{"id":472,"date":"2023-02-07T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-07T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reflectivebiblestudy.com\/gospeladventure\/?p=472&2023"},"modified":"2023-02-02T17:00:47","modified_gmt":"2023-02-03T00:00:47","slug":"the-faith-of-friends-luke-5-17-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reflectivebiblestudy.com\/gospeladventure\/the-faith-of-friends-luke-5-17-26\/","title":{"rendered":"The Faith of Friends: Luke 5:17-26"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"spoiler spoiler-style-2\"><div class=\"spoiler-title\">Focus Passage: Luke 5:17-26 (CEV)<\/div><div class=\"spoiler-content\">\r\n<p><sup>17\u00a0<\/sup>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.<\/p><p>God had given Jesus the power to heal the sick, <sup>18\u00a0<\/sup>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. <sup>19\u00a0<\/sup>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.<\/p> <p><sup>20\u00a0<\/sup>When Jesus saw how much faith they had, he said to the crippled man, \u201cMy friend, your sins are forgiven.\u201d<\/p> <p><sup>21\u00a0<\/sup>The Pharisees and the experts began arguing, \u201cJesus must think he is God! Only God can forgive sins.\u201d<\/p> <p><sup>22\u00a0<\/sup>Jesus knew what they were thinking, and he said, \u201cWhy are you thinking that? <sup>23\u00a0<\/sup>Is it easier for me to tell this crippled man that his sins are forgiven or to tell him to get up and walk? <sup>24\u00a0<\/sup>But now you will see that the Son of Man has the right to forgive sins here on earth.\u201d Jesus then said to the man, \u201cGet up! Pick up your mat and walk home.\u201d<\/p> <p><sup>25\u00a0<\/sup>At once the man stood up in front of everyone. He picked up his mat and went home, giving thanks to God. <sup>26\u00a0<\/sup>Everyone was amazed and praised God. What they saw surprised them, and they said, \u201cWe have seen a great miracle today!\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"passage-read-more\">Read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Luke 5:17-26&amp;version=cev\" title=\"Read the passage on BibleGateway.com\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"hyperlink-underlined\">Luke 5:17-26<\/a> in context and\/or in other translations on BibleGateway.com!<\/p><\/div><\/div>\r\n<p>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.<\/p>\r\n<p>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\u2019s friends were the ones who had faith: \u201c<strong>When Jesus saw how much faith they had . . .\u201d<\/strong> (v. 20a)<\/p>\r\n<p>The \u201cthey\u201d that Luke is referring to is this man\u2019s 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.<\/p>\r\n<p>While Jesus focuses His message on the subject of forgiveness, we must not minimize the faith these four men had that Jesus could\u2014and would\u2014heal their friend. Had the friends not had any faith, or if their faith wasn\u2019t 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 \u2013 the lesson of forgiveness and His role in the process.<\/p>\r\n<p>This leads me to the theme I see in this passage: <strong>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.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p><em>The faith of these men showed, and because of it, their friend was healed.<\/em><\/p>\r\n<div id=\"aj-wrap-up--472\" class=\"aj-wrap-up\"><p><em>This thought was inspired by studying the <strong>Walking With Jesus<\/strong> \u201cReflective Bible Study\u201d package. To discover insights like this in your own study time, <a class=\"underline\" href=\"https:\/\/reflectivebiblestudy.com\/\" title=\"Check out Reflective Bible Study!\">click here<\/a> and give Reflective Bible Study a try today!<\/em><\/p><p><em><a class=\"underline\" href=\"javascript:void(0);\" onClick=\"rbs_aj_inline_subscribe(this, '472');\">Subscribe<\/a> to this blog and never miss an insight.<\/em><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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 [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text"],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":false,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Faith of Friends: Luke 5:17-26 - Reflective Bible Study Gospel Adventure<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/reflectivebiblestudy.com\/gospeladventure\/the-faith-of-friends-luke-5-17-26\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Faith of Friends: Luke 5:17-26 - Reflective Bible Study Gospel Adventure\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"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. 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