It always bothers me that the people of Jericho and other
places were devoted to destruction, everyone was killed at the end of the
siege. The Lord, however, has His own
ways and at the end of the day we believe He is not only great but also good
and it points to the fact that good is something only He alone knows. We know that the people of the Land were
under God's judgment and they did know that He was with Israel. These people are all kin to one another in
some way (read Genesis 10 if you want the details) so they have lost their
religion along the way. The flood united
them all under Noah and we see in his story that soon after the flood sin
re-emerged in his son Ham and caused Noah to curse Ham's descendants, the
Canaanites. Their sin was the indecency
and sexual sin of their father and the Lord had said that this sin had filled
and polluted the Land and it must be purged.
The city and its inhabitants are utterly destroyed and the surrounding
peoples knew of the victory and how it was achieved. Did they then turn and fear the Lord?
They had never seen anything like what Jesus did in healing
the paralytic and proclaiming that his sins were forgiven but did they
understand the sign. Jesus' work and teaching
were signs in that they pointed to something beyond themselves and gave
information, they were not ends in themselves.
I believe that the paralysis here was connected with sin in the man's
life. That isn't a general principle by
any means, it is the only time we see Jesus proclaiming forgiveness prior to
healing anyone. I believe that He
pronounced this absolution not simply to be provocative but that it was a
necessary element of the healing. They
question His authority to forgive sins, even priests could proclaim only that
the Lord forgave sin after receiving the sacrifice, and here there is no
sacrifice, no overt confession. The
greater thing would certainly be to heal so if the greater is done, certainly
the lesser is done. This sign points to
a truth the scribes state, " Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
If Jesus can heal this way, and only God can forgive sins, who is He?
Paul can apparently claim innocence re
speaking evil of the high priest because he didn't know that Ananais was high
priest. The high priesthood was a
closely-held affair and it changed back and forth among members of the same
family, sort of like the Borgia popes, and he could honestly have not known
which family member was presently high priest.
Paul uses the argument between the Pharisees and Sadducees regarding the
resurrection to divide his accusers and change the subject. Knowing our enemies and their weaknesses is
certainly a good thing. Wisdom is an
important part of our arsenal, it is trusting the Lord and the movement of His
Spirit.
No comments:
Post a Comment