant on others. Interestingly, his condition, unlike the leper, was NOT contageous, and so did not cause the iostracisation that leprosy would in the ir society. However, it was generally accepted as truth that his own actions had resulted in his condition. We are not so different on occasion. Romans 3:23 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and it means that. I used to have a friend named Ivan. He worked for my dad in our tire shop when I was around 13 or 14. He actually lived in the motel my parents owned as part of his compensation package. He had a girlfriend that lived with him for a while, and they broke up. He took that poorly, and he drove to Winnipeg to try to win her back, and that didn’t go well. That weekend was a freak ice storm, and the roads were very slippery. In his own fragile state, he got liquored up and tried to drive the 125 miles home. He most of the way there. He got back into Ontario, and found a patch of ice and a telephone poll. This was my first experience with the death of a good friend, and it drove this lesson home: the wages of sin is death. Sometimes literally.

We do not know what caused this man’s paralytic state, only that he was truly paralyzed, because the text tells us so. I like this, not because the man was paralyzed, but because it tells me that the circumstances don’t matter here. Yes, his sin may have paralyzed him. And yes, Jesus would have known the details, but as we will see by the end of our study this evening, they don’t matter one bit, and that gives me great hope. I will try to explain. There are things I have done personnally that I know that God has forgiven me that I would still be incredibly embarrassed to say in front of you. I know you have done things like that as well. None of that matters if you will ask God to forgive your sins, and you will change your mind and direction and follow Jesus. However, there was a Jewish belief that was common for that time, and it was a very foundational idea: “a sick man does not recover from his sickness until all his sins were forgiven him.” (Schanbel, E. J., New Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2023), 226.) For most people on most days, that would have been a problem. Not here. Next verse.4: Being unable to get to Him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above Him; and when they had dug an opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic was lying.

This story occurs in all three synoptic gospels, and in other places, gives us other details, but I can fill in a few here. This was a classic Jewish home of the first century AD. The internal rooms were one thing, and that is where Jesus was, but like all of the surrounding houses, there was an external staircase that ascended to the roof, which served as a storage area, and a patio of sorts, there would often be chairs, even a flap that could be propped up by poles, I suspect, as a shade or rain shelter ofr a place to sit on a rare day off, or with company, open to all that fresh air. This roof area figures into the tale.

Think of the feat of engineering this would have to be. They would have to be at least basically familiar with the interior of the home, or they might have put the hole in the wrong place. Then they woul,d have to dig away the layers of the roof. I don’t recall if that was a complicated operation or not, but I don’;t read where they brought the tools to do so with them. Then they had to figure out how to lower him down through the hole instead of Monty-Python-style just throwing him into the hole. Nonetheless, they accomplished it.

Think about this for a moment. It was not the faith of the paralytic in play here. All he did was lie there. It was the faith of his four friends. Puritan commentator Matthew Henry said this about it in his Commentary on this text: “True faith and strong faith may work in various ways; but it shall be accepted and approved by Jesus Christ.” To me, this has long been an example of Christian corporate prayer. These four men wanted nothing more than to get their friend to a place where he could get the help he needed to make everything alright again. I know of prayer meetings like that. I’ve been to a few of them, probably not nearly enough, but the Lord knows.

It was in this way that a very sick man got to meet Jesus. He could do nothing to help himself, or in fact for himself, it was the faith and ability of others that had brought him to this place, and this is just the opening act. The main event is yet to come. Next parapraph.

5-8: Why Do You Reason This Way?

