The Center of our Faith..
Matthew 9:2
And behold, some people brought to him a
paralytic, lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the
paralytic, “Take heart, my son; your sins are
forgiven.” (Matthew 9:2)
This is the center of our faith: Jesus says,
“Your sins are forgiven.” Everything else in religion and doctrine, life and
death, in heaven and hell, has to take a less significant place than this one
point: "Your sins are forgiven."
You are to believe that, and remember that, because often there
will be other things that seem more important to you at the moment -- more
pressing. It’s easy to think too little of forgiveness of sins. It becomes
something we just assume. We think, “Yes, we confessed our sins at the start of
the service. We’ll mention it again the next time we’re in church. But let’s get
on with things. There’s so much else we want to think about. There’s so much
else we want from God.
Of course, you expect many and great things from God. But consider this, why would you expect blessings from God like healing of your ailments and maladies or other miracles if your sins are not forgiven? How can you expect heaven to be open to you and the angels coming down and up to help and minister to you, without first and foremost having your sins forgiven?
At the center of the Lord’s Prayer is this petition, “forgive us
our trespasses.” We pray in this petition that our Father in heaven would not
look at our sins, or deny our prayer because of them. We are neither worthy of
the things for which we pray, nor have we deserved them, but we ask that He
would give them all to us by grace, for we daily sin much and surely deserve
nothing but punishment.
It would be foolish to assume good things from God before the
forgiveness of your sins. You’d be denying your condition as a descendant of
Adam and Eve. You’d be arrogant claiming your sins aren’t a problem.
This is the center of our faith: Jesus says,
“Your sins are forgiven.” This gets to the center of God’s heart, his favorable
stance toward us his children. God is love. For the righteous and holy God of
heaven to love us sinners, he must forgive us. So from the foundation of the
world he had his heart set on forgiving us sinners by sending his only Son,
Jesus Christ to take our sins away.
In this gospel reading today, some scribes were
very critical of Jesus, his words and his actions. Scribes were the religious scholars
of the day, experts on the Bible, which at the time of Jesus was just the Old
Testament. They seemed to expect God would be stingy with forgiveness. They knew
all about his judgement and his retribution for sin. But they knew little about
his forgiveness. It’s like they preferred his judgement and wrath and hoped his
forgiveness would be rare and difficult to come by. So when Jesus so freely
announces to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven.” They object. Jesus was
interfering with God’s work. God is against sin, don’t you know. For Jesus to
say otherwise was blasphemy.
Jesus miraculously healed a paralyzed man in our
Gospel reading today. He did so as a lesson to anyone who would hesitate to
believe him when he says, “Your sins are forgiven.” Jesus says, “what’s easier,
to say, “Your sins are forgive,” or to say, “Rise and walk?” Then he shows that
both are easy, for Jesus. It’s easy for him to fix problems of the body and physical
life. It’s easy for him to fix our problems of the soul and spiritual life.
People like the Scribes will say, “no, it can’t
be that easy.” Especially when we see the sin in someone else’s life, it’s mean
of us to say, “that stuff is not going to be easy to forgive.” That attitude is
mean and misguided. It shows a false understanding who Jesus is. The Scribes
didn’t believe that Jesus could forgive sins, because they didn’t believe that
Jesus was God come down from heaven and made man. So also, when we hesitate to forgive
those who sin against us, when we say something like, “No way! That sin is too
big, too evil, it can’t be forgiven.” We show that we are not believing Jesus,
not believing who He is and what He says. For Jesus sake, put aside grudges.
Get over the hard feelings. Forgive as Jesus forgives. When he says, “Your sins
are forgiven,” It’s that easy.
Now, here’s another problem we might have. The
thinking can go like this: “Well if forgiveness is so easy, it must not be that
important. If forgiveness is free, it must not be that valuable.” Remember, it’s
free to you. But it was costly to Jesus Christ. He paid all for it. You who
have truly received that forgiveness free and easy, know how precious that
forgiveness is. That’s why it remains at the center of our faith.
Let’s never think that forgiveness is cheap. Let’s
never take it for granted. We go back again and again to the forgiveness of our
sins. It is our practice to recite it regularly, weekly in our church, daily in
our prayers. There is a great value to the faith to belong to a church that keeps
the forgiveness of sins at the center. Some have let it fall to the side. Some
have replaced forgiveness with other ideas like acceptance and tolerance. Many
churches nowadays are trying to baptize worldly, liberal ideas, trying to make
them seem religious. There are Churches preaching a message of acceptance and
tolerance for those who take pride in deviant behavior and immoral lifestyles. Let’s be clear: forgiveness is not the same as
tolerance.
I think of someone who’s family member has been
murdered. In Christian faith, the survivor will strive to find forgiveness. But
they would never want to show acceptance or tolerance. Forgiving sin, does not mean
accepting sin, nor tolerating sin.
When sin is accepted and tolerated, the result
is no repentance, no faith, no hope. God calls sinners to repent of sin and go
forward in faith, as Ephesians 4 says, 22Put
off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt
through deceitful desires, 23and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
24and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true
righteousness and holiness.
Amen.
