Gospel reading: Luke 5:17-26
The healing of the paralytic by Jesus involved two aspects, a spiritual healing and a physical healing. His sins were forgiven and he walked again. Oftentimes, spiritual healing is necessary for physical healing. We need both and God want us to experience both. But the problem with Church modernists today is that they just look to physical healing and neglect spiritual healing. Thus it is with political correctness, where the sinner is accepted, embraced, accompanied, loved and cared for, but the sin is not addressed. Thus the sinner experiences emotional healing but not spiritual healing.
The friends of the paralytic, because “the power of the Lord was with him for healing” (v.17b), looked to Jesus just for physical healing. They, together with everyone else, must have been surprised when instead of healing him, Jesus said to the paralytic, “As for you, your sins are forgiven.” (v.20). The crowd did not expect that. On the other hand, the Pharisees and teachers of the law were scandalized, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who but God alone can forgive sins?” (v.21).
For Jesus, even more important that physical healing is spiritual healing. Glad tidings to the poor does not mean the poor will get rich, but that the poor have the good news preached to them. Liberty to captives is not only freedom from physical chains, but from the chains by which Satan binds people. Sight to the blind does not just mean now being able to see, but to see the truth and beauty of God’s laws and ways. Letting the oppressed go free is not just liberation from oppressive worldly forces but from demonic forces.
The error of modernists today is to look to the former and not the latter, to the physical and not the spiritual. The focus is on the physical and emotional well-being of man but not on his spiritual well-being, indeed, his salvation. The irony of it all is that sinners feel good at the hands of modernists, but such is superficial, and in fact, ensures their continued domination by the evil one.
Would the paralytic have been better off being healed of his paralysis but not having experienced the forgiveness of his sins? Definitely not. On the other hand, if Jesus had forgiven him but he remained paralyzed, he would already have been better off. God, however, wants both spiritual and physical healing for us. But let us not look to the physical apart from the spiritual.
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