With the stage set, we have a short interruption iun our main plot to something that is not only critically important to know, but we may mark this as the beginnings of the trouble of Jesus with the leadership of the Jews, mainly the Pharisees, the majority of religious practitioners in those days. We think the movement of the Pharisees began about 200 or so years earlier between the Scribes formed under Ezra and a group of people who wanted to separate themselves from most or all dealings with the Gentiles. The very name “Pharisee” means “separate.” I wish I could tell you it came from a godly root, but the honest fact is that I do not know. I have read speculation that crosses that topic and comes down in a bunch of different places. Some say yes, but most say that they just wanted to have nothing to do with the Gentiles at all, including alien converts. In fact some of them had the same attitude about the Jewish common people. They would have considered themselves a kind of (spiritual) elite, the intelligensia of the day, and this would have attracted the Sadducees as intellectuals (today we’d just call them atheists who didn’t really believe in anything). Because they were the religious elite, they, like those societal elites today, been attracted to positions of leadership. Sadly, also like today, this was not to help their fellow man, but in a raw pursuit of power for power’s sake, thinking that the exercise of that power would make the world a better place instead of helping others in sacrificial fashion like Jesus did throughout His entire life. Let’s look and see what this short but important cut scene tells us.

5: And Jesus seeing their faith said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

My friend that used to be involved with contemporary Christian Music who is now a West Palm Beach pastor wrote a song that goes like this: O, suffering soul // Cryin’ out for love // In a world that seldome cares // See a hungry heart // Longing to be filled // with much moire than our prayers // and a young girl sells herself on 7th avenue // And you’re here cryin’ out for help // My God, what will we do? // Don’t tell them Jesus loves them // until you’re ready to love them too // until your heart breaks from the sorrow // and the pain they’re going through // With a life full of compassion may we do what we must do // don’t tell them Jesus loves them // until you’re ready to love them too. I take the time to go through that first verse of the song because it is the kind of attitude that these Pharisees lacked. Keep that in mind as we continue.

Jesus saw their faith, not the paralytic’s faith. Not only that, He understood why they brought him to Him. He honoured them, and said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” He addressed the real need of the man. The issue was not his paralysis. His friends would have helped him regardless. The thing Jesus could do that no one else could was the spiritual forgiveness of his sins, committed against Himself, God, his creator. And He did.

And there we were. Stuck in our paralyzing, debilitating sin, without anything we could do to change things. We maybe had people helping us, maybe not, but all we could do was lie there and be stuck, when we found ourselves face to face with the very One who could make a real difference. And He spoke the very words that would change our horrible existence into one of thankfulness and praise no matter what we faced. At our honest, earnest request for His forgiveness, He gave it, without condition other than opening our heart to Him by faith, and we were spiritually healed, even if we were not physically, as this man was not, at least initially. That’s a fair description of what Jesus has done for each of us who have turned to Him in faith that He really does love us. However, this showed something else in some of those present, and our “cut scene” begins here.

6: But some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts,

We only know that they were reasoning in their hearts because our text tells us so. They may have been standing there with a disapproving look, but they were not speaking aloud; the Scriptures would have told us so, and as we go on, it tells us they were not. It says they were “reasoning in their hearts.” I can do that without speech. Some have difficulty with that, but I never have.

The text specifically says it was some of the scribes, and that may be significant. We know this from the next verse.

7: “Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming; who can forgive sins but God alone?”

The Scribes originally began under Ezra as a professional class that was dedicated to interpreting Jewish law. Initially, they were priests, though by this point in history, they were also coming from the general population. It was about this time after the exile to Babylon that Torah )the Old Testament) became the foundational code of the nation of Israel. The relationship with the Pharisees took place over centuries, with most scribes becoming Pharisees, but not all of them. Not all Pharisees were scribes, either, like Paul, who was not a Scribe. The significanse of the Scribes here is that in the Jewish Council of the Sanhedrin, they occupied the “seat of Moses,” a symbolic position representing their authority as teachers and interpreters of the law.

Enter the Supior and aristocratic Scribe, passing judgment on the words of the Lord Jesus. “You can’t talk that way! No one on Earth can forgive sins!” At least not as far as he knew. “Only God can forgive sins!” That’s true, by the way. Next verse.

