Matthew 9:7

Matthew has just shown Jesus’ authority over the wind and sea and over demons. In Matthew 8 he calmed a violent storm on the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 8:23–27) and cast the demons out of two men in the country of the Gergesenes (Matthew 8:28–34), on the eastern and largely Gentile side of the sea. The people there were afraid, and they begged him to leave.

So Jesus “entered into a ship”. The verb embaínō means to step aboard a vessel, and the ship, ploîon, was likely an ordinary fishing boat. He “passed over”, diaperáō, which means to cross entirely, from one shore to the other. Mark also records this sea being crossed at Jesus’ word (Mark 4:35). The sea he had calmed now carries him back to the western, Jewish shore, and Matthew turns from his authority over nature and demons to his authority over sin and sickness.

John writes of a wider rejection, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11), where “his own” are his own people. Turned away on the eastern shore, Jesus carries his work on to the next place, and his mission goes forward by his own purpose.

Matthew opens the scene with “behold”, idoú, a word that calls the reader to look closely at what is about to happen. A man “sick of the palsy”, which is paralysis, is brought “lying on a bed”. He is wholly helpless and depends on others for everything, even for coming to Jesus. In that society a paralysed man was often reduced to begging, and many people assumed that such an affliction came from sin, his own or his parents’, so that it carried shame as well as weakness.

Mark and Luke tell the same event (Mark 2:1–12, Luke 5:17–26), and they add that the men who carried him, finding the way blocked, lowered him through the roof. Matthew passes over that detail and goes straight to what Jesus saw.

Jesus puts forgiveness first because being reconciled to God is our deepest need, greater even than the need to walk. The man’s friends brought him for his body, and Jesus gives him first what will last for ever. It agrees with what he taught in the Sermon on the Mount, that we are to seek first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33).

The verb for forgive is aphíēmi, which means to send away, to release, to let go. Sins that are forgiven are dismissed, and the person is released from their guilt and penalty. The form of the verb in verse 2 describes a finished act whose result stands, so Jesus is declaring that the man’s sins have been sent away and remain so. The passive, “be forgiven”, points to God as the one who forgives, which is exactly why the words are so bold on the lips of Jesus.

By forgiving first, Jesus also brings the question of who he is into the open. A healing alone would have been received as the work of a prophet. A word of forgiveness claims what belongs to God, and the healing that follows becomes the proof of that claim.

In doing both for one man, Jesus does what Scripture says the LORD does: “Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases” (Psalm 103:3). Isaiah had spoken of the servant who would bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, be wounded for our transgressions, and heal us by his stripes (Isaiah 53:4–5). Jesus cares for the whole person, body and soul, and he begins with the soul.

A second “behold” turns our eyes from the man on the bed to the scribes. A scribe, grammateús, is literally a writer, from gramma. In the New Testament the scribes (grammateis) were the men learned in the Law of Moses, who copied and studied the Scriptures, interpreted them and taught them. They were highly respected and are often found alongside the Pharisees, so their judgment of Jesus carried weight.

Their charge is that “This man blasphemeth.” To blaspheme, blasphēméō, from blasphēmos, is to vilify, to speak impiously against God or holy things. The scribes knew that forgiving sins belongs to God alone. Through Isaiah the LORD says that it is he who blots out transgressions (Isaiah 43:25), and in the accounts of Mark and Luke the scribes put it as a question: “who can forgive sins but God only?” Even the priests could only offer the sacrifices the Law appointed. For a man to pronounce sins forgiven looked to them like seizing God’s own right, and blasphemy was punished with death under the Law (Leviticus 24:16).

Their reasoning was sound as far as it went, since only God can forgive sins. Their error was about who stood in front of them. They speak of him as “this man”, houtos, which has a dismissive ring, and they see only a man. So the men who knew the Law best failed to recognise the Lawgiver. The same charge will be brought against Jesus at his trial, when the high priest tears his clothes and the council judges him worthy of death (Matthew 26:65–66).

They said it “within themselves”, en (in) and heautoû (themselves). The accusation was a private judgment that had yet to be spoken, and that sets up what happens next.

“And Jesus knowing their thoughts” uses eídō again, the verb for his seeing their faith in verse 2. He sees the trust of the friends and he sees the judgment of the scribes, though one was shown in action and the other was hidden in silence. The word for thoughts, enthýmēsis, from enthyméomai, means deliberation. These were considered judgments that the scribes had reasoned out, and Jesus answered them as plainly as if they had been said aloud. Luke records the same thing (Luke 5:22).

Scripture gives this knowledge to God alone. Solomon prayed, “thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men” (1 Kings 8:39). The LORD says that he searches the heart (Jeremiah 17:10), and David confesses that God understands his thought afar off (Psalm 139:2). The word of God is “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12), and God will one day judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ (Romans 2:16). So before he heals anyone, Jesus has already shown the scribes something that only God can do, and it supports the very claim they object to.

“Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?” The question begins with hinatí, “for what reason?”, and it calls on them to examine themselves. The word for evil, ponērós, comes from pónos (toil, pain) and means hurtful, evil in its effect. Their thoughts were a hostile judgment against the Son of God, born of unbelief and pride, and Jesus names them for what they are. He taught in the same way that sin begins in the heart, with anger and lust, before it shows in any deed (Matthew 5:21–28). Our inner life lies open before him, and he came to cleanse that as well, so that anyone in Christ is a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Jesus now asks, “For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?” The word eukopṓteros comes from a compound meaning “better for toil”, and so it means easier, less labour.

