Looking at the paralytic He just forgave, Jesus asked the teachers of the law a question, “Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?” How would you answer that question? Is it really easier to forgive someone who has deeply offended you, or is it easier to grant that the lame walk again?
God is our creator. Genesis teaches us that He spoke, and it was. Such is His power. For God to exercise His power to the point of making the lame walk is not unlike an exceedingly wealthy man exercising wealth and spending two cents. But the richest man in the world – or God Most High Himself – still feels the hurt of the damage done to a relationship that really matters to them. This is the rub. God loves us with an everlasting love. But we have deeply offended Him. Not only because we have failed at consistently honoring Him as our King, but because we do not love Him back for all the good He has done for us and is doing for us.
Think of that. What degree of hurt is it to love a child of yours, and see them grow up only to largely ignore you as their parent. What measure of insult is it when your children rejoice in your gifts, but shun your presence? When they treasure those things you give them that you know last only a season but despise the relationship you seek to have with them?
This is the degree to which we have hurt our Father. Knowing that, we can appreciate that it is a much, much greater thing for Him to forgive than to heal.
Praise His Name, God is so unlike us. He does not stop loving us, even when we have so poorly treated Him. He does not abandon us, nor does He does not wait to do the hard thing till the last minute – as we are so prone to do. He forgives the moment we ask Him to. He does not tell us to wait while He wrestles through the emotion of needing to forgive (as we do). He does not make the bar higher by asking us to do something to prove we are worthy of forgiveness (as we sometimes want to do). He does not use the occasion to drive home a point or humiliate us (as fallen flesh would ask to do). No – He just forgives immediately. He has spent eternity thinking about it, wrestling through the emotion of what it means for the King of glory to forgive creation made of dust who were willfully disobedient. He forgives anyway. He takes all the offence we have shown at Him upon Himself, He willingly bears the disgrace of our treason. He sheds His own blood on the cross for us so that the unbreakable covenant He made with us might be broken by death – and that we the guilty would not die, but rather live.
This is not a small thing, or something to be overlooked. Still, our fallen nature looks for the spectacular over the meaningful. We want to see the lame to walk again. We count that as worth far more than hearing “You are forgiven”, even though forgiveness means life eternal, and lameness means but lameness for a blip in eternity.
It isn’t just that the teachers of the law were wrong about accusing Jesus of blasphemy. It is that they are evil for even thinking so. It is that they are so absolutely misguided in their appreciation of what God is doing, and that they value all the wrong things about His Kingdom come.
What then of us? Do we think the same? If so, let us repent. Praise His Name, He is yet quick to forgive!
Grace does not come cheap.
John Drane
APPLICATION: Intentionality
Let us forgive as He has forgiven us.