Mark 2:1 – 12

(Focus on the faith of the friends) 

2 A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. ² They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. ³ Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. ⁴ Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. ⁵ When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” ⁶ Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, ⁷ “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” ⁸ Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? ⁹ Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? ¹⁰ But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, ¹¹ “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” ¹² He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

In the bible we see a number of people responding to Jesus in different ways. The types of responses all boil down to either belief or unbelief. Here, the friends of the paralyzed man believe the words of Jesus, so much so that they take the extreme measure of removing some roof tiles to get the paralytic closer to Jesus. 

As always, we need to read the bible with thankful hearts, but also being careful not to develop any expectation about what God might do in our lives. In His wisdom, he will choose to heal (or not heal) as He wishes. Although we commend the faith of the paralytic’s friends in this passage, I think what we can take away here is a challenge to think about how active we are in our friends’ lives. How can we better help them towards Jesus?  

If you’re struggling to think of close non-Christian friends that you could share the gospel with, this thought from Sam Chan may be useful. He talks about strengthening friendships by asking favours of people. It sounds counter-intuitive, but his reasoning is by placing yourself in someone’s debt, you’re forging a deeper bond that will hopefully open the door to gospel conversations.

A song to ponder – Leaven Bread – Rain for Roots – https://open.spotify.com/track/0CC0jDDnxfQFIZw3RjuI3z  

Oliver Meehan, Living Church Carina