Unconditional Forgiveness

 

Unconditional Forgiveness

January 13, 2022

 

The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

I am continually amazed by how Bible stories that I have known for decades still yield new insights when I read them again. I happened today when I read the story at Mark 1:1-12. In that story Jesus is at home in Capernaum. A large group of people has gathered around his door, and Jesus preaches to them. There were so many people that it wasn’t possible for latecomers to get anywhere near Jesus. Some people come carrying a paralyzed man on a mat. It seems they hoped that Jesus would cure the man’s paralysis. In some of the stories of Jesus healing people he does it long distance. In this story it seems that the people who brought the paralyzed man to Jesus thought they had to get the man close to Jesus if Jesus was going to cure him, but they couldn’t get him close to Jesus because of the crowd. So thy come up with an ingenious solution. They climb up to the roof of the house and somehow get the paralyzed man up there (we aren’t told how). The roof is apparently made out of mud or straw because the people who have climbed up there are able to did through it. They must have dug quite a large hole because they are able to lower the paralyzed man on his mat down through the hole they had dug.

Jesus sees the paralyzed man who has come through his roof. Jesus says nothing about people having destroyed the roof of his house, but never mind. The text says that Jesus sees “their faith.” It seems that the “their” here refers to the people who brought the paralyzed man to Jesus not the faith of the paralyzed man although the story is ambiguous about whose faith he means. Before anyone says anything to Jesus, Jesus says to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” The story continues with some scribes who were present accusing Jesus of blasphemy because, they say, “who can forgive sins but God alone?” Indeed. Jesus says to them, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk?’” Whereupon the paralyzed man stands up and walks out of the house.

It’s a famous story I suppose because of the drama of the way people get the paralyzed man to Jesus by digging through Jesus’ roof. I’ve known this story most of my life. When it came up for me today in a daily lectionary I use I very nearly said to myself I know this story, I’m not going to bother to read it again. But I did read it again, and when I did a new meaning the story has jumped out at me. In this story Jesus’ forgiveness of the sins of the paralyzed man is utterly unconditional. Let me explain.

At first reading it may appear that the paralyzed man’s sins were not forgive before Jesus said they were forgiven, yet that is not necessarily the case. Jesus could have as easily meant that the man’s sins were already forgiven, the man just didn’t know that they were. Read this way the story is about God’s universal, unconditional grace, expressed in the forgiveness of human sin. I love that reading of the story. For many years now I have believed, written, taught, and preached that God’s grace is indeed universal and unconditional. I have often used the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke to make that point. Until today I didn’t know that I could also use the story of the paralyzed man let down through Jesus’ roof to make it.

There’s a lot in this story about unconditional grace, about God’s unconditional forgiveness of human sin. Jesus forgives the paralyzed man’s sins as soon as he sees him. No one asks Jesus to forgive the man’s sins. The man makes no confession of his sins. He utters no mea culpa. Jesus doesn’t tell the man that there’s anything he has to do to get his sins forgiven. He just says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” It appears that Jesus tells the man that his sins are forgiven though no one has asked him to forgive them because he knows that the man needs his sins forgiven (and don’t we all) or because he knows the man’s sins always have been forgiven but the man didn’t know it. Either way, the forgiveness of the man’s sins to which Jesus refers is entirely unconditional.

That is indeed how it is with God’s grace, which of course includes the forgiveness of human sin. That’s how it has to be with God’s grace. If there are any conditions on God’s grace it isn’t grace, it’s an earned reward. In the ways of the world, for the most part, to receive anything we have to earn it. The ways of God however always turn the ways of the world upside down. God extends God’s grace to us not because we’ve earned it but because we need it. It really is that simple. For God truly to be God it has to be that way.

One way to get into Jesus’ stories and parables is for us to consider which of the characters in the story or parable we are—and we’re never Jesus or, if there is one, the character who represents God. In this story we may at times be the people who brought the paralyzed man to Jesus. We often want to help people in need get what they need. I find it more appropriate, however, for us to see ourselves as the paralyzed man. He needed God’s forgiveness, God’s grace. So do we. We need God’s grace at least as much as the paralyzed man of the story whatever that man’s sins may have been. For as 1 John says, “If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” 1 John 1:8. We are all humans not gods. We are creatures not the Creator, and that means that we all need God’s grace. I wish everyone knew that they already have it. God has already extended grace to us and has done so entirely unconditionally. For that priceless gift from God let all of us say, “Thanks be to God!”