Get up, take your mat, go home

Matthew 9:6 (NIV)

“But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”  So He said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.”

Matthew 9 shares stories about Jesus that demonstrate His power over four satanic forces we all face---sin (verses 1-17), death (verses 18-26), darkness (verses 27-31), and demons (verses 32-38).  This study will focus on His power to forgive sins.    

When Jesus claimed that He had the authority on earth to forgive sins, He was accused of being a blasphemer (Matt 9:3).  A blasphemer is one who commits a contemptuous or profane act, utterance or writing concerning God or one who claims for himself the attributes and rights of God.   Blasphemy then and even today is a very serious offense.  The penalty for blasphemy was death (Leviticus 24:16).   What is the “unforgivable sin”?  Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (the eternal sin) (Mark 3:29).  A modern example of blasphemy was when the writer Salman Rushdie was accused of blasphemy and given the death sentence by the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 for publishing a book entitled “The Satanic Verses”.

Jesus certainly knew the consequences of being labeled a blasphemer, yet He followed up with His promise in Matthew 9:2 to the paralytic that his sins were forgiven with this very emphatic claim in verse 6.  A claim like this brings to mind what CS Lewis wrote in his famous book “Mere Christianity”:

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."

Jesus has the authority to forgive sins.  You either believe this claim or you don’t.  This is manifested in the three commands Jesus gave to the paralytic man:

-  Get up

-- Take your mat

-- Go home

These three commands seem so simple that we overlook their underlying powerful meaning.  To get up means that the man needed to have faith that what Jesus claimed is true.  Do you have faith that what Jesus said about Himself and what the entire Bible says about Jesus are all true?  To take your mat means to move forward. The man’s faith—your faith—needs to be backed up by action.  It’s the faith and works principle described in James 2:14-26.  To go home means to accept responsibility, to take care of your household, your loved ones, and be a loving neighbor. 

Can you identify with this paralytic man?  It’s not his physical paralysis, it’s his paralysis to declare his faith and take action to prove his faith.  It’s his willingness to ask for forgiveness and believe that the Lord can and does forgive sins.  You may think that your sins are too great for the Lord to forgive you, but that is false thinking.  He is willing and has the power to forgive you of all your sins and cleanse your heart of all unrighteousness (Luke 5:13, I John 1:9).  But, you must be willing to accept his forgiveness through faith in Him.  Are you willing to believe in His power to forgive your sins and enable you to restart your life as a true follower?  

“What do you see in me, cause I'm just a man with all these insecurities.  How can I even speak when the words they seem to fall so far away from me.  All my life I have felt Your purpose bathed in me.  To you I'm crawling now so desperately.  I am willing to be anything you want from me cause you have given new life to me”  -- Jeremy Camp