NOTES for Mat 9:4-5

Addressing the people, Jesus said that He came “not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it.” At the very least, this must mean that He understands this Law correctly. Yet as we read the Gospel, we repeatedly see Him enter into conflict with the Pharisees, people of special piety, and with the scribes, experts in the Law. Christ Himself explains His conduct with a quotation from the prophet: “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” Thus, in His understanding, the Law consists in love. For love’s sake, He works on the Sabbath, associates with sinners, and even breaks fasts. The time has come when Law and mercy become one. This means that new content requires a new form, so that the “new wine” does not end up in “old wineskins.” The Gospel cannot be contained within the “only correct” worldview; it requires a readiness for openness, forbearance, and forgiveness. Otherwise, it will burst through our lives and leave us with emptiness and thirst.

By what right does Jesus do what He does? How dare He forgive sins, if every sin is guilt before God and only God can forgive it or not forgive it? This is a question asked not only by the scribes, but by every person who has not found faith in Christ. Let us try to answer it this way: if doing the Father’s will makes us His relatives, then the perfect fulfillment of His will, such as we see in Christ, means that Jesus is the Son of God (Matt. 3:17, 17:5) and bears witness to the fullness of the unity of the Son and the Father. Thus Jesus simply does what His Heavenly Father desires: He forgives sins and thereby heals people’s infirmities.

Christ can heal physical illness, and He has already healed many sick people, but this time He chooses to begin with the forgiveness of sins. This is the main thing needed not only by this particular paralytic, but by everyone who comes to Christ. To this day many who come to church for healing receive it, yet even then we are so reluctant to admit that our most serious illness remains our habitual, long-standing sin. Christ does not refuse at all to heal bodily illnesses, yet already in the healing of the paralytic He clearly showed what should follow what.

Meanwhile, by publicly declaring the forgiveness of sins, Christ truly bore witness to Himself as God. The Pharisees do not accept the works Christ performs and are ready to accuse Him of blasphemy, but they are right that no one except God can forgive sins. From this point on, the crack grows between the educated scribes, who do not want to entrust themselves to Christ, and the simple people, who understand the subtleties of the law less well and often do not understand who Jesus is, but are drawn to Him.

For the scribes, distrust will cancel out their knowledge; for simple people, trust will fill in theoretical gaps and lead to a deeper understanding of the meaning of revelation.

Today the evangelist Matthew tells us about the healing of the paralytic, which Mark and Luke also mention. Its essential feature, apparently, is the words that the Lord Jesus Christ says at that moment: "Take heart, child! Your sins are forgiven you." These words provoked sharp rejection from the scribes, but by the miracle itself the Lord confirmed His authority to forgive sins. For us, what matters most is the connection between suffering and sin.

The many healings performed by the Lord Jesus Christ by no means always imply that diseases and sufferings are caused by the person's own sins. It is enough to recall the healing of the man born blind. But for the paralytic, it is precisely God's forgiveness that becomes the source of healing. This means that the cause of his suffering is sin. This is important because, when we come into contact with suffering, we experience its irrationality and meaninglessness very painfully, and we rarely manage to remain on the boundary between bewilderment and complaint. Seeking an explanation, a person almost inevitably asks the question, "Why does God allow this?" But as we see, God did not create death and suffering, and it is not Him but ourselves whom we should blame for them.

In essence, it is separation from God as a result of sin that makes us subject to death. Therefore forgiveness becomes for us the gift of freedom and the restoration of what was lost. The Fathers of the Church constantly remind us of this.

Sometimes there is no strength to begin some task, no strength to reassess one's position - civic, religious, whatever it may be - and simply no strength to get up. There is no strength because we have spent it on something or because an illness torments us; it does not matter. Sin or sickness - does it matter? Perhaps sin, perhaps sickness. Often no line can be drawn between them.

We very much want this, we very much want clarity, but we do not have it - and we do not need it, for there is only good and evil, and only between them is a strict demarcation line needed. But there is no need to classify either one or the other. We will be told: we do not know whom to go to - a doctor or a priest. It is worth going to both, but it is important to remember: we are going to God so that He may heal us.

Today people speak much about cooperation between the priest and the psychologist. And this is good: the time of divergence between types of activity has passed, since a fundamental limit has been reached, and before us is a time when convergence slowly begins again. This will enrich everyone, for in every phenomenon of the visible world there is the imprint of the Creator - but it is revealed from different angles. To see here not a "flat" picture, but a "three-dimensional" one, costs great labor - but this labor is blessed

It is no accident that there are so many stories of healing in the Gospel: every healing is a witness to the Kingdom. But, as can be seen, not everyone understands the essence of what is happening, even when everything happens right before his eyes. Hence the displeasure of the Pharisees around Jesus: Jesus speaks of the forgiveness of sins, and who can forgive a person's sins except God?

Yet even from the point of view of the ideas generally accepted in those days, the situation in this regard was not so unambiguous. The fact is that the question of a person's forgiveness of sins was connected above all with the day of Judgment and the day of the Messiah's coming, which in the Judaism of the Gospel era coincided. And the Messiah took a certain, though not fully defined, part in God's judgment, testifying for or against the accused; His testimony could become decisive. Then, depending on the outcome of the Judgment, a person received, or did not receive, the right to enter the messianic Kingdom.

Jesus, however, somewhat corrects these familiar ideas: He speaks of the Kingdom entering the world, giving everyone the opportunity to begin with a clean slate. He speaks of the forgiveness of sins with reference not to the Judgment, nor even to the judgments a person may pass through before the day of the final Judgment. He speaks of the fact that the sins of everyone who touches the Kingdom and shares in its life are forgiven precisely because that person begins a new life in the Kingdom, leaving the old one behind. And every healing is an act of faith, faith as trust in God and in the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. That is why Jesus says to the healed man: "...your sins are forgiven."

For the Pharisees, as can be seen, what is happening has no relation to the Kingdom. At best they see simply a miracle, an action of God which by itself gives the One through whom it is performed no right to substitute Himself for God, or His own determinations for God's judgment. Here passes the boundary between the world and the Kingdom, the very boundary that is so clearly visible from the Kingdom and often completely invisible from the world.