8: Immediately Jesus, aware in His spirit that they were reasoning that way within themselves, said to them, “Why are you reasoning about these things in your hearts?

When was the last time you thought something in your mind, not speaking it aloud, and had it thrown in your face verbally by the individual you were judging? I confess I have done it, the thinking quietly to myself, I mean. No one has ever answered my thoughts aloud. Nor have I ever been able to do so. But read the text!

Immediately, Jesus was aware of their thoughts. The text is very clear that they were reasoning within themselves. He knew their thoughts and told them so out loud in front of a crowd of witnesses. Is there a better argument for the divinity of Jesus tan this? Maybe there is, but I cannot think of it for the life of me. It was a direct verbal challenge to their silent thoughts! There was enough of a crowd that these scribes could have been fairly anonymous in the crowd. Even if you can allow Jesus knew they were in the crowd, it did not deter Him in the least. He still forgave this man his sins, aloud, in front of witnesses. Like He was God. Oh, wait, He was. They just didn’t know that yet.

This little sideshow that I have termed a “cut scene” like a video game would use is here for the exact same reason: plot development. These Scribes, as members of the religious intelligensia, were finding out first hand that Jesus was no ordinary man. His forgiveness of this man’s sin in the face of religious practioners was a clarion cry of who He is, and in dramatic fashion, especially with what comes next. Moving on.

9-12: We Have Never Seen Anything Like This

Have you ever been surprised when you realized what was going on around you was not what you thought, or you were suddenly surprised by events unfolding around you? I was once in traffic on the Queensway on a Saturday afternoon. I was cruising along at highway speed, and suddenly, there were brake lights in front of me. I braked at a rapid rate of speed to avoid crashing, and realized that traffic had stopped across four lanes, and I was going to be there for a while. Then I heard the sound that made my blood freeze: an air horn. I grew up around trucks. My dad was a long-haul truck driver for a while. That air horn was on a dump truck, thank God, or all four lanes of traffic would have been wiped out. The blasting air horn is the universal signal under those circumstances for “I cannot stop.” It plowed into the minivan on my left, driving that vehicle forward while barely slowing down for about 40 yards. Glass flew in my open window (it was a warm day and I did not have air conditioning in the car) and cut my arm. On instinct, I started rolling the window, and I started somehow moving forward with the car (standard transmission). Cars were crunching around the space I was in. Suddenly, I saw an opening up ahead on my right, and I aimed for it. I got to and through it, and that lane kept moving, so I stayed with it for safety and to try to clear the road for emergency vehicles that would need to respond. People were doing the same thing, and we managed it together. I got up to the next exit, and I saw the problem; a half-ton truck had had a matress fly out of the back and stop the entire roadway. They were still trying to get it back into the truck and get off the highway. I can truly tell you that I have seen nothing like that, even to this date, where it was happening all the way around me. That is the level of event that these Scribes were seeing, though admittedly much less destructive and physically harmful. It was just as impactful to these men. That clarion cry I referred to is about to say, in no uncertain terms, “I AM God. I CAN forgive sins. You should know me.” Let’s look at the text.

9: “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven’; or to say, ‘Get up, and pick up your pallet and walk’?

I love how the Lord presnts them with a dichotomy, which in this case is not a false dichotomy. It is a simple choice of which is easier. Is it easier to say, “your sins are forgiven,” which really requires no actual power just to say the words, or “Take up your bed and walk?” That second option, to be effective, needs a demonstration of supernatural power. Any thinking adult should know this, including the Scribes present.

Think about this. He is being a bit more gentle than just claiming to be the Son of God and demonstrating it for a reason, and that reason is the propagation of the gospel. The Lord knew the best way to get the dander up of an intellectual was to speak to them in terms of actual logic like they were morons. Ultimately, Jesus will provoke the “leadership” of Israel so badly that they will seek to have Him mudered by the Romans, and that upcoming death is the gospel, that is the good news for everyone who will turn to Him. Next verse.

