17 One day some Pharisees and experts in the Law of Moses sat listening to Jesus teach. They had come from every village in Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem.
God had given Jesus the power to heal the sick, 18 and some people came carrying a crippled man on a mat. They tried to take him inside the house and put him in front of Jesus. 19 But because of the crowd, they could not get him to Jesus. So they went up on the roof, where they removed some tiles and let the mat down in the middle of the room.
20 When Jesus saw how much faith they had, he said to the crippled man, “My friend, your sins are forgiven.”
21 The Pharisees and the experts began arguing, “Jesus must think he is God! Only God can forgive sins.”
22 Jesus knew what they were thinking, and he said, “Why are you thinking that? 23 Is it easier for me to tell this crippled man that his sins are forgiven or to tell him to get up and walk? 24 But now you will see that the Son of Man has the right to forgive sins here on earth.” Jesus then said to the man, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk home.”
25 At once the man stood up in front of everyone. He picked up his mat and went home, giving thanks to God. 26 Everyone was amazed and praised God. What they saw surprised them, and they said, “We have seen a great miracle today!”
Read Luke 5:17-26 in context and/or in other translations on BibleGateway.com!
Often times, when we think of Jesus healing someone, we think that the person being healed must be the one who has faith in order to receive the healing. However, after a closer reading at a number of the miraculous healings that are included in the gospels, it would seem that the necessary faith may be able to come from other sources.
In the passage for this post, we have such an event. Little if any evidence is given that prompt us to see the crippled man as the one who has faith. However, all three gospels that include this event point us to the fact that the crippled man’s friends were the ones who had faith: “When Jesus saw how much faith they had . . .” (v. 20a)
The “they” that Luke is referring to is this man’s friends, who have just carried the man up to the roof, removed ceiling tiles, and lowered the crippled man down to Jesus because there was no way to get the man through the crowd.
While Jesus focuses His message on the subject of forgiveness, we must not minimize the faith these four men had that Jesus could—and would—heal their friend. Had the friends not had any faith, or if their faith wasn’t strong enough to have made them be persistent in their mission, the crippled man would have finished his life as a cripple, and we would have missed learning the key lesson Jesus wanted to teach that day – the lesson of forgiveness and His role in the process.
This leads me to the theme I see in this passage: My faith is important, not just for the benefit of my own relationship with God, but for the benefit of those I spend time with as well. For faith to be effective, it must inspire the one who has it to act in a way that shows it is present.
The faith of these men showed, and because of it, their friend was healed.
This thought was inspired by studying the Walking With Jesus “Reflective Bible Study” package. To discover insights like this in your own study time, click here and give Reflective Bible Study a try today!
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