LESSON 27 – THE COMPASSIONATE HEALER
THE COMPASSIONATE HEALER
MARK 1:40-2:12:
This section describes two key events: Jesus healing a man with leprosy and a group of men bringing a paralytic man to Jesus. The first passage shows Jesus’ compassion as well as his power, healing the man by touch despite religious and social disgrace & the stigma of leprosy. The second passage features Jesus forgiving the paralytic man’s sins.
This angered the religious leaders, and then Jesus healed the man to demonstrate his authority to forgive sins. These two incidents in the life of Jesus are grouped together by the way they reveal the truth about our basic humanity, and his perfect knowledge of human nature. He knew what was in man, as he understood humanity, how God made us, and who we are.
As Jesus’s ministry is moving forward, a man suffering from advanced leprosy approaches Jesus:
A leper came to him [and kneeling down] begged him and said, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.” The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean. (Mark 1:40-42 NAB)
Mark says that the motives that moved Jesus were compassion and pity, and the response of Jesus’ heart was to touch him. Socially, leprosy was the equivalent of a corpse, and curing leprosy was seen as requiring a miracle equal to raising the dead (2 Kings 5:7) Ray Stedman shares how Willaim Barclay describes what a leper looks like:
The whole appearance of the face is changed, till the man loses his human appearance and looks, as the ancients said, “like a lion or a satyr”. The nodules grow larger and larger. They ulcerate and become staring. The voice becomes hoarse, and the breath wheezes because of the ulceration of the vocal cords. The hands and feet always ulcerate. Slowly the sufferer becomes a mass of ulcerated growths. The average course of the disease is nine years, and it ends in mental decay, coma, and ultimately death. The sufferer becomes utterly repulsive – both to himself and to others.
Worst of all is that it separates him from all contact with humanity, and as previously mentioned, Jesus’ heart was moved with compassion. Then Mark discloses the purpose of this event in verses 43-44:
Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once. Then he said to him, “See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.”
The purpose of the command of Jesus to go to the priest and offer the sacrifice was that it would be a witness to the priests, for they would be amazed when this man appeared to them and asked for the sacrifices Moses had commanded in the book of Leviticus. They would be puzzled and confused about what to do, as there has never been anything like this since the days of Elisha. They would know that there was one who had the power to cleanse a leper, and this would be for them a realization of a sign of the Messiah.
But, because of the leper’s disobedience, this did not come to fruition. Mark tells us in Verse 45:
The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter. He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere. (Mark 1:45 NAB).
The result of the leper’s disobedience is that Jesus can no longer enter a town openly due to the massive crowds seeking miracles, forcing him to stay in lonely, unpopulated areas. Yet people came from everywhere. This incident shows Jesus’ desire to avoid being known merely as a miracle worker and focuses on the deeper message of his preaching the word.
Then, Jesus returns to Capernaum, and a large crowd gathers at the house where he is staying. Four men, bringing a paralyzed friend on a mat, cannot get through the door because the house was jam packed full of people, and the doorway was blocked. In a great act of faith and determination, they climbed up a stairway to the roof and dug a hole in the roof and lowered the man down to Jesus.
When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days, it became known that he was at home. Many gathered together so that there was no longer room for them, not even around the door, and he preached the word to them. They came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. Unable to get near to Jesus because of the crowd, they opened up the roof above him. After they had broken through, they let down the mat on which the paralytic was lying. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are forgiven.” (Mark 2:1-5 NAB)
The story begins with Jesus being at home. There has been discussion among scholars as to whether this was Jesus’ home or Peter’s home. Either way, the house that Jesus was staying in, whether His or Peter’s was filled with people so there was no room to maneuver.
The unmistakable thing Mark emphasizes is the faith of these five Men. WOW! It’s vital to note that this was not a healing service, and Jesus was preaching the word in a house, not in the street. This incident shows us that God is always available to people’s needs whether they
are physical, spiritual, or emotional. And here were five men who were determined to reach the Lord, and their faith is an illustration and encouragement to us that this is what faith is all about. For these five men, failure was not an option, and of course, there will be a cost to repair the roof. I’m just amazed at this story. How many of us have four friends that would help us like this? And as an aside to the story, Jesus never rebuked them or criticized their disruption of his preaching.
Can you imagine sitting in your home with a gathering of people, and suddenly, you hear people cutting a hold through your roof, and five people are coming down from your roof? What would be going through your mind? Who’s going to pay for fixing the roof? Does my homeowner’s insurance cover this? So, I believe that this is proof that if the desire is strong enough, a burning desire, that God will respond, even though it is not in his program.
When Jesus said to the paralytic, “your sins are forgiven,” he knew what the scribes were thinking. In Verses 6-12:
Now some of the scribes were sitting there asking themselves, “Why does this man speak this way? He is blaspheming. Who but God alone can forgive sins?” Jesus immediately knew in his mind what they were thinking to themselves, so he said, “Why are you thinking such things in your hearts? Which is easier to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, pick up your mat and walk?’ But that you may know that the Son of man has the authority to forgive sins on earth” – He said to the paralytic, “I say to you, rise, pick up your mat and go home.” He rose, picked up his mat at once, and went away in the sight of everyone. They were all astounded and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this.” (Mark 2:6-12 NAB)
This story establishes a central theme in Mark that Jesus has the divine authority to address humanity’s deepest sin, which is the root cause of all suffering, even more so than physical ailments. In 1st-century Jewish thinking, the people did not separate physical illness from spiritual condition in the way modern medicine does. They would have been under the assumption that the paralytic’s illness was caused by sin. They believed that sickness and disability were a direct punishment from God for an individual’s transgression. (See the Book of Job).
Notice that when Jesus sees the man, the first thing he addresses is the spiritual condition, likely because he knew the surrounding crowd and the man himself assumed his paralysis was a consequence of sin. And Jesus says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” The teachers of the law immediately accuse Jesus of blasphemy because, in their theology, only God had the power to remove the illness (punishment). They mentally link the physical state directly to man’s spiritual debt.
Jesus then links his authority over the physical world to his authority over the spiritual world, saying that he can command the man to walk because he has the power to forgive sins.
Therefore, the narrative explicitly works within the 1st-century framework where the illness was seen as the physical manifestation of sin. You see, if Jesus had simply healed the paralysis without having forgiven the sin, there is no doubt that the paralysis, sooner or later, would return.
All the people, except the scribes, rejoiced and gave glory to God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!” They had seen miracles before, but what amazed them was the understanding of Jesus regarding the problems of human nature, and the fact that he clearly understood that physical and emotional problems are often caused by spiritual disease, and that the center of security and liberty lies between what goes on between a man and God.
We struggle with our anxiety and insecurity in our relationship with one another, and we ignore this great revelation to us. Our healing begins with our relationship with God, in faith that God lives in us, and us in him, and he is ready to work through us to accomplish his program. To put yourself into the hands of the living Christ is to trust him, obey him, and believe that he is the truth, and to follow him, and do what he says; That is a glorious thing.
In our next lesson, we will explore the Controversy of Jesus.
Until next time, may peace, love and you be with you always.