10: “But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—He said to the paralytic,

This is what the world should correctly call an “inflection point,” the connotation of that phrase being that this is a sudden change in how things are. From the next verse and its consequences, things will never be the same, and it is decidedly a change in the direction and destiny of all of humanity. If you think I’m being overly dramatic, put a comment down below in the comment section. I don’t think I am. This next verse will put Jesus on the official radar of those in charge of the nation of Israel. Let’s look.

11: “I say to you, get up, pick up your pallet and go home.”

Jesus says it! He really says it! Pick up you pallet and go home! We will see the results of that in the next verse, but before we get there, stop and think about what is happening. Jesus is answering both questions in the affrmative! And the answer to this second issue is the proof of the first answer. Let’s see the results.

12: And he got up and immediately picked up the pallet and went out in the sight of everyone, so that they were all amazed and were glorifying God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this.”

The paralytic moved himself! He followed the instructions of Jesus, too! He obeyed! He picked up the pallet, something I think you will agree that paralytics are not known for! And He did it in front of everyone. Including the Scribes. And apparently, it amazed all of them, including the Scribes, and they all glorified God. Look at what they said: “We have never seen anything like this.” And there are two perspectives that are worth examining here.

The first of those is the paralytic. When he arrived, he was helpless and immobile. Maybe it was his own fault, maybe not, we are not told, but if I were in that condition and by the end of the encounter I wasn’t, I would be extremely grateful. He needed help just to get there. Not so anymore! I looked in the other two accounts in the other synoptic gospels (Matthew and Luke), and I could not find a word of caution of any kind. Because there is always a theme of repentance for sinful man behind all of this, my own assumption is that Jesus Himself saw it as unnecessary because the man had already learned his own lesson.

The Religious Practitioners (Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees) as a whole would have had a unique perspective, and I can see it in two parts. There is what they should have recognized, and there is what they did recognize. What they should have recognized (especially with John the Baptist and his emphasis on repentance) is that the very kingdom of God had come to them in real power at such a miracle. Isaiah 35:6 says, “Then the lame will leap like a deer, And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy. For waters will break forth in the wilderness And streams in the Arabah.” I know this doesn’t specifically refer to the paralytic himself, but is talking about exactly what the Messiah would do, particularly through His suffering, though that is still in the future. Even so, the Scribes could hardly miss Isaiah 53:5 and “But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed.” However, there is (like we have seen in other texts all over the New Testament) a deeper meaning here. The healing of the paralytic specifically demonstrates the Messiah’s ability on earth to forgive sins. Jesus performs this healing miracle from the context of what the text says here specifically to show His own authority on Earth to forgive sins. In v.10 earlier, he invoked the specific Messianic title from Daniel 7:13–14 “I kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion, Glory and a kingdom, That all the peoples, nations and men of every language Might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will not pass away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed.” Now think about this: Judaism later taught that God does not help sinners or liars. Healing the paralytic shows the transcendant power of God working in and through Jesus personally.

Jesus has opened the discussion of who He is up very powerfully. None of the eyewitnesses who were there could deny this absolute miracle of God. Everyone (v.12) said they had never seen anything like it before. All of them gave glory to God. Jesus’ actions here were saying, in no uncertain terms, to that audience, in their own language and culture, in an undeniable way (unless you do the same kind of backflips that the unbelieving Pharisees did later), that He was God, and more, He had come to do good to humanity.

That’s what I saw in the text this time. Next time, we will be looking at Mark 2:13-17, which I have loosely titled at this point, “You’re Eating with Sinners!” I know, right? Those religious leaders. Pick, pick, pick, it’s all they ever do.

This week we saw that no matter how you want to spin it, Jesus is God. He healed impossible cases and read minds. Pay attention as we study, because I think that list is going to get longer. It is amazing to see and know about our Saviour.

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May God richly bless you and your family until we meet again next time. Take care, and have a wonderful week!

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