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Forgiveness: The Healing of Paralysis
Lead Pastor: Rollan Fisher
Focus: We will be healed from that which cripples us when we experience and express the forgiveness of Christ.
Sin that Cripples
Forgiveness as the Real Need
Jesus the True Friend
Mark 2:1-12
And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them.
And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay.
And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?
But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” —he said to the paralytic— “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”
Sin that Cripples
The importance of forgiveness:
“There were centuries and centuries . . . in which the Christian notion of forgiveness was not a part of anybody’s culture — the unconditional starting afresh, forgiving, forgetting, and how that practice ought to work. . . . But I think it’s the only way civil society really hangs together. If we continually deny people the opportunity to have an identity apart from their punish-identity, then you’re inviting them to . . . permanently inhabit that failure.
In other words, not to change. And even if they do change because they are good-hearted, they will not be able to reconcile with anyone as long as they are presented with an identity that is attached to their failure.”
-The New York Times columnist Elizabeth Bruenig
Forgiveness as the Real Need
“Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer’s apprentice who lacked the magic formula to break the spell.”
-Hannah Arendt, a Jewish political philosopher writing after the Holocaust
Who do you need to forgive today for your own healing?
Jesus the True Friend
Though these friends brought the paralytic to Jesus to be healed of his paralysis, Jesus is the true friend who brings us to the Heavenly Father to be absolved of our sin.
At the cross, Jesus tore a hole is the cosmic roof separating you from God.
The idolatry of self keeps us from moving forward in God.
When we are more consumed with our own estimations of ourselves than what God says about us, we are paralyzed with self-loathing, fear and despair.
It often comes down to esteeming an image of yourself greater than the one
“When people say, "I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself," they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's.”
― Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters
You can be that type of friend to others, helping them come to the cross of Jesus to find healing from their sin and paralysis in life.
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher 2021