The question turns on the words “to say”. Anyone can say that sins are forgiven, because forgiveness is unseen and nobody in the room can test it. To say “Arise, and walk” to a paralysed man is another matter, because everyone will see within a moment whether the words had power. So the claim to heal is the harder one to make, since it can be proved false on the spot. Jesus chooses to put himself to that test. If the man gets up at his word, then his word of forgiveness also stands.

There is something deeper here as well. Forgiving sins is in truth the greater work, the one that belongs to God, and the healing is the lesser work given as its sign. For Jesus both are equally within his power. “Arise” is egeírō, to waken, to rouse, to raise up, a word used of rising from sleep, from a sickbed and from death.

Verse 6 is the centre of the passage. “But”, dé, a small connecting word that here marks a turn, moves Jesus from the question to the answer: “that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins”. He states openly why he is about to heal. The miracle is given so that the scribes, and we, may know something that is otherwise beyond our sight.

“The Son of man” (ho huios tou anthrōpou) is the name Jesus most often uses for himself, and Matthew has already recorded it once (Matthew 8:20). It speaks of his true humanity, and it also reaches back to Daniel’s vision of “one like the Son of man” who comes to the Ancient of days and is given dominion, glory and a kingdom that shall never pass away (Daniel 7:13–14). By taking this name Jesus identifies himself with that figure, the promised Messiah who acts with God’s authority.

“Power” is exousía. The word means authority, right and jurisdiction, and it also covers power in the plain sense of ability. Greek has another word, dynamis, for strength and miraculous might. The question in this room is one of right: who may forgive sins? Jesus says that the right is his.

“On earth” uses gē, the earth or land, the ground we live on as distinct from heaven above. God’s forgiveness is being spoken here, among people, by a man standing in a house in Capernaum. The scribes were sure it could only come from heaven, and Jesus says it has come near.

Then he turns to the paralytic with three commands. “Arise” is egeírō again. “Take up thy bed” joins aírō, to lift, with klínē, a bed or couch, which for a poor man was often a simple mat. The bed that had carried him is now to be carried by him, so that what marked his helplessness becomes the evidence of his healing. “Go unto thine house” uses hypágō, to go or depart, and oîkos, a house and by implication a household. He is sent back to ordinary life, to his family and his place among his people.

“And he arose, and departed to his house.” Matthew tells it in the plainest words, and the plainness is fitting, because the healing was immediate and complete. “Arose” is egeírō, the verb of the command, so that what Jesus said is exactly what happened. “Departed”, apérchomai, means to go away, and the stress falls on his walking off from the place where he had been laid down.

A man who came in on the shoulders of others walks out by himself, strong enough to carry his own bed. Everyone who met him on the way home saw the proof, and since the healing was given as the sign of forgiveness, every step declared that his sins were forgiven too. Isaiah had said of the day of God’s salvation, “Then shall the lame man leap as an hart” (Isaiah 35:6).

The man’s rising is a picture of what Christ does for all who believe. We who were helpless in sin are raised to “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4), by the power of the one who was himself “declared to be the Son of God with power” by “the resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4). His going home pictures it also. Those who were strangers are made members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Jesus Christ as the chief corner stone (Ephesians 2:19–22), and Jesus has promised to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house (John 14:2–3).

Matthew turns from the scribes to the crowd with another dé, “But”. The multitudes, óchlos, are the throng of common people, and their response is the opposite of the scribes’. They “marvelled”, thaumázō, which means to wonder and by implication to admire. Then they “glorified God”. Their wonder went past the miracle to the one who gave it, which is the right response whenever God acts. The last psalm calls for it from everything that has breath (Psalm 150:6), and the people of Jerusalem did the same when a lame man was healed through Peter and John (Acts 4:21).

So the ordinary people, with far less learning than the scribes, came nearer the truth. They saw the hand of God where the experts saw blasphemy.

The forgiveness Jesus spoke in Capernaum was costly, and he himself would pay for it. He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Scripture says that “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22), and the authority he used in this house rests on the blood he would shed. As our great high priest (Hebrews 4:14) he entered the holy place by his own blood and obtained eternal redemption for us (Hebrews 9:11–14).

The charge of blasphemy that the scribes first thought here became the charge on which he was condemned, so the very thing they held against him was the work he came to do. God then raised him and exalted him “to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:31).

That forgiveness is now preached to everyone. All the prophets bear witness that whoever believes in him receives remission of sins through his name (Acts 10:43). The Father “hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13–14). Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Romans 10:13), and “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

This passage gives a burdened conscience solid ground. The one who says “thy sins be forgiven thee” has the right to say it, and he proved that right in front of his critics. Guilt and shame can be brought to him with confidence, because his authority to forgive reaches every sin and his word of pardon stands as surely as the paralysed man stood up.

It also shows us what Jesus counts as most important. We often come to him with the need that can be seen, as these friends did, and he cares about that need. He healed the man fully. Bodily healing is given in differing ways and times, while his forgiveness is promised to all who come to him, and he gave it first.

The friends show how much one person’s faith can do for another. The man on the bed received everything, and he received it because others carried him to Jesus.

The scribes are a warning to those of us who know the Scriptures well. Their knowledge was real, and they were so sure of how God must act that they judged his Son when he stood before them. The crowd shows the better way, which is to marvel at what God has done and give him the glory. And since Jesus knew the scribes’ unspoken thoughts, he knows ours, the trusting ones and the hard ones alike, and he is the same Saviour who forgives what he sees there.